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Eight smart uses for vinegar

By Brian Clark Howard

Posted Tue May 12, 2009 7:51am PDT

Related topics: Food and Drink, How-To, Cleaning, Tips, House

More from The Daily Green News blog

256 votes

(Photo: iStockPhoto)

Now that you know ketchup can be used for shining copper and repairing hair, or that vodka can be used to repel insects and freshen laundry, you may have been wondering what tasks you can get done for cheap with other household items.

Since May is National Vinegar Month (did you forget?), we thought we'd take a closer look at this inexpensive, versatile good.

According to the Vinegar Institute, the useful stuff was probably discovered by accident (most wine drinkers know what happens when you leave a bottle sitting around too long). In fact the word vinegar comes from a French translation for "sour wine."

Over the centuries vinegar has been produced from many stocks, including molasses, dates, sorghum, fruits, coconut, honey, beer, maple syrup, potatoes, beets, grains, and more. But the principle is the same: You get acetic acid (a.k.a. vinegar) after first fermenting natural sugars to alcohol, and then fermenting again.

As Michael de Jong, The Daily Green's Zen Cleaner and author of the Clean series of books, points out, vinegar has been pressed into service for many uses over the centuries. It has been prized as a foodstuff, condiment, preservative, and natural remedy.

What's so great about vinegar? Besides being effective, vinegar is cheap and widely available. It is nontoxic and lasts for a very long time without losing strength. It does not pollute land, air, or water, and it doesn't combust. It's much safer to have under your sink than bleach, ammonia, or other toxic cleaning products. Many folks also swear by the benefits of apple cider vinegar.

In the spirit of green cleaning, green thrift, and green creativity, we put together this list of alternative uses for vinegar. Add your own in the comments!

Cure hiccups

Some have said they were able to cure pesky hiccups instantly by swallowing a teaspoon of vinegar. Most folks use white vinegar, but people have also reported success with apple cider, balsamic, and rice varieties. So you have a few options as far as taste and aroma. Hey, if the Roman legions drank it, it must be good for you, right?

Fight cramps

If you often get foot or leg cramps in the middle of the night, you may want to try boosting your potassium levels. There are a number of great superfoods rich in potassium (way beyond bananas). Some folks have also suggested trying this remedy: Mix 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon of honey, and a cup of hot water. Then drink before bed. Yummy!

Break bad bonds

Having trouble getting that annoying sticky label residue off a product? Or accidentally glue something together? Vinegar can be used as a solvent to dissolve many common adhesives. Vinegar is also good at cutting grease.

Deter cats

We love cats (even LOLcats!). But sometimes you don't want them doing their business in the kids' sandbox or in your flower bed. According to HomeEnvy, a simple solution is to pour vinegar around the edges of the area you want to protect every few months.

Wash produce

According to the green team at Ideal Bite, vinegar can help remove bacteria and pesticide residues from fruits and veggies. Mix three parts water to one part white vinegar, and dispense in a spray bottle. Then rinse with water. The site claims this wash kills 98% of bacteria on produce.

Clean windows

Instead of spending money on window cleaning chemicals -- especially ones that include toxic or potentially toxic chemicals -- make your own! Mix 2 tablespoons of white vinegar with a gallon of water, and dispense into a used spray bottle. Squirt on, then scrub with newspaper, not paper towels, which cause streaking.

(Photo: Gerville Hall / iStockPhoto)

Get spring-fresh laundry

Got grass stains? No problemo, says Michael de Jong. Make a mixture of one-third cup white vinegar and two-thirds cup water. Apply the solution to the stain and blot with a clean cloth. Repeat this process until you've removed as much green as possible, and then launder as usual.

When your big washing day comes around, toss in a capful of white vinegar. Your colors will come out bolder and your whites whiter. If you've recently had an encounter with a skunk, it will take more than a capful.

After washing, get a sharper crease in pants by dipping the cloth in a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water. Then wring out the cloth and press the creases. Now you look like Dilbert!

Clean carpets

According to this The Daily Green community member: "Spots in carpets often remove with a simple dilution of one part vinegar, one-sixteenth part lemon juice, and eight parts distilled water."

Thanks for the tip!

For more vinegar tips watch the Zen Cleaner, and check out Michael de Jong's Clean series of books.

How do you use vinegar?

More from The Daily Green

• Nine Uses for Ketchup That May Surprise You
• 10 Cool Uses for Vodka
• 12 Natural Remedies
• Top 10 Sources of Vitamin C
• 23 Breathtaking Natural Swimming Pools

Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.

Bayou Boogaloo

Y'all in New Orleans this weekend? If so, you can find me at the laid-back Bayou Boogaloo.

