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| an action shot, just getting ready to smash my garlic |
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| you can see my bag of veggie trimmings that I keep in the freezer until I have 3 or 4, then I make veggie stock. and the bowl of already chopped onions & celery |
Many
of you may know that I started making soap about 10 years ago. At that time, I lived in Connecticut and BG
and I drove to an oil distribution center in Massachusetts to pick up 150
pounds of palm kernel, olive, coconut and castor oil to make soap. (Yes, that’s how real soap is made,
with some kind or kinds of oil/fat and lye.
Most (all?) commercial soaps today are not made that way, instead they
are some sort of detergent formula).
Anyway, I have finally exhausted most of my supply of oils (and soap)
and it is time to make more. I have
tried to find oil near me to no avail, and having oil shipped to you is
prohibitively expensive due to the weight.
BG and I were talking one day and she was trying to find me some oil
(because when she came for a visit, she remembered how much she likes my soap
(I have a bar in the guest room shower) and I told her if she found me oil at a
good price, I would make her some J), and she said ‘too bad you don’t have a
way to get oil from CT to SC because I would definitely drive back to MA and
pick it up for you’. On a whim I wrote
to 2 ladies that I know go to CT a lot and said ‘is there any chance you ever
drive when you go to CT, and if yes, would you ever have room to bring back
several large packages, and if yes, would you be willing’? Carol immediately wrote back to tell me that
she would be in CT on October 24th and would be happy to bring stuff
back for me…SCORE!!!!!!!!!!!! So, BG
drove to MA last Friday and picked it all up, and BG and Carol are meeting
today for the trade off. Anyway, palm
kernel oil is hard as a rock at room temperature (I still have a lot of that),
and I want to make soap as soon as I get the other oils, so the whole time I
was downstairs, Michael had the fire on, with the large plastic container of
palm kernel oil sitting in front of it.
When I went upstairs, I measured out 4 portions of that oil (that took
almost 1/2 an hour…it was still that hard) so that I can hit the ground running
when Carol delivers everything else. By
the time that was done (and the soup fixin’s and the roll dough), it was 12:30
and I was STARVING, having never had breakfast OR lunch (except for my habitual
morning tea). I stopped and made a
couple of diet pizzas (an old, old Weight Watchers recipe that I still love),
then headed downstairs to work on an art project with Michael. This is the first time we are trying
something new and I can’t wait to debut it in the future if it works out….it
involves leaves…and I just love leaves J.
This pen and ink drawing, that Michael completed years ago, remains one
of my favorite pieces of art in our house:
I finally got to hit my sewing machine around 1:30 and polished off 2 Christmas pillow cases for Jan to give as gifts to her grandkids:
She
bought the fabric about a week ago, and since my serger was already set up, it
was easy to run them up for her. At 3:30
I headed upstairs to actually make the soup (and bake the rolls) and Michael and I watched a bit of TV while
eating:
and he
headed off to OPENING NIGHT of ARSENIC & OLD LACE at 6 PM. Jan
and Walt swung by on their way home from a volleyball game to take home a quart
of soup. I have 2 other quarts frozen
for woodworker Bob and Donna & Lee and we still have a quart left for
dinner on Saturday. I’m hoping to visit
Becky next week (she had surgery on her feet) and take the last quart to
her. It’s a good thing I doubled the
recipe we got dinner out of it, and then 5 additional quarts J. I knit for the rest of the evening and am
about 1/2 way through my first baby sweater.
Michael didn’t get home until mid-night, and we didn’t make it to bed
until 1 AM!!
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