Solid Lotion Bars

Last week I discovered a new blog, Common Sense Homesteading, and saw this "recipe" for solid lotion bars.

These are so easy to make.  All you need are equal amounts of beeswax, cocoa butter and the oil of your choice.  I used olive oil.  I used 2 ounces of each (by weight on the beeswax and cocoa butter, and by volume on the oil).

Melt all together...

Pour into molds (I just recycled some yogurt tubs)...

and a couple or three hours later, pop them out.

These are really fun to make and have a nice chocolaty scent when you use them, but the smell doesn't linger and become a distraction.  The emollients soak into your skin quickly so you aren't left with a greasy feeling on your hands or body.  I really like that all the ingredients are natural, and that this one product can be used all over my body, including my lips.

I used olive oil, but I think next time I will try coconut oil instead, in hopes it will yield a slightly firmer bar.  This batch made four bars for me (1.5 ounce each, approximately).  There are only three in the picture, though, because I already gave one to my daughter.

Exhausting Weekend, But In A Good Way

Thanks to rain on Friday, Shane had another three-day weekend.  He spent part of his day off in the doctor's office, though, getting meds for a sinus infection he'd been fighting all week. 

He was already feeling a lot better by Saturday morning, so out we went.  First to drop Kat at her mom's for the weekend, then to Lowe's to pick up a special dryer vent, to a thrift store to drop off a mountain of donations that were in the back of the van, and to the credit union to make a payment on our camper in person because they forgot to include a February ticket in our payment book. 

That was followed by an hour-long drive to pick up an almost new tiller from someone who'd listed it on craigslist (the same new one at Lowe's was more than twice as expensive!), followed by a stop to see Shane's dad and step-mom, install the dryer vent we'd bought earlier, and to have lunch with them.

After leaving the in-laws' house, we went to a health food store for some soap making oils, went to a freight salvage store just for fun, stopped at Sam's Club to get a few things I'd missed last time I was there, and we finally ended our day by going to a Chinese-and-sushi buffet before heading home.

We were out for 12 hours straight, and I barely stayed awake until 10:00.

On Sunday, I put in my monthly volunteer hours at the recycling bins.  Our city is getting 24/7 recycling bins soon, instead of the one-weekend-a-month bins we have now.  That means recycling will be easier for everyone here and no one will have to monitor bins anymore.

It was too muddy for Shane to work outside, so we worked together nearly all day making two small batches of bath soap bars, one batch of shampoo bars, and a batch of solid lotion bars.  No pics of any of it yet, but I'll probably take some as the goodies come out of the molds.

We rebottled three batches of kombucha, some with fun flavor combinations, and we got two new batches started.  We also used our juicer to make some orange and pineapple juices. 

When Kat came home around 5:30 , we made some roast beef wraps with lots of veggies (sub-shop style) and watched a couple of kids' shows on TV with her.  By the time she went to bed we were wiped out!  We were in bed with our books by 9:00 and were asleep before 10:00.

That's two good weekends in a row for us.  We got a lot accomplished and had some fun doing it.

How was your weekend?

February Follow-Along

For February, I'll be following along with Erica at Northwest Edible Life as she tries an anti-inflammatory diet.

I've never followed any kind of diet in my life.  At best, I've made a few changes along the way based on things I've read and agreed with.  So, this isn't usually my kind of thing, but when I saw on Erica's blog the details of Mark Sisson’s Primal Meat and Fat diet, I realized I was already eating many of the foods on the plan.  I decided to hop on board for the fun it.  Just call me a very informal (haphazard?) participant.

You don't have to follow along if you don't want to, but I hope you'll follow the link and at least see what's going on. 

There's a book giveaway, too, but you'll need to participate and you'll need to hurry.  The first progress report is due today! 

Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

I've tried a few different ranch dressing recipes and finally fiddled with them enough to call this one our family favorite.  Hope you like it.


Homemade Ranch Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise -- can use Miracle Whip, but dressing will be much sweeter if you do
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar -- or white (clear) balsamic vinegar if you can find it
1 teaspoon dry parsley leaves
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon dry dill weed
1/8 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)

Combine all until smooth. Let chill for several hours for best flavor.


This recipe is being shared at the Delicious Dish Tuesdays Hop with Full Time Mama.

Making Kombucha Tea

Who here is familiar with kombucha tea? It's a fermented tea drink that is thought to be healthful.  If you've not heard of it, here's an excerpt from wiseGEEK, who explains it better than I can:

Kombucha is a fermented beverage made of tea and bacteria cultures. For the last 2,000 years in Asia, families drank kombucha for its purported medicinal qualities. The special yeast and bacteria cultures are usually circulated person-to-person, although now mixtures can be purchased online. This homeopathic drink tastes tart but full-flavored, like carbonated apple cider. Kombucha recipes have traveled to Korea and Japan, from there to Russia, and finally reached Europe after WWI.

