Repurposed San Pellegrino Bottle
Recycling is fantastic, but there’s something even better: repurposing! And the kitchen has tons of potential for finding new uses for things you might otherwise throw out or recycle. (Composting is repurposing, too — you’re nourishing your garden with food scraps rather than grinding them down the drain.) From flimsy plastic containers to classy glass jars, you can reuse more than you’d think.
I wash out my cheapie containers and then use them when I’m taking non-liquid, non-heated, non-acidic items to a party: it’s far easier to hand over your cookies or cornbread to the host in a container that you don’t have to have returned. Whenever I get a nice glass jar, though — it may have originally contained peanut butter or olives or applesauce or what have you — I keep those for myself so that I have handy glass jars for leftover sauces, canned pumpkin, coconut milk, etc. Screw-top jars are great for making dressing, too, because you can just pour/sprinkle in all your ingredients and then shake the jar like crazy to get a nicely-emulsified, creamy dressing without having to worry about any errant splats of oil and vinegar.
My favorite thing to recycle, though, is pretty bottles. Wide-necked ones can be filled with multi-colored stones, shells, or sand; narrow-necked ones make nice vases. If it’s a bottle with a cork, you can keep vinegar in it, although you definitely want to keep anything edible out of direct sunlight and in a cool, dry place. (Sunlight will hasten food’s demise.) If you like the look of decorative liquids in bottles, either fill them with dyed water or something else you’re not planning on eating.
Have fun with your repurposing! You can often find intriguing glass containers at garage sales, too, and for 10 cents apiece. I like to snatch up dollar-a-dozen, plain glass plates and champagne/wine glasses whenever I see them — it’s fun to paint them as I see fit, and at less than 10 cents each, if my creation doesn’t come out exactly the way I’d envisioned, that’s fine. I can always use another pretty vase.
Enjoy!
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Tags: kitchen art, recycle, repurpose
I love the idea of using glass water bottles for vases! What a pretty picture, too!
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