I've always enjoyed being creative, but lately that creativity has come out in the form of making some of my own goods from scratch. Ever since college I've baked cakes from scratch, made homemade bread, knitted my own scarves, etc., but in the past few years I've expanded that to making my own apricot jam, canning tomatoes and applesauce, and putting up as much of our garden produce as we can. This year, Greg and I have been able to add a few more fun things to that list:
Making our own beer (Sparrow Hawk Porter, due to be ready in another couple of weeks--and three cheers for FIVE GALLONS of beer!):
Made the same evening, five gallons of pear mead (which will take 6+ months before we can drink it):
Homemade pita bread (from the delicious recipe in the Extending the Table cookbook):
. . . it really does make a delicious meal, particularly when paired with garlic hummus and Tillamook extra sharp vintage cheddar cheese:
Yes, there have certainly been some delectable creations lately. But not all of the recipes we've been following have been for edible items.
Since certain of my graduate classes in Environmental Studies, I've been learning more and more about the chemicals and toxins that infuse many of our everyday products, from shampoo to dish detergent to paint to cleaning products to lotions and other bath & body products. And really, there is absolutely no need for most of them. We don't need to spend tons of money on things like Windex and Pledge and 409 with their long lists of unpronounceable chemicals. You can make pretty much every kind of cleaning product you need from various combinations of washing soda, baking soda, vinegar, borax, essential oils (if desired), and castile soap, and the great thing is that you know exactly what is in those products you're spraying so casually on your kitchen counter and bathroom sink.
On the beer/mead making day, Beth and I spent a few minutes making our own all-purpose cleaner. The recipe: 1/2 tsp. washing soda, 2 tsp. borax, 1/2 tsp. liquid soap, a few drops of lavender essential oil, and 2 cups of hot water, mixed together in a $2 plastic spray bottle from Ace Hardware. And--voila! DIY cleaner! (For other recipes, check out the Women's Voices for the Earth website. And to see exactly what's in your bath and body products, check out the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, where you can type in the brand name and product type and get not only a list of ingredients, but a look into the harmful side effects of those ingredients. It's more than a little scary, but better to know than not to know. This is also a great place to find healthy, toxin-free products.)
Interesting though all this may be, none of this (yet) is my true purpose in blogging today. My goal, when I sat down at my computer this evening, was to share my very first foray into making my own soap. This past Saturday, I got together with amazing MNHC volunteer and friend Valerie, my always-up-for-an-adventure mother-in-law, and my good friend Ann to make soap. Valerie has made her own soap for a few years now, which I learned when she donated two generous baskets of her homemade lavender soap for the MNHC auction this past fall.
When we arrived on Saturday, Valerie sat us down to go over the soap-making basics. She has found that it's much easier to set everything up first, as the soap-making process actually moves quite quickly once you begin. Here we are, learning about the process:
And here's all of our equipment for making coconut soap, ready to go:
*one large and one small set of glass (preferable) or stainless steel bowls,
*a tall stainless steel pot (NOT aluminum),
*a two-cup glass measuring cup,
*a kitchen scale that calibrates to zero,
*one or two insta-read food thermometers,
*a stick blender,
*coconut oil (16 oz - please note that all measurements except essential oils are by WEIGHT),
*olive oil (14 oz)--the cheapest, lightest stuff you can find--go for the "extra light" instead of the "extra virgin,"
*Crisco (12 oz),
*cold distilled water (16 oz),
*lye (6 oz),
*soap molds (you can use milk cartons, Pringles cans, plastic containers, or small cardboard boxes lined with freezer paper--shiny side up),
*essential oils (2 oz),
*additives (1/4-1/2 cup of oatmeal, lavender buds, juniper berries, herbs, for extra scent, exfoliating properties, etc.),
*and a couple of old towels or an old blanket.
Here's Valerie preparing the mold by lining a small cardboard box (I believe these are the boxes that wet cat or dog food comes in) with freezer paper, shiny side up.
Next, we measured out the oils--by WEIGHT. For this particular recipe we used 16 oz of coconut oil (which, by the way, is a solid, and can be found in the cooking aisle at most grocery stores--not the Orange Street Food Farm, though, sadly!) and 12 oz of Crisco, which we measured one at a time and then put into the stainless steel pot. The olive oil (14 oz) was measured into the 2-cup measure and set aside to be added later.
