Nom de Plume

Found a recipe for chocolate soap. Who can resist? Came out chocolate-colored, had to score the top like a Hershey bar (yes, totally trite). It smelled great at first, but now — two weeks later — the smell has dissipated. Perhaps it will come back when used.

***Update. I don’t like this at all. The soap lathers up fine, but has a thin, stingy feel to it, and it doesn’t smell at all. And let’s face it, what’s the point of making my own soap if it doesn’t smell good?

Say goodbye to my high moral ground and the assertion that I will only use pure essential oils. Yep, that’s right, I’ve succumbed to the lure of fragrance oils (FO to those in the know). To celebrate my newfound olfactory freedom, I found a more fussy recipe:

3 oz coil
2 oz sweet almond oil
2 oz oo
3 oz palm
4 oz crisco
2 oz cocoa butter

61 g? lye
6 oz water

And the FO? 1/2 oz Flowerbomb (type) FO

It smells great.

***Update: I’m not crazy about what I did to the soap (acrubbies, color), but te actual soap itself is beyond heavenly. It’s very silky.

16 oz oo
1 oz beeswax
1 oz palm oil
61 g lye
1 TB poppyseed and 2 TB of litsea cubeba added to trace

I unmolded this WAY too soon, and it was a soggy mess. Four days later, however, it’s hardening up quite nicely.

Although I’ve been lax in posting, I’ve found an all new one-pound wonder — and it fits perfectly into microwave-safe Chinese takeout boxes for molding. When done, simply unpeel the sides and slice. There’s a slight slant to the edges, but who cares? Not I — especially if it means not fussing with waxed paper and stuff.

The recipe is:

126 g oo
126 g palm
108 coil/pko

4.5 oz water
51 g lye (coil) / 50 g lye (pko)

Using this recipe, I’ve made a lovely carrot soap, replacing the water with carrot juice (half added to lye, half when mixing all ingredients) and adding cardamom and ginger essential oils.

Nicki gave us grapes from her garden before we left for Canada. There was no way we could eat them all, so I mushed them up and used the juice the same way. It was really cool; when I added the lye it hissed and fizzed, and turned a deep brown color. Alas, the soap itself crumbled when it came out of the mold. I think the sugar content was way too high.

The lavender batch turned out just fine.

Last night, I modified one pound wonder by replacing the oo with half almond oil and half safflower. Scented with a blackberry rose (dyptique type) FO, and added red sandalwood powder to the lye to make it purple.

I was going to do a long, involved step-by-step recap of our week-long trip to British Columbia, but I’ve lost my steam. The short version is that we spent two days in Victoria, 2 days in Tofino, a day sightseeing our way to just north of Vancouver, and a day and a half along the coast up there. It was great; we fell in love with Tofino and the whale-watching tour, thought Butchart Gardens was WAY overrated, and discovered the mining musum, which rocks (literally). One of the highlights, though, was camping outside Port Alberni along a stream where the salmon were migrating in DROVES.

The view from our cabin …

I am so disappointed with this beer soap, made with the pretty awful beer Steve made last year. But I’ll post the recipe anyway, in case anyone out there wants to smell like a frat party.

12 oz flat beer
4 1.4 oz lye

9 oz oo
9 oz palm kernal
14 oz Crisco

2 tsp sandalwood powder
1/4 oz cypress eo

Sprinkled more sandalwood powder and ground nutmeg on the top.

Steve is going back to work on October 1 — even though he says he’s not ready. Actually, what he says is, “I just want to be unemployed and you can be my sugar mama.”

Which would be fine with me — as long as he had dinner ready every night and was wearing something sexy when I got home. Oh wait, I work from home.

In any case, we’re going on a hurrah trip on Monday: British Columbia. Neither of us has ever visited our friendly neighbors up north, so we’re looking forward to the trip. But of course, it means that I’m in a rush trying to wrap stuff up.

This is what Geoff asked when he walked into the kitchen yesterday evening. It was the 1/2 oz of amber I melted into my oils. When I was at Zenith, I couldn’t resist picking up a packet of the stuff. Then, I couldn’t resist the idea of amber-scented soap. Would I add the powdered stuff at trace? Hmm … I googled it, and found a single reference to someone melting it into the oils. And granted, it’s not natural because it’s extracted with petroleum or some such stuff, but hey, I never said I was completely organic.

So, aside from the amber:

201 g lye
21 oz oo
16 oz coil
14 oz palm (YAY!)
19 oz water

I decided to add essential oils too: a combo of 10 tsp (yes, ten, the scents are disappearing!)

2 cedarwood
2 vetiver
2 ylang ylang
3 ginger
1 palmarosa

Unmolded and cut this evening. Very, very oily. Freaked out a little because Cavitch says not to use soap that has oil on top and very hard soap. The soap was pretty soft too, though, which makes me think that the lye discount — which started at 10% — was really very high with the amber and eo additions.

