DIY: On Cleaning a Tooth or Two

I panicked a little at the grocery store over the weekend when my usual brand of toothpaste, Dr. Ken's, was missing from its usual spot on the shelves. I'd loaded up on it a while back during a sale and have no idea of when they ran out or of whether they've stopped stocking it. Not too long ago, the grocery store in question had gone several months without carrying the organic variety of Vegenaise I love and then recently resumed carrying it without explanation -- asking the staff about it had proved useless. Basically, there's no telling when or why a favourite item will vanish, so I try to stock up on non-perishable favourites when I can -- particularly when they go on sale. Dr. Ken's toothpaste became my "usual" brand because on top of being vegan, its taste isn't overwhelming and it's generally one of the more inexpensive of the brands carried by local stores. So with a little less than a half-tube of it left to go and refusing to shell out additional money to taste-test a different brand, I found myself with enough time to turn to Google to locate information to try to make my own.

Aside from containing animal ingredients and of having possibly been tested on nonhuman animals, commercial toothpaste often contains artificial sweeteners and flavours, as well as chemical preservatives. Much has also been written over the past couple of decades about the hazards of fluoride, whether added to toothpaste or to drinking water (please note that I haven't read enough about this issue to weigh in one way or another, myself). Considering that brushing your teeth is something you (ideally) do at least a couple of times a day, aren't you concerned about what it is that you're putting on your toothbrush and into your mouth?

A while back, I'd spent the better part of a year as an impoverished college student brushing my teeth with plain old baking soda. I would just sprinkle some baking soda on a small plate, wet my toothbrush, dip it in and then brush. Mildly abrasive, baking soda helps scrub plaque and stains off your teeth, leaving you with whiter looking teeth and fresher breath. It also raises the pH level in your mouth, which in turn combats the enamel-destroying acid created by the bacteria in your mouth. Concerns have been raised over baking soda being too abrasive to use regularly without wearing down tooth enamel, although this mostly becomes a problem if you brush too hard to begin with or use too firm a toothbrush. That being said, my dentist once told me that far too much gum damage is actually caused quite specifically by people brushing their teeth too hard -- something to keep in mind whether or not you use baking soda.

There are recipes for homemade toothpaste or tooth cleaner all over the internet. Seriously. They're common on a variety of blogs and websites because they appeal to the environmentally responsible (think of the packaging saved by making your own), to the thrifty and to the health-conscious. As it turns out, making your own toothpaste is so simple that it would also make sense that it catch the attention of penny-pinching, environmentally conscious, superfluous chemical avoiding vegans. The most common one you'll find is a variation on a combination of the aforementioned baking soda (with or without hydrogen peroxide), vegetable glycerin (for smoothness) and some sort of essential oil or extract such as peppermint or cinnamon for an all-natural fresh taste. Here's one example on the Instructables site. Here's another on the Vegan Epicurean blog. As an alternative to glycerin, some recipes use coconut oil. Find a recipe, try it yourself, then tweak it.

Let's face it: Sometimes vegan personal care products can be a bit pricey. This is one example, however, of how easy it is to make a cheap alternative of your own. A few years ago, I'd weighed the idea of integrating more do-it-yourself, vegan-friendly, frugal and sustainability-focused posts into the blog. Maybe this is a good time to revisit that idea. Please feel free to comment below if you have suggestions for future posts. Are there any items for which you'd like to find DIY alternatives to tackle at home?

Related post: DIY: Animal-Free Shampoo

DIY Animal-Free Shampoo

A fair bit of this blog's focus in its first few years was anti-consumerist in nature. Tips on how to wean yourself off the sort of materialistic self-indulgences were always qualified in some way with an emphasis on using methods free of animal exploitation, of course, but my intended message was as much about living a more simple, affordable and sustainable life as it was about being vegan. The important thing is that these aren't mutually exclusive. Veganism can be expensive, depending on how reliant you choose to be on commercial products to substitute the commercial products you used previously. The thing is, though, that it's easy to cut costs by making things from scratch. Often, using this approach also means living the sort of life that's more gentle on the planet's resources -- the resources upon which all other animals (human or non-human) also rely. Even if pinching pennies isn't a motivating factor for you, think of how all of kinds of simple little changes in how you consume could add up and make a difference.