Next, we went to get the lye, which is of course very caustic stuff. Valerie keeps it in her garage, so we trekked out to collect it, and then stayed outside to add it the cold distilled water. We measured (again, by WEIGHT) 16 oz of distilled water into our large glass bowls, and then added 6 oz (yup, by weight!) of the lye crystals. Lye (sodium hydroxide, or NaOH) is a highly reactive substance, and, when combined with water, heats up rapidly. We performed this part of the operation outside, since the lye and water reaction creates some nasty fumes that you don't want to breathe. You want to be very careful with this stuff. We wore old clothes, long sleeved shirts, and those of us who don't wear glasses wore safety goggles. Rubber gloves aren't a bad idea, either; as Valerie says, it's better to be overly cautious. We poured the lye crystals slowly into the water and then stirred with a plastic spoon until all of the lye was dissolved. Then we left it outside to cool down while we went back inside to start heating up the oils.
When heating up the solid oils (in this case, the Crisco and coconut oil), it's best to warm them up very slowly, on low heat. They only have to get to 90-110 degrees, which really doesn't take much. Once the solids are mostly melted and there are some small chunks left, turn off the heat--those chunks will continue to melt. At this point, you can add the olive oil and stir the mixture to make sure everything dissolves.
At this point, you want to measure the temperature of both the oils and the lye solution (it's nice to have one thermometer for each, but, of course, not absolutely necessary). The goal is to have them both in the 90-110 degree range. Some recipes call for the temperatures to be within 1-3 degrees of each other, but Valerie has found, with this recipe at least, that as long as they're both between 90 and 110 degrees, the soap turns out. Of course, the closer you can get the two temperatures to each other, the better! When I took the temperatures, my lye solution was at 92 and the oils were at 95, which was perfect. So we brought the bowl of lye solution inside, and, while I started mixing the oils with the stick blender, Valerie slowly and carefully poured the lye solution into the oil mixture.
This is the cool part. As you blend--and it's good to blend for 10-20 seconds, then stir to check the consistency, then blend again, etc.--the mixture thickens, and this is where that crazy caustic lye undergoes another chemical reaction, this time with the oils, and saponifies. That is, it ceases to become lye and the whole mixture becomes soap. This point, when the lye water and fats have combined into a mixture that will no longer separate, is called trace, and this is what you're waiting for. Signs of trace include a thick consistency similar to cake batter, and, when you drizzle some of the soap on the surface of the mixture, it leaves behind a "trail" that takes awhile to sink back into the mixture. Here's Valerie testing my mixture to see if it's thick enough.
For some reason, my mixture took a little while to thicken properly (Becky's reached trace really quickly, but it took her a long time beforehand to get the temperatures of the lye solution and the oil mixture in the right range). I just kept alternating the blending and stirring until, when we dropped a few drops of the mixture onto the surface, they stayed there for just a little bit before sinking back in. At this point, the "light trace," you add any additives--oatmeal, herbs, etc. (1/4-1/2 cup for this recipe). I added about half a cup of crushed juniper berries, which I ordered from Botanie Soap, a company owned by my friends Tim & Lindsay Iudicello. (If you don't want to make your own soap, buying from Botanie is the next best thing--in fact, I've been using their soap exclusively since moving to Missoula. It's wonderful, organic/natural, beautifully fragrant stuff.)
After stirring in the crushed juniper berries (which I ground up with a mortar and pestle), I blended the mixture for just a little longer, until it went from "light trace" to "trace." At this point I added the essential oils (2 fluid oz, NOT by weight this time). For my soap, I added 1 oz of spruce essential oil and 1 oz of cedarwood essential oil, which I'd also bought from Botanie. (Becky added 1 oz of peppermint, 1/3 oz of spearmint, and 2/3 oz of cedarwood, along with dried mint leaves.) Once again, we blended for just a bit to make sure the essential oils were well combined. By this time, the mixture was a thick, custardy consistency, and it was time to pour it into the molds--exactly the way you'd pour cake batter into a pan, including scraping every little bit out with the spatula (but not including licking the spatula).
Ta-da!
Here's a little video (!) so you can hear us being silly, as well as see more clearly the final consistency of the soap mixture--when you know it's ready to be poured into the mold.
