This week, I’ve been extra grateful for my large supply of beeswax wraps.
Now I know I bang on about these ad nauseam, but in a time when we’re supposed to be staying home and only going out to buy essentials, they’ve proven invaluable. By keeping our vegetables fresh for longer, they’ve greatly reduced the number of times we’ve had to leave the house.
Best of all, they work brilliantly. Take the spring onions above. That photo was taken NINE DAYS after we bought them. I haven’t edited or filtered it in any way – we’ve had a few wilted outer leaves, but no sliminess. So far this week, our wraps have kept cos lettuce, spinach, rocket and eggplant as good as new for over a week. The only real problem is remembering what’s in the fridge at any given time!
So if you haven’t already done so, now might be the time to make some beeswax wraps. Hopefully you can do it without leaving the house! You can order beeswax foundation sheets online (check out candle making business online, or try etsy, amazon or ebay) – make sure to buy pure natural uncoloured beeswax. In the past I’ve bought beeswax sheets from both Stacks of Wax in Newtown and E. C. Tobin in Raglan, NSW. Rummage through the linen closet for old cotton bedsheets that are past their best and cut them up. You’ll also need an iron, some parchment paper and an old towel to protect your ironing board.
Then grab a helper (two sets of hands are useful), read our updated tutorial and have a go! ♥
Also keeps cut avocado much better than horrible plastic wrap:) Been using them for at least three years for this.
Very interesting! I thought you only used the beeswax wraps for bread. I bought a few when I was in town last time. I haven’t used them yet though. I should get them out sooner, rather than later though. I have noticed that there are more things we took for granted that we have been cutting back on. Maybe I should have made that switch a long time ago.🤷♀️
And bread baking!
excellent idea. thank you.
Hi Celia
Thanks for your recent posts on making beeswax wraps. I have ordered some wax today. This might help me use up some of my fabric stash and make some gifts. I am also endeavouring to learn how to make bread. Thankfully I bought some bread flour before all the panic buying started. I am going to start with yeasted bread to get a little confidence happening then move onto sourdough. Could you let me know where you buy your grain mix? I live in country NSW and need to find someone who can have it delivered.
Sandy
Those spring onions look amazing! I don’t have wraps that big, but sounds like I should make some… I only have a lump of beeswax rather than sheets, any ideas for how I could use that for wraps?
You can grate the wax, but you need a separate grater to do it with as it will leave wax on it. Sprinkle the wax over the fabric and put on a baking tray with parchment paper or similar on it and put in the oven on a warmish temperature. It is also useful to have a paintbrush, again a special one for the job, to spread out the wax if it ends up in clumps. When the wax is melted, turn your fabric over and do the same on the other side. It you don’t want to grate it you could melt the wax in a double boiler and use a paintbrush to paint it onto the fabric and place in the oven to melt it into the fabric, and then repeat on the other side. Hope that helps x
thanks sustainable mum! I’ll give it a go :)
I love my wraps they are great aren’t they. I have just made another batch as the first ones I made about eight or nine years ago are beyond being able to be patched up now!
It’s great to have reusable wrappers :)
I bought some last year but for some reasons I didn’t find them easy to use… they were quite stiff endnote easy to fold/wrap with, despite some gentle warming. Do I need to significantly warm them up?
I use brown paper bags for storing vegetables in the fridge; these are being reused when possible and then recycled – I appreciate that recycle is less good than long-term reuse altogether.
Now, I hadn’t thought of wrapping my vegetables to help preserve them. What a great idea – thank you!
I got sick of unwrapping everything to find one thing. So, I used a hole punch on a corner, before waxing, then after waxing i threaded an elastic band through the hole and through a matching hole in a tag. I made the tags by printing out a sheet of paper with names of all the foods i usually wax wrap, then laminating the sheet before cutting into individial tags and punching a hole in the end. sounds like a lot of work, but it was only an hour, and saves so much more time spent searching.