Cleaning products and personal care products are sometimes highly toxic, often overly-packaged and unless you specifically choose ones that are designated as vegan, invariably end up using animal ingredients and involve heavy animal testing. Also, unless you select products that are organic or where the emphasis is placed on using natural ingredients that are mostly plant-derived, your products, regardless of being animal free, will still contain harsh chemicals which are no better for your own body than for the environment. So what's a penny-pinching and environmentally conscious vegan to do? Experiment with making your own stuff. For instance, you can start with one particular product, like shampoo.

This Instructables post on DIY shampoo is actually one of my favourites. It describes a whopping ten different ways to make your own shampoo, catering each to individual preferences or needs. Starting off with a basic recipe, the author of the instructable moves on to provide variations to stimulate, quench, soothe, de-flake, shine or rejuvenate your hair. She throws in one variation for the sake of its amazing smell (coconut and vanilla!) and one for a dry shampoo. Her final -- "No 'Poo" -- is one of the most basic recipes imaginable, using baking soda, water and apple cider vinegar. Please note that the author isn't vegan and that these recipes are mostly "accidentally" animal-free, except the last one, where she mentions the option of adding honey. Please leave the honey for the bees and while you're at it, check out a better variation of a "No Poo" recipe here at the Big Raw & Vegan Blog.

For those with hair prone to appearing greasy near the roots, do what my old Hungarian roommate in university used to do and apply a little bit of cornstarch to the roots, lightly rubbing it into your hair and then combing it out well with a fine-tooth comb. The cornstarch absorbs the grease and anything else stuck to your hair thanks to the grease. The important thing to remember when using this method is that it can be messy (so do it over a sink) and that you should start with the least amount of corn starch you can, adding more as you need it; otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of white powder in your hair and... will have to wash it! Well-dried arrowroot can apparently serve the same purpose (and pose the same problems if you go to heavy on it).On the other hand, for a moisturizing "shampoo", I've found several references online to taking a ripe avocado, mashing it with just enough baking soda to make a paste, then rubbing that into your hair and massaging your scalp well. Rinse it out well when done and your hair will supposedly be left very soft.

For more DIY shampoo recipes, a few Google searches will bring up hundreds, many of them similar variations on the ones I've mentioned or to which I've linked. All it takes is a little trial and error until you find the one that's right for you, which is what you'd do shopping around for a new store-bought shampoo, anyway. In this case, however, you don't have to plunk down $7-12 to test something out since many of the ingredients you need you can find at home or buy in smaller quantities.

If you have a favourite recipe for homemade shampoo, please share it below. If you try any of the ones I've mentioned, do please leave a comment to let me know how it went. Expect a My Face Is on Fire post on homemade hair conditioner over the next few days and in the interim, if there are any other products for which you'd like some DIY suggestions, just drop me a line.

How to Make Your Own Soy Milk

I found a number of recipes for homemade soy milk online, most with only slight variations. Many of them called for the use of a soy milk making contraption, however, which I'm guessing that most people don't have on hand. I neither have one, nor do I intend to get one--I've got too many electric kitchen gadgets as it is, and want to scale back on what I already have and use. I found a number of videos, as well, using the same. I ended up finding this one below on YouTube and really liked it. It shows how easy it is to make soy milk from scratch using nothing but the most basic kitchen tools, a blender and your stove (or other source of cooking heat).

Given the relative ease with which most people can find soy milk in stores these days, the idea of making it yourself may not seem that appealing. The cost-saving benefit is worth noting: Dried organic soy beans are cheaper to use and you will indeed save money making it yourself--up to half or more of what you'd pay for the commercial soy milk. When you make it yourself, you get to flavour it however you like it. Also, remember the energy and resources wasted during the manufacturing of commercial soy milk and of its packaging, and of where that packaging often ends up even if it may be recyclable. Another thing I've been noticing is that the availability of organic soy milk seems to declining somewhat, with brands like Silk switching from organic to beans that are almost certainly genetically modified, and then sometimes even reintroducing organic versions at higher prices.

