Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

After you’ve read this, please have a look at our updated tutorial and tips here! x

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Last Christmas, our lovely friend Diana gave us a beeswax wrap to experiment with.

It proved to a handy replacement for plastic bags and cling film, and an ideal way to wrap loaves of sourdough…

As it’s our goal to try and live greener in 2018, and given that commercial beeswax wraps are prohibitively expensive, we thought we’d have a go at making our own (thanks for the suggestion, Margo!). There are oodles of tutorials and methods on the internet, with some more complicated than others.

Pete and I came up with a very simple technique, inspired by this informative video…

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And this one from the wonderful 1 Million Women blog...

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The only beeswax we had in the house were leftover sheets from candle making nearly a decade ago, but these proved to be perfect for the job. It took a couple of attempts to get them right, but we’re now pretty happy with the result.

Here’s what you’ll need…

• 1 foundation sheet of natural (uncoloured) beeswax – these are available online on Ebay and Amazon, and from craft, candlemaking and beekeeping supply stores.
• washed and ironed cotton fabric – not too thick, and make sure it’s colour fast
• two large sheets of parchment paper
• old towel
• iron

1. Fold the towel in half and lay it on an ironing board. Place a large sheet of parchment paper on top.

2. Fold the cotton fabric so that it’s the same size as the wax sheet. It can be between six to eight layers deep, depending on the thickness of your fabric. In this example, I’ve used the sleeves from an old Japanese yukata that I’d saved from the 1990s. The fabric is six layers thick in the photo below. Place it on top of the parchment paper…

3. Put the wax sheet on top, lining it up as best you can…

4. Cover with the other sheet of parchment paper, then iron over the top, pressing down and moving slowly over the area until the wax melts. It should seep through all the layers. Some tutorials say to use a warm iron, but I had mine on the cotton setting and it was fine…

5. Holding onto both sheets of parchment, carefully flip the whole thing over and check to see if the wax has penetrated through to the bottom layer. Iron again on the flip side to help even it all out.

6. If you have excess wax (which  might happen if your fabric is quite thin), peel back the paper and place another piece of cloth over the wax-infused fabric. Cover again with the parchment and iron a bit more. There might be enough wax to soak into another cloth, but if not, just keep the partially done one for next time…

7. When the beeswax is evenly distributed (there shouldn’t be any dry patches in the fabric), remove the top layer of parchment and gently peel apart the layers. Be careful as they might be hot. Wave the finished fabric around a bit, then drape it over a drying rack or the back of a chair to let it cool completely. This won’t take very long at all. The wrap will feel waxy and a bit stiff. If you like, trim the edges with pinking shears, although they shouldn’t fray too badly…

These wraps won’t work quite as well as the commercial ones, as they don’t include pine rosin or jojoba oil, which I’ve read is added to help it “cling”. Edit: This article warning against pine rosin, so we won’t be trying it, but we did try one batch with added jojoba oil and honestly didn’t notice much difference.

To cover a bowl, you need to hold the wrap in place for a while until the warmth of your hands shapes it a bit.I usually add a rubber or silicon band for added security…

These are really very cheap to make – we had everything we needed at home, but if you had to buy them, the foundation beeswax sheets are now about $3.50 each. I picked up a few more today at Stacks of Wax in Newtown. We’ve found that pure cotton fabrics – patchwork or sheeting weight – work best. You’re looking for a close weave with a bit of weight to it, but not too much – thick, coarse weave tea towels for example, won’t work. Make sure the fabric is colour fast before you start (avoid things like batik prints and indigo dyes) and wash and iron it first.

Edit Jan 2019: after a year of using them, the ones made with sheeting fabric have far outlasted and out-performed the others. These days I make the wraps with Sheridan sheeting offcuts that I bought years ago from Reverse Garbage, as well as retired bedsheets. Make sure you only use pure cotton sheeting.

The internet will tell you that these can be used with almost any food item other than meat. I’ve found it best to wrap anything oily (like focaccia) or sappy (cut pumpkins or sweet potato) in kitchen paper first, and then in the beeswax wrap.

After use, the wraps can be wiped down, rinsed off, or washed in gentle detergent and cool water, then left to dry before reusing. After six to twelve months, they can be re-waxed if needed. We’ve stored ours in a sealed Tupperware container, as apparently the wax can occasionally attract cockroaches.

These will make a great gift for friends, so I’m off to raid my fabric stash for more cotton!

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As we stood in the checkout queue at the fruit shop yesterday, I had a happy realisation. Every single person in line had brought their own bags.

Harris Farm Markets stopped supplying plastic shopping bags on 1 January 2018 – they still have small thin ones on offer for individual items, but even those were being used sparingly. The young man in front of us was piling unbagged fruit and veg on to the counter for weighing, and the well-trained cashier was placing them carefully into his backpack after ringing up. As always, it’s a joy to live in Sydney’s Inner West, where the community is happy to embrace initiatives like this without so much as a murmur.

I always travel with a couple of furoshiki in my handbag these days…

As I’ve mentioned previously, Harris Farm offers a range of imperfect fruit and vegetables – a boon to both the farmer and the purchaser. I was so impressed with the green mesh bags provided for these items that I wanted to make my own. It was a great use for the roll of mosquito netting that has been sitting in my sewing room for twenty years, and the bag of lanyards I picked up at Reverse Garbage six months ago. Not being a minimalist occasionally pays off…

The prototype worked so well that I came home and whipped up a dozen more. The fabric doesn’t fray, so it was a doddle to adapt the glasses case pattern from my Useful Bag post…

We picked up a mesh bag full of imperfect apricots for $3.99/kg (as opposed to $12.99/kg for the perfect ones) so that Pete could make our favourite jam. Of course, first we had to make pectin from Granny Smith apples (lucky they had seconds of those too). It’s been a very long time since we’ve had any of our own homemade jam, so this was a real treat…

My friends in the UK tell me that shops are now required to charge for plastic bags over there, which has greatly reduced their use. We still use more at home than we’re happy with, although we make a concerted effort to wash and recycle them wherever possible. How are you going with reducing your plastic usage?

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