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Friday, December 2, 2011

Wheat. What is it good for?

Did you start singing the song? I did too. :)

If you've heard much in the way of primal, paleo, ancestral-type health, you would probably agree that the answer is absolutely nothin' ...(say it again).

BUT I did work out at least 3 things that use wheat and are actually great :) horray!

Mix the flour and cold water
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Number 1 - GLUE!


Yep, gluten makes a great glue, who knew?
(prrreeety much everyone Jayne, duh)

We all know how to make papier-mâché glue right? Plain white flour and water. At least that was how we did it when I was in Primary School.

There are many many complicated recipes out there for it that you can google if you like, but my way is to get about a cup of flour, and just keep adding warm water until you have the consistency that you like. Start with 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup and then add in small amounts to your heart's desire.

My teenage brother made packet pancakes for his and his girlfriend's breakfast the other morning and somehow managed to leave little droplets of mix all over the kitchen (really, he must have been flinging it around or something) and due to his lack of cleaning skills they dried where they landed. Let me tell you, when I noticed them and tried to clean them, they were horrible! I had to soak, scrape and scrub so hard to get rid of them.

Great reminder of why I don't want that in my body.

Number 2 - DECORATIONS :)

Salt-dough! It's like glue, but you mold it and bake it!

I found this lovely post on salt-dough ornaments and decided to make some with Wildchild.

I put blue and yellow food colouring (because I didn't have red, I really wanted red...) into the water that I used to mix with the flour and salt so we ended up with 7 little green christmas tree decorations. They will be painted sparkly and probably have a message on the back too. Do you like 'em?
work in progress

I'm rather broke this christmas so I'm sending these out as presents for a few people and keeping one for our family. I'm hoping it can be a yearly tradition so that in years to come we can look at the tree and see her hand grow :)

Also (not wheat related, but) another ornament I'm going to make soon is a time-capsule bauble.

Number 3 - HAIR-DYE ...?

True story.
I dyed my hair darker about 3 weeks ago, and the hairdye I used said it was made using wheat, corn and soy.
I had to laugh at that because those are all things I avoid like the plague usually but they were using it as a selling point. Anyway I used it because I thought it's got to be a little better than the usually toxic chemical cocktail, and I really wanted to get the blonde out of my hair. I think it was Naturtint, but I'm not 100% certain.

I have pretty sensitive skin, and dying my hair is usually a very painful experience (I know, I know, why do it then? I have no idea, I like changing my hair colour...). BUT this time not only did the dye NOT stink to the high heavens, but also DIDN'T hurt my scalp in the slightest! Woah!

Horray! A use for all that wheat, corn and soy that people should definitely not be eating!

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)
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So there you go, three things that wheat is good for. Not that I'm advocating for wheat in any kind of way, but if you happen to have some remaining in your pantry from a less-enlightened time in your life feel free to get crafty with it!

Can you think of any other great uses for horrible pantry-lurking poisons? Please share :)

3 comments:

  1. Cool stuff, people are always going on about how wheat and corn must be good for you, next time someone bring it up i'll showem ur site.

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  2. Thanks for your comment and the support :)

    ReplyDelete