So do indeed use organic beans and give this recipe a try. Save that soy pulp (also called "okara"), since it's incredibly nutritious and there are innumerable recipes available on the internet, particularly Asian recipes, in which you can use it. Enjoy!

Vegan Simplicity

When I started writing My Face Is on Fire a couple of years ago, I did so with a couple of intentions. I wanted to write about veganism, but I also wanted to write about other issues involving the ethics of consumption that have to do with over-consumption in general. Cheap oil (among other factors) has facilitated a sort of rampant consumerism in "developed" countries, and this consumerism has enabled our becoming disposable societies. Cheap oil facilitated the Green Revolution, which has left us with a hyper-industrialized agricultural system which has poisoned the land, water and air around us, and which has also left global food production--much of the world's actual seed supply--in the hands of a very few gigantic biotech companies. It's also left us eating questionable concoctions out of disposable (albeit sometimes recyclable) paper, plastic and metal packaging--foods whose ingredients sometimes travel halfway around the world to get to the machines used to slap them together before they hit the store shelves.

So along with talking about the ethics of veganism, when I started this blog, I wanted to focus on the things we can do to reduce our consumerism by eating lower on the food chain, relying less on manufactured goods, and supporting agricultural practices that don't involve tithes to Monsanto (i.e. practices which are instead focused on supporting organic agriculture, and on even growing some of your own food while avoiding chemical fertilizers, pesticides and frankenseed). I think that with veganism as its foundation, an ethical consumption mindset that also involves consideration for treading lightly can lead to a lifestyle that is healthier for us, for non-humans, as well as for the environment we all share. It can also be a fun and educational process, as you teach yourself methods you can use to simplify your life and pass on any acquired knowledge or skills to others interested in learning more.

I'm sure that some vegans get a bit of a negative knee-jerk reaction to mentions of things like "locavorism" and "small-scale organic farming" because of the emphasis often placed on animal use and exploitation when discussing either--particularly in purportedly hip mainstream articles about either topic. The truth is, though, that there are so many benefits to be enjoyed from incorporating a variety of fresh and unprocessed plant-based foods into your diet and in knowing what's been used to grow them. I also think that along with treading more lightly when choosing what we eat, that we have so much from which to benefit in learning how to simplify our lives in other ways that leave us consuming--and spending!--less.

I've been chatting with a number of fellow vegans (as well as non-vegans) over the last few months, mostly via email or in some discussion forums, about how pricey or difficult to track down certain processed vegan items and personal care products can be. While doing this, I've realized that there are too many instances where veganism ends up deemed "too difficult" because of the expense or scarcity in some stores of items with otherwise readily-available non-vegan equivalents. In many cases, the items in question are, in fact, items that are neither critically essential nor completely unaffordable if consumed in moderation. That being said, while extending the blog's focus to include the exploration of less expensive lifestyle choices for vegans that rely less on manufacturing and instead lean more towards sustainability and voluntary simplicity, that could be an interesting "issue" to tackle. Over the next while, I hope to include tips, tricks and do-it-yourself instructions for a variety of things that may be helpful to those interested. I look forward to getting some feedback on it all in the posts to come.

Heavy Metal Vegan Cooking: Making Seitan with Satan

Sprouting 101

(This is a post from March 28, 2008 that I thought I'd bump after a conversation about sprouting earlier today.)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to fix myself up a batch of something I used to have on hand almost constantly up until just a few years back. I decided to try my hand at sprouting again. I popped over to the local health food store to load up on some extra organic Speerville Flour Mill kamut and spelt berries--grains I usually boil or steam to eat instead of rice, or throw into the bread machine with any old bread recipe ingredients to make a really chewy and nutty-tasting bread (with a really crunchy crust).

I don't use a store-bought sprouter, although if I were making sprouts for more than one person (or decided to up my own sprout intake significantly), I'd consider it for the sake of convenience. A simple clean Mason jar does the trick for me right now, though, providing me with enough sprouts to throw into a couple of salads or stir fries. A second Mason jar to sprout something different might be useful, too, though. So? Here's the scoop on everything you could possibly want to know about sprouting. I'm not going to go over every facet of it here, since there are bunches and bunches of other places online where you can go to find sprouting FAQs that aren't commercial sites like the one to which I just Iinked, which is actually really easy to navigate and has a lot of usable info for low-tech sprouting.

