"make your own" news and stories

I tend to divide kitchen appliances into three tiers in my head. There's the top tier, the ones you can't live without, that every kitchen should have (toaster oven, crock pot and blender leap to mind). Then comes the second tier, the ones that aren't vital, but do make cooking easier and more fun (stand mixer, waffle iron and indoor grill, for instance). Then there are the ones that are rarely necessary, but are appealing nonetheless. In this category, I group things like ice cream makers, bread machines and fondue pots.

I discovered another third tier appliance recently, and while it's not one that I think I'd use much, I can see how it would be fun and useful (provided you're a fan of nut butters). That's right, I'm speaking of the Peanut Butter Machine. It has a blessedly small foot print and whips up freshly ground nut butter at the flick of a switch. I can see how this would be great if you had access to large amounts of nuts or you had health concerns that precluded you from ingesting manufactured peanut, almond or cashew butter.

[via Josh Spear]

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Back in July, I wrote about my own efforts to carry reusable bags to the grocery store. In that post, I confessed that my reusable bag purchasing habit was potentially canceling out the effectiveness of using those bags, as I kept buying new ones. I'm happy to state that I've gotten that buying bug under control and that I am now using and reusing the same bags (although the one I took to the grocery store today has a funky, spoiled milk smell going on. Scrubbing may be in order).

However I do still long for a new bag or two and happily the Green Home at Apartment Therapy has come to my rescue with a post about ways to make your own grocery bags. They've got links to bags you can knit and bags you can sew. This is very good incentive for me to dust off my Aunt Flora's long-neglected sewing machine and see if I can't make very own, unique grocery bags.

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Here are 25 ways we humans show we can't ever be satisfied with the "usual" ways of preparing, cooking and even eating our food. Make it yourself. Do it yourself. Hack it yourself. There's something for everyone here.

1. How to avoid crying when chopping onions
2. Make fire with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar
3. Peltier beer cooler
4. Lighting a barbeque with liquid oxygen
5. Open-source beer
6. OpenCola
7. Geek your barbecue
8. Liquid-nitrogen ice cream
9. How to process sap from trees and make maple syrup
10. 43Folders hacks for food, food storage, nutrition, coffee, tea, water, recipes and the kitchen.
11. Making "bad" vodka "good" using a Brita filter
12. How to make ginger ale and root beer at home
13. Do-it-yourself Margarita maker
14. Make your own marshmallows
15. Chill a bottle of wine in six minutes
16. Make your own Peeps
17. Do-it-yourself brick pizza oven
18. The big red juicer
19. Beer can chicken
20. How to cool the burn of chiles
21. Cookin' with Google
22. The Cook's Thesaurus
23. Thorax cake
24. Gastronomy for geeks
25. Aluminum can backpacking stove