You Can Do It Too!

September 4, 2006
This month I have lots of ideas for how you can create your own Peace Corps experience at home in the US. I’ve left out instructions for how to hand-wash a sheet, or chase a huge toad out of your house, or get teachers to change their attitudes towards education, or speak an indigenous language without using obscenities by mistake, and instead focused on more basic things like cooking and recycling.

Honey, honey!
I’ve come to discover the joys of honey in Paraguay. It’s a natural “remedio,” or medicine, it’s great to drink w/ hot water on these cold mornings, and I love substituting it for sugar when cooking (not to mention peanut butter, banana ‘n honey sandwiches!). I ran out of honey a few weeks ago, but a neighbor just gave me a whole “tuper” full (yes, that’s Paraguayan for Tupperware) and I have rediscovered how much fun honey can be. For example:

The Best Biscuits Ever
1c flour
½ T sugar or 2 T honey
1 t baking powder
½ t salt
¼c oil (you can use butter but then add a little more milk below)
Mix these together til it’s crumbly, then add
¼c milk
Bake, and enjoy (you’ll get six biscuits here, which is a little much for one person but not demasiado if you’re in the mood!)

I can’t tell you on what temperature to bake or for how long b/c my oven has one setting: on. But I can tell you that in a few short minutes you’ll be in biscuit heaven. Enjoy!!

Recycled paper
Recycling things is so much fun!! On Sunday, Andrea (the new volunteer in town) and I put our PC training to good use and made recycled paper, along w/ some of the neighborhood kids. It turned out great I think, was pretty easy and tons of fun! See pictures above for proof.

Materials: old papers, newspapers or magazines (about 4 magazines makes 30 sheets of paper); blender (or you can mix w/ sticks and little wire things if you’re in the campo); big bucket; other flatter bucket (called a palangana here); little screen contraption w/ wooden frame; sponge; polyester fabric (one meter of fabric made 20 normal paper-sized pieces); clothespins and line (or you can dry them on the floor)

Process:
Cut up papers into little squares (be sure there’s no tape or stickers) and soak in water overnight in the bucket.
Put about a handful of papers in the blender, and add 3-4 times as much water. You need to be sure to put enough water in or the motor could burn out. Then blend for just a minute or so til the mixture becomes grayish.
Empty the pulp into your big flat bucket and repeat. Then add water to the pulp mixture to get the right consistency. This part takes experimenting.
Once you have all your pulp ready, dip the screen into the pulp and, keeping it totally flat, bring it to the top. You should have lots of pulp on the screen now. If you’re working with little kids, take a minute to look for letters in the pulp that weren’t blended all the way, and think of words that start with that letter. If you’re not working with little kids, you could still try it for fun J
Lay out a piece of polyester all flat and nice and flip the screen over so the pulp’s now resting on the polyester (they say polyester is best b/c the pulp won’t stick to it)
Use the sponge to soak up extra water by dabbing the paper through the screen (you’ll need to squeeze out lots of extra water from the sponge). The paper should start to separate from the screen when it’s dry enough
Carefully peel the screen from the paper, leaving it on the polyester. Put another piece of polyester on top of this one and repeat steps 4-7.
Once you have all your paper on polyester in a pile, put one final polyester on top and then use a rolling pin, wine bottle, rock, etc. to squeeze the water out of all the papers.
Peel the polyesters off, slowly, one at a time, and put the paper/polyester on a clothesline or out on the floor to dry overnight.
In the morning, put the dried papers under books or rocks or something to flatten.
And then write me a letter!!