Jean B. MacLeod

Author Jean B. MacLeod is a peerless maven of making do, as she proves with this well-constructed catalogue of gardening strategies, The Waste-Wise Gardener – Tips and Techniques to Save Time, Money, and Natural Resources While Creating the Garden of Your Dreams.

MacLeod begins with a brief introduction revealing her own gardening troubles and triumphs, then provides an alphabetical list of simple solutions for some of the thorny problems involved in home horticulture, which are generally easy to use, and some quite eye-opening.

For example, materials for the staking required for a variety of crops can be ribs from […]

Jean B. MacLeod believes in using simple supplies, tools and devices to solve a myriad of kitchen and cooking related dilemmas, as revealed in her well-organized manual, The Kitchen Paraphernalia Handbook: Hundreds of Substitutions for Common and Uncommon Utensils, Gadgets, Tools, and Techniques.

From A to Z, MacLeod has practical suggestions for substituting common, simple items as a replacement for kitchen implements, or when you run out. Suppose your recipe calls for aluminum foil and there’s none left: use a disposable pie plate, cookie sheet, plastic food lids or parchment paper. No funnel? Try anything from a paper cup […]

The Waste-Wise Kitchen Companion: Hundreds of Practical Tips for Repairing, Reusing, and Repurposing Food by Jean MacLeod’s is a highly useful food-recycling encyclopedia that should be in everyone’s kitchen library.

An “enthusiastic and curious (and thrifty) cook,” writer Jean MacLeod has created a compendium of tips on how to save, rescue, and “repair” common and not-so-common edibles, in alphabetical format – from almond paste to zucchini.

Some tips are obvious to the budget-minded cook: use leftover applesauce in oatmeal or pancakes, or turn stale cake into new dessert with milk and a bit of sauce. Other ideas are less common […]