After that, all we had to do was wrap the mold in our old towels/blanket--this is to keep the soap from cooling off too quickly. In the picture below, you can see my pink towel-wrapped soap on the counter in the background, while Becky smooths her soap with a spatula.
You can also use the spatula to create fun textures on the surface--once it cooled just a little, I made little waves on the top of mine, just for fun. Once we'd poured the soap into the molds, textured or de-textured our soap as desired, and wrapped it in towels, we were set. The whole process, including getting everything ready beforehand, took less than an hour and a half--not bad at all! After that, it was time to eat a yummy lunch of mushroom & meat dumpling soup (courtesy of Valerie), spinach salad with walnuts, blueberries, feta, and onions (courtesy of Ann), and Valentine's Day/Valerie's birthday sugar cookies (courtesy of Becky). YUM.
Once poured into the mold, the soap needs to cool/set for 24 hours. I put mine in the pantry, out of reach of the cats, and on Sunday afternoon brought it out to cut it (you can see that the towel stuck in a few places, but oh, well).
The soap can be cut anywhere from 24-48 hours after pouring it into the mold. I think I waited exactly 24 hours. :) I cut mine on a glass cutting board, since the scents can seep into a wooden cutting board and be difficult to remove. If you use a wooden cutting board, just put a brown paper bag on top of the board to protect it. You can use a big kitchen knife to cut the soap, and either wing it or measure out the bars carefully.
I winged (wung?) it . . . and I think it turned out pretty well!
Now the hard part: waiting four weeks for the soap to cure! To cure it, make sure there's plenty of space between the bars, put it in a place where it won't be attacked by cats, dogs, small children, etc., and make sure to turn it every week so that all six sides are exposed to the air. And then . . . enjoy!
The lovely thing about homemade and natural soaps (as opposed to brands like Ivory or Irish Spring or what-have-you), is that in these soaps, the glycerin is not removed. Glycerin is created during the saponification process, and is a natural skin moisturizer. While removing it makes soaps like Ivory cheaper for the consumer (commercial manufacturers remove the glycerin because it happens to be a valuable commodity that can be sold to the cosmetic and other industries), it also makes such soaps harder on the skin, especially in dry climates. Sure, the price is right. But many people find that their skin dries out and gets irritated by glycerin-free soaps . . . and it's so remarkably easy to make your own glycerin-rich, moisturizing, fresh-smelling, natural soap.
And I can't wait to use mine.
Making our own beer (Sparrow Hawk Porter, due to be ready in another couple of weeks--and three cheers for FIVE GALLONS of beer!):
Made the same evening, five gallons of pear mead (which will take 6+ months before we can drink it):
Homemade pita bread (from the delicious recipe in the Extending the Table cookbook):
. . . it really does make a delicious meal, particularly when paired with garlic hummus and Tillamook extra sharp vintage cheddar cheese:
Yes, there have certainly been some delectable creations lately. But not all of the recipes we've been following have been for edible items.
Since certain of my graduate classes in Environmental Studies, I've been learning more and more about the chemicals and toxins that infuse many of our everyday products, from shampoo to dish detergent to paint to cleaning products to lotions and other bath & body products. And really, there is absolutely no need for most of them. We don't need to spend tons of money on things like Windex and Pledge and 409 with their long lists of unpronounceable chemicals. You can make pretty much every kind of cleaning product you need from various combinations of washing soda, baking soda, vinegar, borax, essential oils (if desired), and castile soap, and the great thing is that you know exactly what is in those products you're spraying so casually on your kitchen counter and bathroom sink.
On the beer/mead making day, Beth and I spent a few minutes making our own all-purpose cleaner. The recipe: 1/2 tsp. washing soda, 2 tsp. borax, 1/2 tsp. liquid soap, a few drops of lavender essential oil, and 2 cups of hot water, mixed together in a $2 plastic spray bottle from Ace Hardware. And--voila! DIY cleaner! (For other recipes, check out the Women's Voices for the Earth website. And to see exactly what's in your bath and body products, check out the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, where you can type in the brand name and product type and get not only a list of ingredients, but a look into the harmful side effects of those ingredients. It's more than a little scary, but better to know than not to know. This is also a great place to find healthy, toxin-free products.)
