Monday, May 30, 2011

A Soap Tutorial

The Memorial Day weekend was fun despite the wind. And lately the wind has been a real buzz kill around here. We had company come to visit!

Chris, Angie and Mycah decided they wanted to see the farm one last time before they make the big move to east Texas--a move that will put eight hours of driving time between me and Lufkin. I'm trying hard not to dwell on that long distance. But did you know Lufkin is only three hours from the coast, and that's a long way from here don't you think? Angie tells me there is a forest in the backyard of their new house. A forest. That seems like another country, am I right? Lufkin is humid and two hours from Louisiana for heavens sake. But I'm not thinking about all that, really.

On Saturday Chris and Keith worked our kid goats, worming everyone and banding the little bucks while the girls slept in. We did fun farm stuff: held chickens, watched baby guineas hunt bugs, watered toads, chased enormous wild hogs on four-wheelers--and the wind was amazingly quiet. It was nice. No wind. So rare of late, and we stayed out until dark enjoying the animals and the evening.

And then Sunday blew in like the proverbial lion. Normal for us, jaw-dropping for our visitors. There was no discussion about going outside, it was 100 degrees and felt like you were standing in front of a super-heated sand blasting machine. House bound for sure. So the guys set up the Wii Fit and laughed their way through the day, and I taught my girls how to make soap.

I wanted my daughter and granddaughter to get a little insight into the magic that is handmade soap. How it is that a pot of oil and a bowl of lye laced goat milk can turn solid and wonderful for the skin. It's just cool to watch.


So we measured. Mycah was a crack measurer. She learned to use the scale to weigh the coconut and olive and castor oils to the exact ounce I specified. She got greasy fingered and discovered that rubbing the excess on her knees would smooth her skin. She poured and melted and stirred the oil pot.




But she stayed well away from the lye mixing process. That stuff is a bit on the scary side it seems.


Next we poured the lye mixture into the oils and stirred a whole lot more. Some soapmakers stir by hand but I like to use a stick blender to speed things up a bit.









Mycah came back to her chair when it was time to add the special stuff. The scent--she had picked Tropical Spice--and the other two ingredients that Angie had decided on: Dead Sea salt and French Green clay. We made a nice tan bottom layer laden with the sea salt and a top layer that turned a beautiful shade of green when the clay was added. Using the soap should feel like a spa experience at home!




We can't wait, but we have to, for thirty days. It takes that long for the soap to cure, but the end result is a bar that is gentle and full of natural occurring glycerin which helps retain the moisture in your skin. It's just magic, am I right?




Did I mention Lufkin is between two National Forests and only a couple of hours from Houston? That seems a long way from my little windy, tree-scarce corner of Oklahoma. But I'll need to be figuring my route as soon as they are settled, don't you think?




Friday, May 20, 2011

Updates




There just simply has to be a post about the rain! When you haven't seen any fall onto your front porch, or your trees, or your garden, or on your tin roof since October 2010--it is a BIG deal. Now others around us got a lot more, but our measureable inch and a tiny bit more was a gift from God. We had none of the rough stuff that can accompany the liquid gold, either. It fell last night, and the thunder and lightening served only to wake me occasionally so I could give thanks.

There is no dust on the Oklahoma wind today, the trees are dancing because they haven't had a bath in months, and the burn ban has been lifted. Woohoo. (That is another big deal for a farm girl who has been hauling trash into town for months now. Think about this: I've had to keep the trash until my weekly trip to town, pile it all in the trunk of my car, drive with for several miles and then sneak it into some out-of-sight dumpster that techniqually is not for country people to use because country folks have no trash service.) But I digress. The trash thing makes me giddy. It RAINED. And yes, we need so much more at our little farm. But a start is a start, and I am hoping it "primed the pump."


The peacocks are laying again this spring. Lil' Momma has five eggs thus far, so I would guess she is about done. Last year she stopped at six. Her five surviving kids from last year are alternately hanging out watching mom sit still, or running wild around the farm without parental supervision. We are close to getting too many peacocks.


I have several new scents of soap ready: Victorian Rose, Mom's Apple Pie, Sexy Little Things, and Lilac in Bloom.

Monday, May 16, 2011

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.