15 HONEY Uses

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Coming up in September, the awareness of American beekeeping, the beekeeping industry and honey as a natural and beneficial sweetener will be promoted and celebrated with National Honey Month. Yes, honey gets an entire month to itself and rightfully so.

Why September? Because September is the month that marks the end of honey collection season for many beekeepers in the United States. The awareness month was initiated by The National Honey Board (a US government established, USDA-overseen, organization) in 1989.

We all know honey makes for a great natural sweetener, but in addition to that, honey has a multitude of benefits that many people don’t know about. For starters:

• Since honey is slightly sweeter than sugar, less can be used to achieve the same sweetness intensity.
• Honey not only gives dishes a unique flavour, but it also enhances and balances the flavour of other ingredients used in recipes.
• Honey makes for a great emulsifier too! It can act as a binder and thickener for sauces, dressings, marinades and dips.
• Honey, in addition, acts as a substance which provides and retains moisture to a variety of dishes and as a result, can even extend the shelf life of baked goods. Because of this great humectant benefit, it's also used as a natural ingredient in moisturizing products including cleansers, creams, shampoos and conditioners.

Personally, I often slather some pure honey all over my face, let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse it with warm water - to give my face a nice glow!

Let's now celebrate honey and its many uses - not just in September but always!! Check out some of the many uses I've discovered from all over the internet.

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4 COFFEE (Bean) Uses

Aaaah.  Coffee.  Who doesn't like the smell of a fresh cup of coffee first thing in the morning?  Fresh ground coffee beans are even better.

Coffee plants are cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,and Africa. Once ripe, coffee "berries" are picked, processed, and dried to yield the seeds inside. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor, before being ground and brewed to create coffee.

The story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goatherder who supposedly discovered coffee when his goats behaved strangely after eating from a coffee plant, did not appear in writing until 1671 and is probably of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true.

The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries around Mocha in Yemen. It was here in Arabia that coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed, in a similar way to how it is now prepared. By the 16th century, it had

Roasted coffee beans - wikipedia

reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. Coffee seeds were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. Yemeni traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the seed. The first coffee smuggled out of the Middle East was by Sufi Baba Budan from Yemen to India in 1670. Before then, all exported coffee was boiled or otherwise sterilised. Portraits of Baba Budan depict him as having smuggled seven coffee seeds by strapping them to his chest. The first plants grown from these smuggled seeds were planted in Mysore. Coffee then spread to Italy, and to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.

Did you know, coffee was the first food to be freeze-dried? Read on to learn more facts about coffee... after reading about its many uses!



The Many Uses of Coffee (Beans):


Reduce Fireplace Mess. Want to clean your fireplace without causing a dust storm? Wait until the embers are cool, sprinkle damp coffee grounds all over the ashes , let them sit for about 15 minutes and then scoop out the whole mess into a metal ash can. The coffee grounds cling to the ashes, so they don't spew dust nearly as much as they would otherwise.

3 RUBBER BAND Uses

We're sure you all have a use or 2 for these cheap yet ever so handy rubber bands.  They are also known by the names elastic band, binder, laggy band, lackey band and other names we probably haven't even heard of yet.

As if you didn't know... A rubber band is a short length of rubber and latex, elastic in nature and formed in the shape of a circle which is commonly used to hold multiple objects together. The rubber band was patented in England on March 17, 1845 by Stephen Perry.
However, Mesoamerican peoples had already produced vulcanized rubber items, including rubber bands, by 1600 BCE. Most rubber bands are manufactured out of natural rubber. Rubber bands come in a variety of sizes.

While other rubber products may use synthetic rubber, most rubber bands are primarily manufactured using natural rubber because of its superior elasticity.

Natural rubber originates from the latex of the rubber tree. Natural rubber is made from latex which is acquired by tapping into the bark layers of the rubber tree. Rubber trees belong to the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae) and live in warm, tropical areas. Once the latex has been “tapped” and is exposed to the air it begins to harden and become elastic, or “rubbery.” Rubber trees only survive in hot, humid climates near the equator and so the majority of latex is produced in the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

2 SAND PAPER Uses

The first recorded instance of sandpaper was in 13th century China when crushed shells, seeds, and sand were bonded to parchment using natural gum.

Shark skin was also used as a sandpaper. The rough scales of the living fossil Coelacanth are used by the natives of Comoros as sandpaper.

Boiled and dried, the rough horsetail is used in Japan as a traditional polishing material, finer than sandpaper.









The Many Uses of Sandpaper:


For Polishing Those Foggy Headlights
(See Video below)


Remove Scuff Marks from Suede
A little fine-grit sandpaper and a gentle touch is great for removing or at least minimizing an ink stain or small scuff mark on suede clothing or shoes. Afterward, bring up the nap with a toothbrush or nailbrush. You might avoid an expensive trip to the dry cleaner!

4 CAT LITTER Uses

One of the first commercially available cat litters was Kitty Litter, available in 1948 and marketed by Ed Lowe.

One day in 1947, Ed was approached by a neighbor who was tired of using ashes in her cat's box and dealing with sooty paw prints.
She asked for some sand, and Ed suggested clay instead. Soon the neighbor would use nothing else, noting that the clay was much more absorbent than sand and didn't track all over the house. Ed had a hunch that other cat owners would love his new cat box filler, too, so he filled 10 brown bags with clay, wrote the name "Kitty Litter" on them, and called on the local pet store. With sand available for next-to-nothing, the shop owner doubted anyone would pay 65 cents for a five-pound bag of Kitty Litter Brand. "So give it away," Ed told him. Soon customers were asking for more–and were quite willing to pay for it. The rest, as they say, is history.

