Something has been bugging me lately with our children’s lunches. Before school started we bought them stainless steel containers so that we wouldn’t use plastic for their lunches. These are wonderful, however they just don’t hold enough food to send a child to school for the day. We have been sending them with an extra plastic bag to hold muffins, cookies, fruit, etc… but it’s killing me.
Every time I pull out plastic, I’m thinking, what a waist, how harmful, what am I teaching my children.
We’ve seen beeswax food wraps a few times. These are available in some lovely on-line shops but we already have hemp scraps and beeswax and lots of it too. I really wanted to try this myself so I looked up a few tutorials and got busy.
Here’s what I did.
I cut some Hemp/cotton muslin into 10″ by 10″ squares to start off for the first try. I surged all 4 sides and tucked in the threads. If you try this out you can cut your fabric to any size you wish, there is no need to surge your edges.
I used 100% pure beeswax. You can try this with a beeswax candle if you have one. Grate the beeswax into fine shavings. Preheat oven to 150 – 170 °F. My oven was at 200 because that’s as low as I can get it.
Take a cookie sheet and apply a layer of tin foil over it.
Sprinkle the beeswax shavings onto your fabric. I first added a small amount but had to add more so the cloth was evenly soaked with wax.
The photo above was my first try.
Place in the oven, the wax will melt in less then 10 minutes. Keep an eye on your cloth. Once the wax is fully melted, take it out of oven and quickly remove the fabric from the tin foil.
I had a string suspended over my sink and hung the fabric there with clothespins to harden.
The first 2 turned out perfect. You can use these to place over bowls instead of plastic wrap. They are also great to wrap up sandwiches, cheese, veg’s, etc. Just use the warmth of your hands to mold them into place.
Care for these is so easy, cold water to rinse and wipe down with a cloth. Do not use hot water because you will melt the beeswax again.
If you just don’t want to make your own but would love to buy some, check out this company here: ABEEGO
We met this lady a few years ago at a small farmer’s market in Vancouver. It was wonderful to see how well they are doing today.
Turn A New Leaf 