Izak Van Heerden

Gourmet mushrooms have quietly become one of the more expensive items in the fresh produce aisle. At most South African retailers, oyster mushrooms can set you back anywhere from R80 to R150 per 200g punnet. That adds up fast, especially when you start using them regularly in cooking. What most people do not know is that cardboard, the kind your last online order arrived in, is one of the most effective growing substrates for oyster mushroom mycelium. With a few rand worth of spawn and a recycled box, you can produce several kilograms of fresh mushrooms every month, right inside your home.

Most households in South Africa spend a surprising amount on commercial toothpaste every year. When you multiply the cost of a tube by the number of people in your home and by twelve months, it adds up. And that is before you consider what you are actually putting in your mouth. Fluoride debates aside, the average commercial toothpaste contains a list of synthetic ingredients that many people would rather avoid. The good news is that making your own toothpaste at home requires only three basic ingredients, costs almost nothing, and genuinely works. This article walks you through exactly how to do it.

There is a strange disconnect in modern South African life. We have spent the past three years watching egg prices swing wildly. We have lived through avian flu shortages where Pick n Pay shelves stood empty. We have absorbed feed inflation, fuel surcharges, and load shedding penalties baked into every dozen we buy. And yet the obvious answer, the one our grandparents would not have thought twice about, is sitting in the back garden behind a low fence: keep your own hens.

There is a complete, daily food system sitting in the bulk section of almost every grocery store. It costs less than a taxi ride, needs no electricity, no soil, and no equipment beyond a jar and water. It produces fresh, living food every single day with less than five minutes of effort. It has been used for centuries, validated by food science, and largely ignored by the modern supplement industry for one simple reason. There is nothing to sell. This is not a trend. It is a biological process you can run in your kitchen starting tomorrow morning.

Store-bought mayonnaise is one of those products that looks simple on the surface but hides a surprisingly long list of ingredients once you flip the jar around. Canola oil, modified starch, artificial preservatives, and flavourants you cannot pronounce tend to make up the bulk of commercial mayo. When you make your own at home, you control every single ingredient, you know exactly what goes in, and the result is a condiment that tastes completely different to anything you will find on a supermarket shelf.

If you grow beetroot and carrots in your South African garden, you already know the problem: they all come ready at the same time, and there is only so much you can roast, juice, or eat fresh before the harvest starts going to waste. Fermentation solves that problem completely. A few minutes of prep, some salt, a glass jar, and you have a living, gut-friendly preserve that will keep for months and actually improve with age. This guide walks you through everything you need to know to ferment beetroot and carrot at home, from the science behind why it works, to choosing the right salt ratio, to knowing when your jar is ready to eat.