I (Jay) learned about canning from my Mother, who grew up on a farm on the Canadian prairies in an era when canning was a normal part of everyday life.
Now that we carry the amazing WECK canning jars, I look forward to preparing more preserves.
Read on to experience some of Mom’s best canning recipes…
We have a winner! Congratulations to Erin Stiles on winning the $50 coupon for the Life Without Plastic store!
Help us improve your Life Without Plastic experience… and win a plastic-free shopping spree!
Anyone who sends us a comment about our new website by email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or on this blog post will receive one entry to win a $50 coupon to use in the Life Without Plastic web store.
27 June 2010 — For those who thought that there was no such thing as a completely non-plastic toilet brush, Life Without Plastic brings to North America the completely natural, non-plastic, eco-friendly, sustainable toilet brush and its holder. Plastic toilet brushes generally last only a few months before they are thrown out and replaced, thus adding more plastic to landfills and the oceans. Fortunately, one small family business in Germany still makes them the way they used to be made, with style and elegance.
19 July 2010 — The long-awaited Sanctus Mundo ice cube tray is finally here! We know it’s well-made and it has been tested to ensure it is safe and toxin-free. It’s modelled after those aluminum beauties from the fifties, but has been made to exacting modern standards out of the highest quality 304, 18-8 stainless steel – no aluminum here! It also works beautifully for freezing baby food, pesto, juice – lots of room for creativity. And the pull lever folds snugly down into the mechanism so you can stack the tray and save valuable space in the freezer.
25 October, 2010 — Plastic pollution in the oceans is a serious problem. It accumulates, degrades, absorbs and releases chemicals, and kills ocean wildlife. Did you know that approximately 80% of the garbage in the world’s oceans comes from land-based sources? And about half of this consists of petroleum-based plastics that have not been properly disposed of by consumers. Life Without Plastic is honoured to be teaming up with the 5 Gyres Institute, a dynamic, cutting edge research and exploration non-profit organization that is tackling the problem of oceanic plastic pollution head on by undertaking research voyages in the world’s oceans. In a few weeks, they embark on thefirst ever South Atlantic Ocean study of plastic pollution.
1 March 2013 — A joint report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) entitled, “State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals – 2012” was released on February 19, 2013.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) leach from numerous types of plastic, and are now present throughout the environment, including in oceans and the air.
The report is the most comprehensive overview of research on endocrine disrupting chemicals to date, and highlights associations between such hormone disrupting chemicals and serious health problems – for example, the potential for such synthetic chemicals to contribute to the development of non-descended testes in young males, breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, developmental effects on the nervous system in children, attention deficit /hyperactivity in children and thyroid cancer.
17 March 2013 — Last weekend, our son Jyoti and I made play dough. Jyoti is 9 years old so play dough is not as exciting as it was when he was little, but he had the idea of creating a time lapse video with it. So, he invented a story and took pictures of a little monster escaping the stainless steel airtight container in which we had stored the play dough. I put together the movie, and here is the result. Feel free to pass it around.
19 June 2012 — Beth Terry writes the pre-eminent blog in this world on living without plastic: My Plastic-free Life. She meticulously tracks her monthly plastic consumption down to the last plastic envelope window, and blogs passionately about it. That alone is reason enough for us to love her and consider her one of our heros, but there is more. Why do we love Beth? She’s funny, straightforward, unafraid to tell it like it is, a superb researcher and writer, an idea factory, super well-organized and systematic, action-oriented, great at making fun of herself to make a point, and, as you can tell by now…she walks her talk. I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know her in person a few years ago, and at the time I blogged about the blast we had together at the Green Festival in San Francisco.
Now, everyone can walk Beth’s talk and change their lives and the world at the same time by living with less plastic. Her book, Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too, was just launched worldwide a few days ago, and it is well worth checking out. You can purchase ithere.
When we started LifeWithoutPlastic.com in 2005 and went live with our first website in 2006, we had posted on our wish list of products that we were working on a “plastic-free popsicle mold“. It took us a long time to finally come up with an ice pop mold without plastic because we kept looking for a supplier outside of China. After many disappointing attempts, we finally decided to have it made in China as long as we had assurances from the supplier that working conditions for workers were ethical and that the product would pass the CPSIA tests with flying colours. We were impressed with the manfacturer and their willingness to work with us to make this product as healthy and versatile as possible out of high quality components.
We are pleased to introduce the FreezycupTM, a plastic-free, BPA-free, freezer lollipop mold that is more than just a mold for popsicles. It can also be used as a drinking cup and your child can rest his popsicle in it when (s)he needs to do something else. We like to ensure our products have more than one life, so when your children are done with popsicles, the cups can be used as fun party glasses.
We live in an eclectic village of community activists. The spirit of postive change is in the fresh air and in the Gatineau River water that flow through town. One example of that magic is the Wakefield International Film Festival (WIFF), the ‘little festival that thought big’, as local media have come to call it in lauding the world class quality of its programming and execution. WIFF is led by two passionate champions of documentaries and independent filmmaking, Brenda and Robert Rooney, who run the Festival with help of the dynamic and hilarious local troupe, Theatre Wakefield. It is a festival that inspires change.
We are deeply honoured to be sponsoring the showing at WIFF on Sunday, February 13, 2011 of ‘Waste Land’ – an utterly mesmerizing film about the depths and heights of life and humanity on this Earth in the presence of something we all know, though perhaps not well enough: garbage. Renowned Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz takes us on a journey to the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro and the world’s largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho. He finds there a thriving community of charismatic ‘catadores’ or pickers of recyclable materials – not garbage, recyclable materials. Remember that, it’s important.
