Jananas

I’d come across this Instructables on how to make your own plastic using milk & vinegar at some point this summer and was intrigued by it. I kept meaning to try it, but as good intentions are want to do, it kept getting pushed aside. I finally decided that we’d give it a try this past weekend. The first step is to heat up milk until its simmering. We used a whole 4quarts of milk (so three bags), which is a lot and so felt like it took forever to heat up!

Step two involves adding about 1TBSP of vinegar for every cup of milk. Immediately after adding it, the casein (or major protein in milk) began to clump. We stirred for another thirty seconds and were left with a pot full of this…

We then dumped the liquid through a strainer into another big pot, so that we didn’t just dump warm plastic down the sink (which seemed like a bad idea). We used a fairly fine strainer and it caught the majority of the casein on the first strain through. Jason shook the strainer until the liquid stopped pouring out. We dumped the casein onto a sheet of aluminum foil and patted it dry. Our end result at this stage looked more like cottage cheese, whereas the version in the Instructables looked more liquid/paste-y. I think that we may have over dried ours. Although I’m also wondering if the milk here in Ontario is different from that where the Instructable was originally developed, and therefore we need a different vinegar/milk ratio. Not sure that the answer is, but it means that we’ll just have to try again!

We flattened the plastic out and cut it out with cookie cutters. The idea was that we’d make personalized xmas ornaments for friends & family, as this plastic can be sanded & painted once its hardened. Our plastic didn’t stick together too well, so I’m not entirely sure how well these will hold together as they dry. We tried two things. The first is that we cut out the plastic using the cookie cutters. The second is that we packed the cookie cutters full. Time will tell which will work out better. They are currently sitting out to dry and will probably take another few days to fully dry out.

So the end result was that we experimented with $7 worth of milk and weren’t 100% successful. The entire process took about an hour and a half. We had a tonne of fun playing around with it and I think that this would be a great activity to try with kids. Regardless, we’re planning on trying again!

I haven’t updated in a bit. I was at a two day leadership seminar last week, that while very good also threw me for a bit of a loop. No pain, no gain right? My last semester of school is back in full swing and I’m trying to stay on top of readings and assignments, while balancing my health (so making time for yoga & the gym & kung fu).

This evening I had Creative Regional Strategies, with Richard Florida. I’m enjoying the class thus far and I’m glad that I didn’t listen to the “Please stop talking about Richard Florida” buttons and ignore it. I don’t get home until about 7pm and Jason being the amazing person that he is normally has dinner waiting for me. We had lots of broccoli and cauliflower in the fridge and nothing planned to do with it. Jason steamed all the veggies, added chick peas, and made some good cheezy sauce. He then baked it in the oven as a big casserole. He also attempted homemade naan (using vegan sour cream!), although it turned out a little more flat bread-ish than naan-ish. Regardless it was a good, filling dinner and I’m left feeling like a very lucky lady.

I’ve been trying to convince him that he needs to start blogging about the good food he cooks, but he’s not quite a fan of the idea (yet…). Tonight I told him that we would have an awesome blog – the knitter who isn’t vegan, and the vegan who doesn’t knit. Only problem is that I taught him to knit yesterday and I do eat a large amount of vegan food. I’m also trying to convince him to let me blog about the very first scarf he’s knitting, mostly because I think its super cute.