Make sure that your hands and sprouting tools are clean whenever contact is made with the sprouts, incidentally. And ensure that the grains (or other things) you sprout are clean and have been stored well before you use them. There are indeed safety concerns revolving around sprouts that haven't been stored or handled properly.

Here's the My Face Is on Fire crash course: Take around a half cup of a mixture of kamut and spelt berries (I've read that spelt doesn't sprout particularly well, although I've had no issues with it--you may want to stick to kamut or something else for your first try at sprouting). Take a bunch of grains and pick out the broken or discoloured ones. Rinse the grains off in a colander and place in a jar. Add 2-3 times the amount of water (so, a cup to a cup and a half) and let the jar sit overnight. In the morning, check to see if any grains are floating on top and if so, press down on them to see if they'll sink. If anything's still floating, pick it out, then rinse your sprouts well over the sink, saving the water for later for your garden or houseplants. Wrap a layer of cheesecloth over the jar's mouth and tip the jar to let the water out. I tend to keep the jar tilted mouth-downward with the cheesecloth on it and kept in place with a rubber band to ensure that there's no water left in the jar, which could cause spoiling. You can rinse and drain them once or twice a day at 8-12 hour intervals and they should be ready in around three days. You can sprout them for a longer period, as long as you keep rinsing and draining them--they're alive! Here's an "Instructable" on how to grow sprouts, just to show you how easy it really is.

There are a zillion other things you can sprout successfully--all kinds of grains, nuts, seeds and beans. Soaking and sprouting times vary accordingly and some sprouts store well in the fridge, while others don't. Remember that Google is your best friend! Once you figure out what to sprout,you'll be burdened with figuring out what to do with them, because the possibilities are plentiful. I like to sprinkle 'em on salads, throw them in wraps or sandwiches, add them to stir fries/casseroles/soups or use them when baking hearty bread or rolls. You can even make sprout cereal, hot or cold, or sprouted "oatmeal". It's all trial and error, baby!

(Listening to: A Vegan Freak podcast while taking photos in me kitchen.)

Noble Bean Tempeh

I've never been much of one to indulge in soy products, myself. Whilst vegetarian (and then vegan) and living with an omni partner, though, I did tend to pick up a lot more soy-based substitutes to have around the house. We had a meat-free home and he really enjoyed the subs, perpetually swigging back glasses of chocolate Silk or piling soy meat analogs into sandwiches packed for work.

One thing I've come to like in recent years, though, is tempeh. Unlike the blank slate that is tofu when it comes to preparing it, tempeh has a mild nutty taste (as well as an interesting crumbly sort of texture). It also escapes a lot of the recent criticism and disputes over the possible issues with unfermented soy products that seem to be all over the internet right now. I'll leave that topic for another time...

Strangely, although every supermarket in my city carries tofu and soy dairy substitutes of all kinds, I can only find a good selection of tempeh at the two small health food stores in the city. One of the major supermarkets carries Green Cuisine tempeh burgers (which are decent enough), but both health food stores carry my favourite: Noble Bean tempeh. At a time when most soy is GMO and most meat analogs in the stores aren't organic (and therefore, almost certainly GMO), it's also a plus for me that the Noble Bean tempeh is organic. I just recently picked up their Sea Veggie Tempeh and pan-fried it with a little bit of garlic and lemon juice and it was amazing. I quartered it to make tempeh burgers with tomatoes, lettuce and diced red onions on Vegenaise and Dijon-smeared multigrain buns. I can't recommend it enough.

I think that I'd like to tackle making tempeh on my own, sometime. The starter required to make it can be ordered online from a number of places and there are tons of instructions available on how to make it. For instance, this PowerPoint presentation and this step-by-step Instructable.

How to Make Your Own Almond Milk from Scratch

This is so incredibly simple.

See more vegan recipes and videos at Eat Drink or Die.

