A Happy Happenstance

I need to talk about soap today. For two reasons.

A new, cute little soap mold I just acquired

and an enamel stock pot decorated with tiny farm animals.

You see, there are just times I wish I could experiment a bit. But I hesitate for the most part because ending up with 25 bars of a very expensive disaster can hurt both the pocketbook and the ego. Also, from time to time I run across scents that only a few people seem to want. Like Chocolate. So wouldn't 10 bars of Chocolate Passion Fruit be better than twenty-five? Most assuredly.

To that end, I recently asked my sweet husband, in a sweet way to make me a little ten-bar mold. So I could dabble more dangerously when the spirit struck me in the dead of night to blend tangerine and rosemary or sea salt with caramel and gardenia. And in my mind it just had to be easier to foist off ten bars of Bamboo Coconut Creme Truffle to unsuspecting family and friends.

Did I mention the new mold is cute? I love its petite nature. I love how easy it is to line and to carry when full. It's my new baby. It's a very cute baby.

So today I made soap using my new baby. Since I had all the stuff out anyway, I decided to make one regular batch of 25 - a remake of the "Beach" scent that sells like crazy, and a small recipe of Chocolate Lovers. I have one really devoted customer who is in love with my chocolate soap, and she bought my last four bars a couple of weeks ago. But how to proceed? Get one done and then wash everything up and start over? That sounded like more work than I wanted to do on any given day.

What I needed was another soap pot. But once a soap pot, always a soap pot. When lye has been used in a piece of cookware or Tupperware, it can't be used again for food preparation. So I sat down on the kitchen floor and started pulling out all my pots and pans looking for something I could sacrifice to the soap. Surely I had some old, slightly bent or handleless enamel or stainless steel dinosaur in the nether regions of the cabinet.

Everyone has something like that, but me.

I seem to have long since relegated those to dog water dishes, cat food pans, peacock feeders and goat treat holders. My stash of

cookware is sparse, and I use every piece but one.

I bought the small stock pot for my mother years ago. She loved the stoneware called "Heartland" and had all the pieces she could find--plates, cups, bowls, cream and sugar, spoon rest, recipe box, everything. One Christmas I found a couple of cookware pieces and scooped them up happily. She immediately loved them, displayed them, and NEVER used them. I asked her year after year why she kept them so pampered, but she could not be swayed. She used her dishes every day, but the pots were off limits. That Heartland pattern is such a part of my childhood... the squat houses, the farmer with his rake, the cow and pigs and sheep all live amid memories of Mom's chicken fried steak, bowls of homemade ice cream, and the spice cake that she made for my birthday every year. Her dishes made me happy, both the actual plates and the food that came on them. And when she died I kept the recipe box, the spoon rest that never leaves my stove top and the four-quart covered stock pot.

That pot had resided in the farthest corner of my bottom cabinet, untouched since mom's death six years ago. Pristine and shiny, I held it in my hands and contemplated its future. I could put it back where it came from, saving it for posterity and grandchildren who could not possibly feel a connection to it. Or. I could use it.

A lot.

I love making the soap. I mean I really get a kick out of it, and I cherish the blue enamel pot that is my go to piece of equipment. Even as I looked for a new candidate, that faithful kettle was full of the oils necessary to make 25 bars of Beach scented goodness. What could be so wrong about committing the Heartland pot to a life of yielding up the same? Giving it a new chance to lay down memories of a mother and grandmother and a pot she loves?

And that darn pot makes me smile. It reminds me of my mommy. So it IS my new soap pot for smaller batches. It gets to sit on the rolling kitchen cart that holds all the soap gear - where I can see it daily. And it's going to see some wonderful scent and oil combinations. We're going to have so much fun.