But I think this is the piece de resistance thus far. There is only the slightest tang of ginger and vetiver — no trace of the others — but the amber shines through it all. The overall smell is muted, but still rich and almost humus-y. I hope it doesn’t fade any more. If I have time tomorrow, I may just run back up to Zenith and get some orris root.

*** Update.
This has darkened to a deep rich brown, and is WONDERFUL. I am renaming it 60s Porn Star. The copy? “Pre-silicone, bush-friendly, and love-handle loving — seems like it was a lot easier to feel good about yourself back then. Go ahead, jiggle around in the shower with 60s Porn Star’s rich amber redolence and ginger zip. This is definitely one bar that makes you want to get naked — and stay that way for days on end. And if you want to get in front of a camera? Well, that’s your business.”

Then it was time to try a shampoo bar. I trekked up to Zenith Supplies, bought lots of goodies including the requisite sunflower oil (which, strangely enough, hasn’t been in ANY of the stores down here in the wilds of South Seattle), and then realized that Whole Foods a block away had it for half the price. Oh well, I bought palm oil too. FINALLY. And lots of other stuff too. This hobby may bankrupt me.

Found a recipe for a shampoo bar (scroll down the page until you find Barbara’s Shampoo Bar). It calls for chamomile tea, which is much better for blonde hair. I replaced with nettle, which is supposed to help with dandruff. (I get really bad sebhorreic dermatitis.) Then I chopped the recipe in half (carefully running it through a trusty lye calculator, of course). So:

10 oz sunflower
3 oz coil
2 oz castor
2 oz lye
5.5 oz very strong nettle tea with two sugars

Went heavy on the essential oils: 3 tsp lavender, 3 rosemary. Come to think of it, that’s a tablespoon each, isn’t it?

She advised not to use the stick blender because it traced quickly. So I started beating. And beating. And beating.

I gave up and finished it up with the stick blender. Into another tupperware bowl mold, out the next day, chopped into chunks. Very oily, with lots of air bubbles. I examined carefully; it’s just cosmetic from the uneven stirring. It’s sitting on my office window sill, scenting up the air. I can’t wait to try it out.

***Update: This is great. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now. I still use a little conditioner, but not the gobs I’m used to. Pretty impressive.

Not counting the 10 bars I’ve already given away, I have 57 bars of soap. Granted, some of them are small, but still, it was time to scale the batches back. Still, no palm oil and still lots of Crisco, so I found a recipe for 8 lbs and modified it. Also, the oo was the remainder of my green tea infused stuff. And it’s not even a pound, but the title was too catchy to give up. So:

3 oz oo
3 oz coil
4.5 oz Crisco
4 oz water
40 g lye (I think. I forgot to write the total amount down in my notebook. Make sure to run through a lye calculator.)

I added some ylang ylang III and cedarwood, lovely combo.

When this came out of the mold, it was very oily — but that could because I have this execrable habit of unmolding and cutting too soon in my impatience. Up the sliced chunks went onto a door lintel. Three days later, I cut a sliver off and used it. I think this is the best one so far — silky and smooth. However, the scent is gone. I think I need to start adding orris root as a fixative.

I am not posting a picture because I molded it in a tupperware bowl and it’s not the most appealing looking stuff.

My hardworking man needs a little extra scrubbaliciousness sometimes. As for me, I needed a hard oil to replace the palm oil that’s missing in my new soapmaking life — Aha! Crisco! (Which, by the way, I have never bought in my life. I felt so … Betty Crocker.)

Started with an 8 lb soap base I found online. Then I wanted to use castor oil, which I had read makes super big bubbles. I figured Steve needed super big bubbles. So:

2 oz castor oil
24 oz oo
24 oz coil
36 oz Crisco
11.75 lye 32 oz water

I was going to do a peppermint tea tree thing, but I couldn’t find my big bottle of tea tree oil, and I only had half an oz of peppermint left. This is where things started to get interesting. Remember, the point of this is detoxification. Isn’t green tea detoxifying? So they say — and thus I infused the oo with a quarter of a cup of gunpower green tea. For scent, I decided to do manly odds and ends, which consisted of:

1.5 tsp patchouli
2.5 cedardwood
2 petitgrain

It was a lovely combo, even though generally I despise patchouli.

At trace, I added the oils and 8 tb of sea clay — one for each pound. I had bought the clay for masks, but it’s so detoxifying that my skin screams its way into the next room whenever it sees that evil little baggie.

And now I know: Too little eo, way too much clay. It doesn’t smell like much of anything. Still, it’s a cool-looking bar. I need a new name though. The Detox Ox?

*** Update.
It’s way too drying for my skin, though troubled teenagers might like it a lot. So I’m using it for pet soap.

