Making liquid handsoap

I've recently been thinking about getting back into soap making, which I did years ago when we were living in Michigan.  Since then we've had the girls, and both of them have sensitive skin.  In our house (and even at their school) they exclusively use Dove soap, which doesn't irritate their skin.  However at £1.50 for a 250ml bottle, it is rather expensive.  No one sells soap refills here, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I did quite a bit of internet searching on how to make liquid hand soap, and one of the fastest, easiest options I found was at Savvy Housekeeping.  This morning I put her recipe to the test:

I grated the bar soap in my Cuisinart.

 
Then dissolved the soap in water over a medium heat.  I did not let it boil, just get warm enough to melt the soap.  After cooling to room temperature I put it in the fridge to set it faster.  I have no patience!






 


A quick note, I used 1.5 bars of soap, and 7.5 cups of water and no glycerin.  Her recipe calls for 10 cups water and 1 tbs glycerin, however Dove isn't a true soap but a body cream bar, and some of her comments stated people had a harder time getting it to the right consistency.  Since I figured it would always be easy to add more water later (or glycerin for that matter), I decided to start with less, and of course, I just guessed an amount.  Originally I used only 1 bar of soap but my testers (5 year old daughters) said it was too runny.  I waited a day just to make sure it was set, and added another 1/2 a bar to the mix, reheated, and went through the process again.  This time it was the perfect consistency.

roughly 1.5L of soap

Cost of project:

1.5 bars Dove soap       £0.81

1 2L bottle of water      £0.17

1 soap dispenser           £3.00

                                   £3.98 for 6 bottles of soap, or £0.66 each

Keep in mind that the next time I make it, I will already have the soap dispenser, and the cost will go down to £0.98 per 6 bottles of soap, or £0.16 per bottle!  WOW, when you do the maths, you can really see how cost effective it is.  Additionally, when the girls current bottle of gentle body wash runs out, I'm just going to refill the bottle with this dove soap mixture.  Perfect!

7 days (in pictures)

Recently I came across a blog post by The Barefoot Crofter called 7 days.  A picture for each day of the week.

 A bird of prey hovering in the wind currents

 A night walk to use our glow in the dark light sticks

Jess

Jack O' Lanterns

 Home

Isla

Adventure

Winter creeps in

We've been having some very cold weather, and it is only October!  Dave even saw a few snowflakes on his way to work the other day.  I'm just not ready!

In preparation we've done a few things around the house--the first was to bleed the radiators.  They work so much better now, it is unbelievable!  The bathroom was actually warm last night.

Additionally, I've been sewing some door draft excluders.  We brought one from our old house with us when we moved, and I've used as a template for the new ones.  With so many more doors in this place, I set to work on three more.  The best part--it only cost £2.88 for 2 bags of the cheapest cat litter I could find.  The fabric was already in my stash.  Bargain!

The girls and I made two of them into snakes, just for fun.  I let them pick out the eyes.

And just this morning I went out to find a stick in the garden (for Halloween decorations) and instead found 4 eggs.  Our first four eggs from our chickens!!  Hurray.  The girls and I were very excited!

Here's the Halloween decoration:

Making Corned Beef

Due to the serious lack of (non-canned) corned beef available here in the UK, we decided to make our own.  Using the recipe here, we purchased a 3lb beef brisket from the butcher, and spices from the local deli.  We made our own pickling spice mix rather than using a pre-made.  We also did not add the sodium nitrate, so our meat isn't pink like a store bought corned beef would be. 

toasting the peppercorn, mustard and coriander seed

all the spices together

Pickling Spice

2 tablespoons black peppercorns

2 tablespoons mustard seeds

2 tablespoons coriander seeds

2 tablespoons hot red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons allspice berries

1 tablespoon ground mace

2 small cinnamon sticks, crushed or broken into pieces

2 to 4 bay leaves, crumbled

2 tablespoons whole cloves

1 tablespoon ground ginger.

Brine mix: 1 gallon of water with 1 1/2 cups salt, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 smashed cloves garlic and 2 tablespoons of our home made pickling spice. Bring to a simmer, stirring until salt and sugar are dissolved. Remove from heat and let coo.

After letting the brine cool we soaked the brisket in it for 5 days in a tupperware in the fridge.  Lovingly turning it every day (when remembered).

When we were ready to eat the corned beef, we cooked it in the slow cooker.  First I rinsed the meat to remove the brine solution, then in the pot it went, with an onion, 2 more tbs of the spice mix, a couple of carrots, and enough water to cover everything.   Cook for 8-10 hours.

The next day we made Ruben sandwiches with home made rye bread. 

Rye bread, thousand island dressing, Swiss cheese, and sourkraut.  Divine!

Savouring the Autumn

Sometimes, it is nice to just slow down, relax, and enjoy each others company.

 

Pumpkins

My very favourite part of autumn is......pumpkins!  I love their shape, their colour, their flavour.  Up until my late 20's I only ever used canned pumpkin, the main reason being you can get it year round in American grocery stores.  Then I learned that you can buy fresh pumpkins and cook them down yourself, a revelation!

That is what the girls and I did today.

We started with three lovely little sugar pumpkins.  I've used regular jack o' lantern pumpkins before, and they work just fine.  Perhaps they are a bit more stringy, because sugar pumpkins have such soft fine flesh.  You can also use a butternut squash if you can't get your hands on a pumpkin.  Here in the UK they are definitely harder to find than in the US.

 

Normally I cut the pumpkins in half, scrape out the seeds (save these!) and then put them cut side down in a pan with about an inch of water. Cover with foil and cook for an hour or until soft.  
 
I was reading online today about boiling them instead, so we decided to do them both ways.


In the end, I found boiling them gently faster, which is better when you are doing several pumpkins.  Next time I'll use an even bigger stock pot and do two pumpkins at once.  

After they are cooked until soft, we pulled them out, let them cool until we could handle them, and then using a spoon gentley scraped out the flesh into the Cuisinart.  Whiz whiz and you have pumpkin puree.  I put them in ziplocks in 1 or 2 cup measurements, as that is what most recipes called for.  The three pumpkins we used gave us 10 cups total.

Using one cup we made a gorgeous pumpkin bread.  Yum!

Maine Pumpkin Bread (from Allrecipes.com)

• 2 cups pumpkin purée
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin purée, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.

Chickens

On September 8, 2011 we went to collect our latest additions--chickens!  Years ago (the before time) Dave and I had chickens that we raised from chicks, in a bathtub no less!  For the last five years we've been patiently waiting until we could have chickens once again.  The time has arrived!  

We decided this time to buy chickens at nearly 20 weeks, so they would hopefully be laying before winter set in.  Four weeks later and still no eggs, but really, our little ladies are delightful!  We bought 5 Hy-Lines, and named them Scooby (Rori's), Ghosty (Isla's), Heedy (mine), Nae Luck McCluck (Dave's), and Shiny (family).