This was the first large scale use of clay (in the form of Fuller's earth - a usually highly plastic, sedimentary clays or clay-like earthy material), in litter boxes. Clay litter is much more absorbent than sand also, and its larger grain makes it less likely to be tracked from the litter box.





The Many Uses Of Cat Litter:

• As a Bonsai soil substitute, you can use kitty litter to plant those awesome bonsai trees into, instead of those costly, (inorganic) soil components which can be difficult to source.

2 VODKA Uses

Vodka (Russian: водка, Belarusian: Гарэлка, Ukrainian: Горілка, Polish: wódka) is a distilled beverage composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits and/or sugar.

Vodka is a spirit that was virtually unknown in the United States prior to the 1940s . Traditionally prepared vodkas had an alcoholic content of 40% by volume. Today, the standard Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Lithuanian vodkas are 40% alcohol by volume (ABV) or 80 proof. The European Union has established a minimum of 37.5% ABV for any "European vodka" to be named as such. Products sold as vodka in the United States must have an alcoholic content of 30% or more.

Vodka is traditionally drunk neat in the vodka belt countries of Eastern Europe and around the Baltic Sea. It is also commonly used in cocktails and mixed drinks, such as the Bloody Mary, Screwdriver, Sex on the Beach, Moscow Mule, White Russian, Black Russian, vodka tonic, and in a vodka martini.

So now we know a little history on Vodka but why would you want to do anything else with vodka but drink it?  Because it is widely available, effective and less toxic than many of the chemical alternatives you might use!





The Many Uses Of Vodka:

• Clean Your Billiard Tables:  As a great cleaning solution, vodka can be used to clean the cloth on billiard tables (apply some vodka to a brush and clean it against the grain). 

0 BANANA Uses

Whoever said bananas were only good for eating are going to be in for a surprise!

The ripe banana is utilized in a multitude of ways in the human diet—from simply being peeled and eaten out of-hand to being sliced and served in fruit cups and salads, sandwiches, custards etc. But we all know the food uses of banana, (see some recipes further below).

But what else are bananas (and its peel) - ripe or not - good for?  Read on!

5 TENNIS BALL Uses

The Many Uses Of Tennis Ball(s):

• Use them to remove scuffs on floors. Many janitors use this trick by placing a tennis ball on the end of a broom so it’s always handy.
• Cut an X in the top of each ball and put them on the bottoms of chair legs to cut down on noise and floor scuffs.
• Keep certain types of gnats or flies away from you when you are outdoors. Just cover a tennis ball in Vaseline and hang it from a tree or bush.
• Cut one in half and use to open stubborn jars.



Protect surf boards
Pic source

• Use as a cover for protecting your trailer hitch.
• Hang one up to use as batting practice.
• Use as arm weights by cutting slits into a couple of balls and filling them with sand or pennies.
• Fluff up laundry by throwing a couple into your clothes dryer.
• Tennis balls can also help any laundry load dry faster - just throw two or three in the dryer and your clothes will be done quicker.
• Speaking of laundry, put a tennis ball into your washing machine along with your shower curtain and 1/2 cup of vinegar, then wash with hot water. The vinegar will kill the mildew and the tennis ball will help to scrub the mildew off.
• Use on top of sharp garden stakes if you're an accident-prone gardener.
• Stick one on top of your car antenna to locate your vehicle quickly in a parking lot.
• Massage the bottom of your foot.

3 BEER Uses

Beer makes for a great refreshment, but did you know it has many practical uses as well?

Beer is one of the world's oldest alcoholic substances, dating back to 9500 B.C. It is the world's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. 

Beer is produced by the saccharification of starch and fermentation of the resulting sugar. The starch and saccharification enzymes are often derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat. Unmalted maize (US: corn) and rice are widely used adjuncts to lighten the flavor and because of their lower cost. The preparation of beer is called brewing. Most beer is flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included. Some of humanity's earliest known writings refer to the production and distribution of beer: the Code of Hammurabi included laws regulating beer and beer parlours, and "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a prayer to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, served as both a prayer and as a method of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people.

Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.

The strength of beer is usually around 4% to 6% alcohol by volume (abv) though may range from less than 1% abv, to over 20% abv in rare cases (as you'll read further down below).

Beer forms part of the culture of beer-drinking nations and is associated with social traditions such as beer festivals, as well as a rich pub culture involving activities like pub crawling and pub games such as bar billiards.

While beer comes in a variety of colours and flavours, it can also be used for a variety of purposes. Here now are some surprising ways you can use beer around the home and more - other than pouring it down your throat:

The Many Uses of Beer:

• Soften up tough meat.  Who needs powdered meat tenderizer when you have some in a can? You guessed it: Beer makes a great tenderizer for tough, inexpensive cuts of meat. Pour a can over the meat, and let it soak in for about an hour before cooking. Even better, marinate it overnight in the fridge or put the beer in your slow cooker with the meat.
  
  
  

0 ASPIRIN Uses

For thousands of years, willow bark and leaves have been used to relieve pain and fever. This remedy contained salicin, a naturally occurring anti-inflammatory substance.  Then, more than over 100 years ago, the active ingredient in Aspirin®, acetylsalicylic acid, often called ASA, was discovered and formulated by Bayer ...