Interesting though all this may be, none of this (yet) is my true purpose in blogging today. My goal, when I sat down at my computer this evening, was to share my very first foray into making my own soap. This past Saturday, I got together with amazing MNHC volunteer and friend Valerie, my always-up-for-an-adventure mother-in-law, and my good friend Ann to make soap. Valerie has made her own soap for a few years now, which I learned when she donated two generous baskets of her homemade lavender soap for the MNHC auction this past fall.
When we arrived on Saturday, Valerie sat us down to go over the soap-making basics. She has found that it's much easier to set everything up first, as the soap-making process actually moves quite quickly once you begin. Here we are, learning about the process:
And here's all of our equipment for making coconut soap, ready to go:
*a tall stainless steel pot (NOT aluminum),
*a two-cup glass measuring cup,
*a kitchen scale that calibrates to zero,
*one or two insta-read food thermometers,
*a stick blender,
*coconut oil (16 oz - please note that all measurements except essential oils are by WEIGHT),
*olive oil (14 oz)--the cheapest, lightest stuff you can find--go for the "extra light" instead of the "extra virgin,"
*Crisco (12 oz),
*cold distilled water (16 oz),
*lye (6 oz),
*soap molds (you can use milk cartons, Pringles cans, plastic containers, or small cardboard boxes lined with freezer paper--shiny side up),
*essential oils (2 oz),
*additives (1/4-1/2 cup of oatmeal, lavender buds, juniper berries, herbs, for extra scent, exfoliating properties, etc.),
*and a couple of old towels or an old blanket.
Here's Valerie preparing the mold by lining a small cardboard box (I believe these are the boxes that wet cat or dog food comes in) with freezer paper, shiny side up.
Next, we measured out the oils--by WEIGHT. For this particular recipe we used 16 oz of coconut oil (which, by the way, is a solid, and can be found in the cooking aisle at most grocery stores--not the Orange Street Food Farm, though, sadly!) and 12 oz of Crisco, which we measured one at a time and then put into the stainless steel pot. The olive oil (14 oz) was measured into the 2-cup measure and set aside to be added later.
Next, we went to get the lye, which is of course very caustic stuff. Valerie keeps it in her garage, so we trekked out to collect it, and then stayed outside to add it the cold distilled water. We measured (again, by WEIGHT) 16 oz of distilled water into our large glass bowls, and then added 6 oz (yup, by weight!) of the lye crystals. Lye (sodium hydroxide, or NaOH) is a highly reactive substance, and, when combined with water, heats up rapidly. We performed this part of the operation outside, since the lye and water reaction creates some nasty fumes that you don't want to breathe. You want to be very careful with this stuff. We wore old clothes, long sleeved shirts, and those of us who don't wear glasses wore safety goggles. Rubber gloves aren't a bad idea, either; as Valerie says, it's better to be overly cautious. We poured the lye crystals slowly into the water and then stirred with a plastic spoon until all of the lye was dissolved. Then we left it outside to cool down while we went back inside to start heating up the oils.
When heating up the solid oils (in this case, the Crisco and coconut oil), it's best to warm them up very slowly, on low heat. They only have to get to 90-110 degrees, which really doesn't take much. Once the solids are mostly melted and there are some small chunks left, turn off the heat--those chunks will continue to melt. At this point, you can add the olive oil and stir the mixture to make sure everything dissolves.
At this point, you want to measure the temperature of both the oils and the lye solution (it's nice to have one thermometer for each, but, of course, not absolutely necessary). The goal is to have them both in the 90-110 degree range. Some recipes call for the temperatures to be within 1-3 degrees of each other, but Valerie has found, with this recipe at least, that as long as they're both between 90 and 110 degrees, the soap turns out. Of course, the closer you can get the two temperatures to each other, the better! When I took the temperatures, my lye solution was at 92 and the oils were at 95, which was perfect. So we brought the bowl of lye solution inside, and, while I started mixing the oils with the stick blender, Valerie slowly and carefully poured the lye solution into the oil mixture.
This is the cool part. As you blend--and it's good to blend for 10-20 seconds, then stir to check the consistency, then blend again, etc.--the mixture thickens, and this is where that crazy caustic lye undergoes another chemical reaction, this time with the oils, and saponifies. That is, it ceases to become lye and the whole mixture becomes soap. This point, when the lye water and fats have combined into a mixture that will no longer separate, is called trace, and this is what you're waiting for. Signs of trace include a thick consistency similar to cake batter, and, when you drizzle some of the soap on the surface of the mixture, it leaves behind a "trail" that takes awhile to sink back into the mixture. Here's Valerie testing my mixture to see if it's thick enough.
