Make your own reuseable food wrap

Quick and easy steps to cut back on plastic use

The best Christmas gift I received last year was a locally made, reuseable food wrap called Abeego.

My family uses these nearly every day for school and work lunches and throughout the summer for picnics. It has cut back our plastic wrap use significantly. In fact, when was the last time I bought a roll…?

This year, we decided to try our hand at making some from scratch—and it turned out to be a cinch… right up until the last step, which involves configuring some sort of button–string closure mechanism. We tried sewing small buttons on opposite corners. We also have a version with a string sewn into the very middle, which then gets tied around your bundle. In the end, we decided to just opt out of the closure step altogether since it takes about 50 percent of the prep time and we have plenty of big rubber bands and lengths of string handy in our house, ready to perform containment duties in a flash.

It is a really fast project, and you can complete several, say six to eight, in about 30 minutes.

What you’ll need:

1. Scraps of fabric, preferably sheeting weight, torn into squares the same width as your cookie sheets
2. Pure beeswax (a few votive candles work fine)
3. Parchment paper or Silpat
4. Clothesline, rigged up wide enough to hang one or two squares of fabric to dry
5. Clothespins, safety pins or paper clamps
6. Scissors or a paper cutter
7. Buttons, beads and string, if desired

What to do

Preheat your oven to 150° F. Tear or cut your fabric to size. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper, and place fabric on top.

Using a vegetable peeler, shave beeswax onto your fabric. Don’t use too much, though; you may want to do a test piece so you get a sense of coverage. (I think we got it right on our third one and it was about half as much as I assumed we would need.)

Place in the oven until all wax is melted and soaked in, about 8 or 9 minutes.

Remove from oven and pick up with clothespins (careful, it’s a bit hot!). Hang to dry about 5 minutes.

Use a paper cutter with a decorative edge or pinking sheers to cut a pretty edge.

Check out the Abeego website for closure ideas or just get creative!