How to keep a sourdough starter alive during the winter
A friend of mine gave me a gift of sourdough starter. I had never made sourdough bread before, so I was very excited to get started. Unfortunately, a few days after bringing it home, my starter “died”. My house was simply too cold.
It turns out that the ideal temperature for creating or feeding a sourdough starter is 75 – 82 degrees Fahrenheit. We keep our house between 65 and 68 degrees during the winter months. As it certainly didn’t make sense to turn up our thermostat for the sake of the starter, I was eager to find another solution.
And there it was, sitting on my chest freezer. My mini dehydrator! Its lowest setting is 95 degrees, which is too warm for the starter. However, what if, I wondered, I set the bowl containing the starter on top of the dehydrator? Would that work? It did. Perfectly. I now have a lovely, healthy (new) starter bubbling its way towards someday being used to make an assortment of tasty treats: bread, English muffins, crackers, etc., etc.
Addendum: I took another look at the thermostat on my dehydrator. The lowest given temperature is 95 degrees, the temperature best suited for drying herbs and raising bread. It can, however, be turned down lower than this. There is simply no label to indicate what the temperature is below 95 degrees. So, I turned it all the way down and placed a meat thermometer (one that also gives an accurate reading of air temperatures) inside the dehydrator. It read 75 degrees. Ha! Even better.
And…. The instructions for sourdough starter call for filtered water at room temperature (75 degrees). Assuming that this is primarily to avoid poisoning the starter with chlorine, I simply left tap water out overnight to allow the chlorine gas to evaporate. To bring the water up to temperature, I simply placed the water bottle in the dehydrator on the highest setting for a few minutes.
How to keep leaves from blowing off the trays in a dehydrator
Sandwich the leaves between two of the plastic screens that line the shelves. This also flattens the leaves out, which enables you to fit more leaves/trays into the dehydrator.
A substitute for caulk for a small hole
I discovered this one one day when I was trying to think of alternatives to poison for the most recent ant invasion. I first located the crack in the baseboard in the kitchen they were using to stream by the dozens into the house. Searching for our caulk gun seemed enough of a hassle that I started brainstorming about an alternative.
Gum? The little bits of adhesive rubber stuff that they use to attach credit cards to paper?
In search of other options, I opened up my office supply drawer and saw ELMER’S Glue! “That’ll work!” I thought. And, it did! In fact, it’s even better than caulk because the aperture of the bottle is just the right size for the thin stream of glue that is needed for the task. It did the job perfectly. Hole filled. Ant invasion stopped without one drop of poison.
Other uses for a laundry basket
- Transporting wood from your woodpile into the house.
- Transporting a pot of soup (wrapped in a bath towel) from your house to a potluck.
- With a jump rope (or other item of length and strength appropriate for pulling a heavy object) tied to one of the handles, it is the perfect mode of transportation for young children to use to pull each other around the house.
- Uses for clothespins
- Attaching parchment paper to the side of a bread pan to keep it in place when pouring in bread batter
- Attaching juicing bags to the side of a bowl or pan when spooning in pulp previous to placing the bag in a cider press
- Keeping piano books open to the desired page
- Fastening the pieces of aluminum foil draped over a roast or turkey to the sides of the roasting pan
How to keep food cold in a cooler without buying ice or using ice packs
- Make your own blocks of ice using plastic take-out containers
- Freeze one of the entrées you are taking camping and use it as an ice pack
How to unwobble a wobbly restaurant table
If available, coffee stir sticks make great mini shims
How to avoid clumps in gravy
Use a small sieve and a spoon as a DIY sifter when adding flour to the gravy.
Use for a broken trowel blade
It was a chilly, drizzly fall day, and I was faced with the chore of cleaning mud off a shovel before putting it away. Running water over the blade with the hose got some off, but the thick clay and some dried-on dirt from the shovel’s last use were stubbornly remaining. The last thing I wanted to do was get my hands cold and wet, rubbing the mud off with my fingers. That was when I spied the trowel blade tucked between the pipe leading to the outdoor spigot. It worked perfectly! Also key was…
Keeping a bucket near an outdoor spigot for cleaning off garden tools
Here in Oregon, the soil is so saturated with water most months of the year that cleaning dirt off of shovels, trowels, and the like creates unwanted puddles. Having a bucket near the spigot both avoids puddles and conserves water: a bucket of muddy water is pretty much as effective at cleaning garden tools as clean water from a hose.
Thoughts and Such 