How to Use Pasta for Glue

Not much to it, just mash up some cooked pasta in water or cook it til it falls apart and the liquid is pretty thick.
Then smear it on there and pretend it's glue. It works great.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_pasting gives more tasty details.

The story behind the picture:
To drive from Boston to Florida without falling asleep and dying, I checked out five gallons of books-on-tape from the Cambridge Public Library to listen to on the way. When I got there alive and finished the tapes, I put them in this box to mail them back. My sister didn't have any glue to put the address label on, but my brother-in-law had just cooked up a mean batch of pasta. I mashed up a couple of noodles to use as glue, and sure enough, it worked like a charm.

Comments

[blodefood]

When we were kids, we were poor. When doing craft projects with magazines and newspapers, my mom would make flour and water paste to glue paper. Sometimes my little brother would eat the leftovers when we were done.

By the way, wall paper paste is made from wheat or rice and is also used in papier mâché projects.

[max.fridman1]

YO THAT IS SLIGHTLY DISTURBING
after all NICE THINKING

[Trebawa]

The library must have found it interesting to see pasta paste when the opened the box!

[miller5669]

Is there any way to store the excess for later use? Does the "glue" stay set and not crusty or powdery?

[CanDo]

Cool, be sure to check out hide glue as well as long as we're on the subject of pasta, milk, and blood....

[JakeTobak]

You may want to edit the photo to block out the return address and maybe the library's address.

[TimAnderson]

Okay, I did it. Why did I do that? What could happen?

[fungus amungus]

People could find out there's a liberry in Cambridge! And they accept casseroles!

[Stormed]

Condensed milk(the ones that come in the cans) works great too. Apply it and glue, it also dries quickly and is quite solid. Used to be used to paste posters in the city when going out to buy poster glue was a hassle. Plus you get to taste some sweet milk!

[Wade Tarzia]

Neat -- that's why I should never wait to clean my pot after boiling pasta! Reminds me....You can use blood too (protein cross-links can stick things together). I believe the Inuit (Eskimo) dried the blood of animals (seal, probably), and when needed mixed a batch in their mouth (blood powder + saliva = glue, but what proportions???), and in one case I recall, glued together the separate parts into a harpoon shaft. The parts were gathered from driftwood or bones (I do forget) and worked to fit together like cabininetry, then glued. They also used ice. Drink from your canteen, spit the water in a controlled stream where you need it, and the 50 degree below zero made an instant repair, such as a new slippery coating on your sled rungs. If the sled rung support breaks, take a piece of meat from the still warm seal carcass, wrap it around the wounded sled, and wait a few minutes -- soon frozen into a very hard replacement part (Inuit duct tape).

[radiorental]

one cant help but feel that in the short term these skills will be lost as the indigenous(sic?) peoples loose their homeland but in the long term when 3M's resources are long dried up we will relearn to use what nature provides (o;