Pug Sudz
Harry may be a little dog–but there’s nothing small about his stench: Dog slobber. Mud. Or his favorite, the kitty poop buffet (don’t ask). Still, no matter what disgusting smells he’s rolling around in, Pug Sudz makes him sweet-smelling and cuddly again. Green clay pulls out the yeechh even as olive oil protects his delicate pugly skin. Give it a whirl on your own furry stinkbomb. You’ll love him a lot more.

This started as Susan Miller Cavitch’s Thai to the East soap and then underwent modification. As I mentioned in my first soapmaking post, I accidentally bought palm kernal oil, rather than palm oil. So I doubled up the olive oil in the recipe, making a modified castile soap.

201 g lye
13 oz water
1 lb 5 oz oo (this is my super, ultra-hip abbreviation for olive oil)
1 lb coil (super, ultra yaddah yaddah for coconut oil>
6 oz coconut milk
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ground dried ginger
2 tb dried lemongrass
2 tsp lemongrass eo, 5 tsp basil eo

*** Update.

This is a really nice soap. I wasn’t sold on the lemongrass bits at first, but they’re a nice scrubby. It’s very moisturizing. I’ve also renamed it:

The King and I
If you want to come-hither Yul Brynner, this is the soap for you. There’s no better way to say hello to that hot king of Siam than this delightful combo of coconut milk, basil, and lemongrass. It’s got big fluffy lather, bigger refreshing scent, and lots and lots of skin softening.

Poor Harry. He doesn’t have a lot going for him. He’s fat, not too bright, somewhat nearsighted, and dumber than a stump. The one thing he has always had in his favor, though, is that he’s pretty darn cute.

But now he has lip warts. And they’re, shall we say, disfiguring. “Take close-ups of his warts,” Steve urges with not just a little glee. “Post them on the blog.”

I have resisted.

But you know that last picture? The one where he’s doing an impersonation of a dead frog? Those two bumps on his mouth aren’t teeth …

I always thought Harris’ Chocolat (and the subsequent knock-off foodie-empowered-woman novel) was the diet version of Like Water for Chocolate: readable, but a little too saccharine. Harris has now turned toward the psychological thriller, and again, it’s readable, but falls short. I get the feeling she really wants to be Ruth Rendell.

Gentlemen and Players centers around the prestigious St. Oswald’s boarding school and a mysterious character whose history as the groundkeeper’s child makes him/her hate the place. This person becomes a teacher for the sole purpose of infiltrating the hallowed grounds and destroying the place–which seems like a really farfetched premise.

The novel was brisk and moved right along — and certain characters were beautifully realized–but ultimately the ending was less of a surprise than it should have been, and I had a hard time believing that anyone could hold a grudge for so long. Harris, too, seems to have that difficulty; she awkwardly inserts the idea that our strange character might possibly have psychopathological tendencies towards the end of the book (i.e., has a shrink) … but at that point, it was far too late.

More aptly, a novel of no sex, stupidity, and mindcrushing boredom. Again, my standards for chick lit are low, but not this low. Not even on an airplane — with no other reading material in sight save for the in-plane catalog filled with FrontGate garden lighting and Lord of the Rings paraphernalia — could I force myself to wade through this labored story that never seemed to start.

The thing about Seattle is that no one paints their houses bright colors. Behold the orange! (Everyone hates it, except for us. And even if we did, we wouldn’t admit it.)

After making 2 batches of blackberry jam, 1 raspberry, 1 mint jelly, 2 plum butters, and 4 apple butters, I finally grew tired of the Urban Jam Project (tag line: Mooching Fruit from Friends and Neighbors Since 2006). I’ve wanted to make cold process soap for years and years, but have been petrified of lye. Finally, I bit the bullet. I dropped $120 on supplies, and now I have a new obsession. It’s really easy. It’s REALLY addictive. I can’t seem to stop. Four days, four batches.

Zum Soaps makes a lavender anise bar that I absolutely adore. I tried to knock it off. The basic recipe was:

24 oz olive oil
24 oz coconut oil
38 oz palm oil
12 1/8 lye
31 oz water
1 oz anise eo, 1/2 oz lavender eo, and (because I ran out of lavender) 1/2 oz bergamot.

I should note that I realized on batch 2 that, silly me, I bought palm kernel oil rather than palm. It’s okay, but makes for a rock hard bar.

In any case, here’s a picture of my very unevenly cut first batch:

I have since decided that the best place to put them as they dry is on various lintels.

(Hard to see because the soap matches the walls!)

This guy is amazing; I love his woodblocks, which I found in the McClain’s gallery a few months ago. He had sold out of this particular print and I was mucho bummed. It reminds me of those wonderful Sekino self-portraits, but with a more contemporary twist. Now he’s found one.