For some reason, my mixture took a little while to thicken properly (Becky's reached trace really quickly, but it took her a long time beforehand to get the temperatures of the lye solution and the oil mixture in the right range). I just kept alternating the blending and stirring until, when we dropped a few drops of the mixture onto the surface, they stayed there for just a little bit before sinking back in. At this point, the "light trace," you add any additives--oatmeal, herbs, etc. (1/4-1/2 cup for this recipe). I added about half a cup of crushed juniper berries, which I ordered from Botanie Soap, a company owned by my friends Tim & Lindsay Iudicello. (If you don't want to make your own soap, buying from Botanie is the next best thing--in fact, I've been using their soap exclusively since moving to Missoula. It's wonderful, organic/natural, beautifully fragrant stuff.)
After stirring in the crushed juniper berries (which I ground up with a mortar and pestle), I blended the mixture for just a little longer, until it went from "light trace" to "trace." At this point I added the essential oils (2 fluid oz, NOT by weight this time). For my soap, I added 1 oz of spruce essential oil and 1 oz of cedarwood essential oil, which I'd also bought from Botanie. (Becky added 1 oz of peppermint, 1/3 oz of spearmint, and 2/3 oz of cedarwood, along with dried mint leaves.) Once again, we blended for just a bit to make sure the essential oils were well combined. By this time, the mixture was a thick, custardy consistency, and it was time to pour it into the molds--exactly the way you'd pour cake batter into a pan, including scraping every little bit out with the spatula (but not including licking the spatula).
Ta-da!
Here's a little video (!) so you can hear us being silly, as well as see more clearly the final consistency of the soap mixture--when you know it's ready to be poured into the mold.
After that, all we had to do was wrap the mold in our old towels/blanket--this is to keep the soap from cooling off too quickly. In the picture below, you can see my pink towel-wrapped soap on the counter in the background, while Becky smooths her soap with a spatula.
You can also use the spatula to create fun textures on the surface--once it cooled just a little, I made little waves on the top of mine, just for fun. Once we'd poured the soap into the molds, textured or de-textured our soap as desired, and wrapped it in towels, we were set. The whole process, including getting everything ready beforehand, took less than an hour and a half--not bad at all! After that, it was time to eat a yummy lunch of mushroom & meat dumpling soup (courtesy of Valerie), spinach salad with walnuts, blueberries, feta, and onions (courtesy of Ann), and Valentine's Day/Valerie's birthday sugar cookies (courtesy of Becky). YUM.
Once poured into the mold, the soap needs to cool/set for 24 hours. I put mine in the pantry, out of reach of the cats, and on Sunday afternoon brought it out to cut it (you can see that the towel stuck in a few places, but oh, well).
The soap can be cut anywhere from 24-48 hours after pouring it into the mold. I think I waited exactly 24 hours. :) I cut mine on a glass cutting board, since the scents can seep into a wooden cutting board and be difficult to remove. If you use a wooden cutting board, just put a brown paper bag on top of the board to protect it. You can use a big kitchen knife to cut the soap, and either wing it or measure out the bars carefully.
I winged (wung?) it . . . and I think it turned out pretty well!
Now the hard part: waiting four weeks for the soap to cure! To cure it, make sure there's plenty of space between the bars, put it in a place where it won't be attacked by cats, dogs, small children, etc., and make sure to turn it every week so that all six sides are exposed to the air. And then . . . enjoy!
The lovely thing about homemade and natural soaps (as opposed to brands like Ivory or Irish Spring or what-have-you), is that in these soaps, the glycerin is not removed. Glycerin is created during the saponification process, and is a natural skin moisturizer. While removing it makes soaps like Ivory cheaper for the consumer (commercial manufacturers remove the glycerin because it happens to be a valuable commodity that can be sold to the cosmetic and other industries), it also makes such soaps harder on the skin, especially in dry climates. Sure, the price is right. But many people find that their skin dries out and gets irritated by glycerin-free soaps . . . and it's so remarkably easy to make your own glycerin-rich, moisturizing, fresh-smelling, natural soap.
And I can't wait to use mine.