Crochet Chain Stitch

The chain stitch is sort of the equivalent of "casting on" in knitting. It's basically what you need to do to get started -- to create that first row from which you then crochet your project. I like this video better than the previous video I posted. It only covers this one part, though. Before you can even get to this point, you need to know how to make a slip knot. Click here for a video that shows you how.

These, and the rest of the instructional crochet videos I'll be posting, were found via the Knit Witch website.

Got tea bags?

I've mostly given up coffee. Over the years I've gone from being an indiscriminate 4-5 cup a day coffee freak to sipping on organic green tea throughout the day. For the longest time, I was buying green tea bags that weren't individually wrapped. Unfortunately, I've been having a hard time finding organic green tea bags that aren't individually wrapped, and am thinking that the way to go will be to buy loose tea, even thought I'm pretty sure that I've only seen it sold by Lipton's (or some other similar company). The smart thing to do would be to give it up altogether. Maybe someday.

So we recycle paper at work and I've been throwing my little tea bag wrappers into the bin (and even bringing the ones I use at home). Then I stumbled across this neat idea on the Instructables website and think that I may very well give it a try this weekend. The instructables' creator even has some images up on her website for Xmas card ideas. I decided to nose around a little and ended up finding this website that contains links to other sites devoted to tea bag folding. More Google searches showed me that tea bag folding (aka kaleidoscope folding) is apparently quite a popular hobby and has been so for years -- especially for folks who like things like origami. Unfortunately, a lot of people print out their own ''tiles'' to use instead of recycling tea bags or reusing decorative paper, which would sort of defeat my own purpose in trying this out at all.

Cornell University's agriculture and home economics databases

I stumbled upon these collections of online books and journals recently. First, there's the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture, which contains links to thousands of e-books or journals on everything from soil management to barn building. Then, there's the Home Economics Archive that covers everything from plumbing to sewing. Both of these include publications going all the way back to the early 1800s.

For those interested in beekeeping (which is a bit controversial in vegan circles, I know), they have The Hive and the Honeybee Collection -- links to about 50 or 60 e-texts of older books on the topic.

Reducing and reusing creatively and a few other finds

I like checking out DIY and crafts sites or blogs -- especially their posts or articles on environmentally-friendly creations. There are a lot of original ideas to be found that make being practical sorta fun.

For instance, here's a step-by-step guide to how to make your own reusable sandwich wrapper. You need some basic sewing skills to do it, obviously, but it's something that wouldn't be difficult to learn (and would have wider applications than merely making a bunch of reusable sandwich wrappers).

Then I stumbled upon instructions for making a solar food dryer. There are lots of these all over the internet and there are even more for solar cookers (with everything from satellite dishes to pizza boxes incorporated into the designs).

And then there's a lot of buzz about Zeer pots, which are refrigerating earthenware pots (you put a terra cotta pot into a larger terra cotta pot, slip sand in between then and keep it wet -- the evaporation of the water cools the inner pot).

Oh, and if you're like me and you have boxes and boxes of old VHS tapes in your shed, attic or basement -- here are some instructions on how to make a totebag using tape from them. The My Recycled Bags.com site has tons of neat blurbs on how to make bags out of just about anything, by the way. Very neat! (Do people still say 'neat'?)

Echowood's Making Tofu At Home: Part two

Here's the second part. The music is a little loud.

Skills, sustainability and self-reliance links

I'll be adding these links to the left of the page over the next few days, but thought I'd share them here first.

Here's a new foraging link -- a free e-book about acorns, a wild edible found readily across North America.

You'll find out almost everything you want to know about preserving food here at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This was by far one of the most intriguing (and potentially dangerous) things I've come across in a while. I've only glanced through it. It's a .pdf guide about practicing medicine in austere conditions where appropriate technology and professional assistance are unavailable. (I'm no medical expert, so I'm certainly not recommending any of the info in that guide, which is full of disclaimers itself.)

Then there's Howtopedia -- the Wikipedia of practical skills, where users are invited to write articles to contribute to this self-described practical knowledge library.

Finally, here's a simple guide on how to make homemade cider vinegar.

