Well, the holidays are officially over. It was a good run that brought together family, good food, over indulging, and likely some sort of holiday leftovers. Maybe your fridge is stuffed with leftover ham, maybe your cookie jar still has a couple sweet surprises hanging around, or maybe you still have a Christmas tree sitting in your living room. There is likely to be some sort of holiday cheer hanging on by a thread around your home as look at 2013 in our rear view mirrors and wonder what 2014 has in store for us. One way to handle the situation is make a clean sweep of your entire home and collect everything that needs to be disposed of now that the holiday season is over. Another way to look at it is think about what you can save to fuel your EcoZoom rocket stove. This isn't going to be easy. You don't want to be starting trash fires, that isn't cool, but you can certainly use some of those holiday scraps in your EcoZoom Versa or Dura combustion chamber to get your outdoor cooking started. Christmas Trees The most obvious holiday leftover that could be used in your EcoZoom stove is a Christmas tree. Each year we hear about the warning of dry Christmas trees as fire hazards. In case you haven't, check out this video of how fast a dry tree goes up in flames compared to well watered tree. It doesn't take long for the brittle branches and tree needles to light up. If you haven't already recycled your tree think about keeping a few branches around as kindling for your EcoZoom stove. They make perfect starter branches and make any stove a breeze to start with just one match.

Cardboard A lot of our gifts this year came in some sort of cardboard packaging that we typically throw away or recycle. If you don't have a reason to keep the cardboard box and reuse for packing or some other application, the next best step to take would be to recycle the cardboard. But if you don't typically keep any paper or good kindling around to start your EcoZoom rocket stove it makes sense to keep some solid cardboard in your stove kit. The best type of cardboard is any that is free from dyes, wax, or plastic. Just plain cardboard ensures you aren't burning anything toxic and it will certainly give your EcoZoom a nice little starter lift if you need one in a pinch. That Worthless Gift We've all been there and it is awkward. It might go something like this: You are pulling back back that last bit of wrapping paper wondering what in the world this magnificent gift could possibly be only to find out you just received two novels...completely in Russian...event though you don't speak Russian. Clark Griswold was given the Jelly of the Month Club, it wasn't more than a slip of paper but that long with the envelope it came with would have gone up nicely in an EcoZoom rocket stove. While we don't actually recommend burning your presents, or anything that isn't biomass for that matter, we do understand your motivation for doing so should you find a moment of weakness. We hope that everyone had a wonderful time over the holidays. Maybe you were even given the gift of outdoor cooking with one of EcoZoom rocket stoves. If not, swing by our store to learn about our different models and what makes them unique cooking machines.