"The Bayou Boogaloo is a free admission music festival in Mid City, the heart of the City of New Orleans, held on the banks of the beautiful and historic Bayou St. John. The spirit of the festival captures the spirit of this diverse and historic neighborhood. It is a family friendly cultural event that celebrates the heritage of New Orleans music, New Orleans cuisine, and New Orleans culture."

"The festival features live music stages, both acoustic and electric with a wide variety of musical genres including New Orleans roots in Blues, Jazz , Funk, Cajun, Zydeco, Latin, Brass, Country, Alternative, Hip Hop and Rock. There's something for everyone!"

CLICK HERE FOR MORE

Study looks at early Navajo use of smoke signals

Play Video AFP – Native American WWII heroes

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press Writer Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press Writer – Sat May 16, 6:39 am ET

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Archaeologists and volunteers armed with special flares will fan out over part of the Four Corners region on Saturday to study how early Navajos could have used smoke signals to warn against invaders.

There are more than 200 pueblitos — usually high on rock outcroppings overlooking the San Juan Basin — that archaeologists believe were built by Navajos three centuries ago to protect against Spanish explorers and neighboring tribes.

"If you hear an enemy approaching, you climb into these things and pull up the ladder, and you can seal yourself in for a while," said Ron Maldonado, program manager of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department.

The sites in the area where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet feature the remains of what were once formidable structures made of stacked sandstone. The theory is that Navajos bunkered down inside the pueblitos and possibly used smoke to send warnings across long distances, said Jim Copeland, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Farmington.

Copeland said experiments in the early 1990s showed the method of warning could work in general, but scores of new sites have been identified since then and scientists want to know more about how the signals could have been relayed. Improved computer modeling and analysis has refined the idea of an "early warning system."

"We're still trying to confirm long distance and questionable views," Copeland said. "A lot of them are kind of no-brainers. You can pretty much see from A to B, but A to C was sort of questionable and that's the kind of thing we want to test."

The volunteers planned to reach some of the remote defensive sites by noon Saturday. Their mission: To set off their smoke signals and scan the horizon for other columns of smoke.

Much of the Four Corners area is known as Dinetah, the ancestral homeland of the Navajos. The tribe's traditional creation story centers on the area.

"The Dinetah essentially is the emergence place of the Navajo," said Ron Maldonado, program manager of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department.

Tree-ring dating shows most of the sites are from the early 1700s, said Patrick Hogan, associate director of the University of New Mexico's Office of Contract Archaeology. He researched the sites during the early 1990s, when oil and gas development began to boom and archaeological surveys became necessary.

Overall, Hogan said, researchers are interested in better understanding the early social organization of the Navajos and the connections between their communities.

"One way to think about linking these larger communities is which defensive sites have line of sight to each other," he said. "They aren't going to have line of sight to all of them. They're going to be in clusters, and those clusters might give us a basis for then defining larger cooperating groups."

While more than 200 defensive sites have been documented, Copeland said he's certain that others are out there, collapsed and hidden under centuries of sand and brush.

"Until you walk up on it or someone points you in that direction, it's just sitting out there waiting," he said.

The sites that are part of the smoke signal experiment are on land managed by the BLM, Copeland said.

___

Bureau of Land Management: http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en.html

Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm?

Twitter, really hasn't caught on with me yet. But it seems to be every were now. Even animals are getting in on the game. Sockinton, a cat has rung up over a half a million hits on the social network site. I really don't get it, though it seems a lot of other people do.

The Montauk Monster

After reading some of today's stories on the Montauk Monster, I'm still left wondering...is it real?

Check out the stories here.

How to Search Craigslist Nationally

If you like Craigslist, then you will LOVE this free software that allows users to search by multiple locations.

Download CraigsPal by clicking here.

All of the instructions can be found on this CraigsPal page here.

Hubble is Going IMAX

The space shuttle Atlantis will be packing more than new deep space cameras and instruments when it sets off on a May 11 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope: IMAX cameras to film the mission's five spacewalks needed to repair and upgrade the Hubble. The footage will be used with new Hubble pictures for a new IMAX film. Train your telescopes here for the rest of the story

Can Parrots and Other Animals Really Bust a Move

Fascinated by a youtube video of a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo dancing to a Backstreet Boys song. A neurobiologist named Aniruddh Patel thought that this was more than just some funny pet trick, it has the potential to be scientifically very important. So he looked up the birds owner to see what exactly what made this bird tick. Along with studying Snowball, he set about checking out over 5,000 YouTube videos to see if these birds and animals were really moving to the beat of the music. You can tune into the rest of the story on NPR's home page.