Guilty geeky pleasures

I recently stumbled upon a book of illustrations by Kurt Halbritter at a local fund-raising book sale. Aside from online antique or used book stores selling copies of his work, I've been unable to find any information about him on the internet. The book I picked up is a spoof of illustrated naturalist books and is called Halbritter's Plant-and-Animal World. It's translated from German and is comprised of images and descriptions of fantastical animals -- integrating human appendages. As a blurb on it from the New York Times in 1982 pointed out, the effect or wit of its original puns has likely lost some punch here and there during its translation. I've managed to find a site hosting a few of the illustrations from it. In the book, this one is described as

Cunning Cuddlefish
octabrachium cupidissimum
Sleazy eight-armed sea monster; can't keep its hands off anybody. Polydactyl and puritanical, it preys primarily on Christian sailors who have gone astray. Research into the sex life of the Cunning Cuddlefish is currently at a standstill for lack of any captive specimens. Cuddlefish cuddling is a tough act to catch, let alone follow.

This one is the

Leghornucopia
illex iambecornuta
Indigenous to the Solomites. Long-haired, sure-footed and provocatively crowned with a pair of ravishing legs. The luscious Leghornucopia lives way up in the mountains, at altitude ranging anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 feet, and comes down from these peaks only on the coldest winter days. The severe climate of its natural habitat notwithstanding, this erotic beast has led many a hunter astray, enticing and exciting him to such heights that they can hardly hold their peashooters straight.

Some of the illustrations are a bit more risqué, some are a little less clever. It was a fun find for a buck. Other find for a dollar apiece: Alan Alda's Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, a like new trade-sized copy of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. I also picked up a crafts book with sections on things like braiding rag rugs and how to make dipped candles.

Plastic Bags, Part I

Around a month and a half ago, I tucked my bicycle into a small nook between the side of my sofa and my collapsible (and sadly, unused) sewing machine, and resigned myself to a winter of adapting to being a pedestrian again. Part of this meant that I would be losing the speed and mobility that had allowed me to spend the previous seven or eight months being a finicky shopper, able to flit from one store to another to shop for better deals or fresher produce. Travel-time more than tripled, which entailed the necessity to plan ahead more carefully. On the other hand, I also suddenly found myself with two free hands to carry bags for extras outside of what I could ordinarily cram into my well-worn knapsack whilst cycling. I'm quite happily car-free, and for those rare occasions when I do need to make a large purchase, it's much cheaper to take an occasional cab than to have a car sitting in my driveway 24/7. So far, I've managed to keep my cab rides down to one every couple of months.

I've generally had no problem accepting some plastic bags at stores, since I do it so rarely and always reuse the bags to clean litter boxes (which nonetheless leaves them ending up in the landfill, I know). Lately, my mother's been re-homing her plastic bags with me, since they would otherwise end up getting thrown out by her. Because of this, I've decided to nose around online a bit, to look for creative and useful things to do with extra bags, as well as ways to reuse existing items at home to actually make reusable bags. I've noticed that reusable bags are often for sale now at many grocery stores, from $1.00 to $4.00, so I was curious to see what other options were available.

I found this blog post on how to make bags out of old sheets and used jeans (or other sturdy fabric). The cost is zilch if you use your own old sheets and old jeans. Online instructions for making shopping bags are plentiful. For instance, morsbags.com even has animated step-by-step instructions for another type of bag. It calls for more durable fabric than what you'd get with sheets. I'd suggest checking out a thrift store, or the liquidation sales that fabric stores often have, if you want to keep costs down.

A woman called Cristen has devoted a blog to crocheting with plastic from old bags. She tells you how to prepare them first and provides links to dozens of projects, including how to make crocheted bags out of used plastic bags. Cindy, at myrecycledbags.com provides tons of patterns (with illustrated instructions) for plastic bag crafts. For instance, she has instructions on how to make a doormat or a pot scrubber. Now if I can only learn to crochet... Craftzine has also featured information in its blog on how to crochet things out of plastic bags, as well as how to fuse plastic to create things like clothing and jewelry.

So why not just recycle the bags, you may wonder? Aren't most bags biodegradable these days, anyway? I'll post more on that aspect of the plastic bag issue later.

(Listening to: The Bauhaus' The Sky's Gone Out)