You must have a "mother brew" to cultivate kombucha, which is why originally it was handed down through generations of a family. Much like yogurt, a cup of kombucha can be reserved to make the next batch. This is because it is a living brew, with microorganisms that are beneficial to our digestive tract and others claim help other internal systems. The culture is not a fungus, as some report, but a mixture of bacteria and yeast that forms a gelatinous, yellowish substance.

Ok, so it doesn't sound all that appetizing, but if you like tart, slightly fizzy drinks, it's a good one.  Shane and I both like the commercially-prepared kombucha tea we've tried in the past, but it's kind of dear at $3-$4 for a 12-16 ounce bottle.  It's not that easy to find, either, so we'd been trying to find a "mother", also known as a scoby (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) for a while.  The closest we came was talking to a person on craigslist who not only lived too far away, but had a weird schedule and a weirder online presence.  When that didn't work out, I put the idea on the back burner.

I was thrilled when I learned in December that an acquaintance, George, makes kombucha tea.  Most of the friends we have in common with George think it's just weird and wouldn't even try it, but things like kombucha are right up our alley.  George was so pleased that we even knew what he was talking about that he offered us some mothers for free.  I made a couple of small "starter" batches just to make sure I could do it right, then I started making gallon-sized batches.  Here are the details of the first big batch I made.

Beware that these photos may not be suitable for wimps the "culinarily squeamish".

Three "mothers" (starter cultures) in some kombucha tea that our friend gave us.

The jar above contains three scobys and about 1 to 1-1/2 cups of kombucha tea from one of George's batches.  The scobys are disc-like and spongy.  I read somewhere that they feel like calamari.  Yep, that's as good a description as any.

Per directions George gave me (which appear to have come from the Cultures for Health website)  I brewed some tea, using 13 cups of distilled water, 1 cup of sugar and 2 Tablespoons of loose tea (or I could have used 8 tea bags).   After letting the tea steep until it cooled to room temperature, I strained it to remove the tea leaves, then added 1 scoby and 2 cups of George's kombucha tea.  I covered the jar with a coffee filter to keep out dust and other foreign particles.  Then I left it to sit on the counter, out of direct sunlight, for several days.

Brewed sweet tea with a scoby and some kombucha tea added.

Closer look at the scoby in my first big batch.

The tea can be ready in as little as 5 days, depending on your taste.  We like ours a little more tart, so we leave ours longer.  Here is the same jar on Day 9.  

Notice how the tea has lightened in color. You can see the new "baby" culture on top and you can also see that the mother floated to the top at some point and attached to the baby.  It happens sometimes; other times not.  Doesn't really matter. 

This is a living culture, so it changes daily and never turns out exactly the same way twice.  The tea tastes sweet, tart, musty (like wine, especially homemade wine), and is lightly carbonated.  It "tingles" on the tongue when you taste it.  If you've ever had homemade ginger beer or soda, it's kind of like that.

Then what?  First of all, I reserved a three cups of the new tea -- 2 cups for the next batch I made and 1 cup to cover and protect the new scoby I now had.  Then we stored this first batch in the fridge and drank it as it was, either straight or mixed with more of our regular sweet tea.  Since then, we've been playing around, using green tea as the base, letting batches ferment for 2, 3 and 4 weeks, mixing some of the tea with fruit juices and other beverages and pouring some into airtight containers to ferment a second time so that it becomes even more carbonated.

Over time, we're going to find ourselves with more babies than we need.  When that happens, we can either give them away to someone else who wants to make their own kombucha, or we can compost them.  No problemo.

So, that's that.  It's an easy process, but not a quick one. It's a real money saver, too, if you're in the habit of drink kombucha tea regularly.   Doing a very rough calculation based on costs of tea, sugar and distilled or purified water, a batch like this could cost as little as $1.80 (more if you use organic tea and sugar...I didn't, but I probably should in the future).  I get about six 16-ounce servings after taking evaporation into account.  That's as little as 30¢ for what would cost at least $3.00 in the store.

I'll be posting more about kombucha as I learn more about the brewing process.  If you're eager to learn more about it, check out this tutorial from Cultures for Health.  Or just do a Google search and you'll find dozens of links.

Anyone else out there tried kombucha?  Would you ever consider making it at home?

January Sewing/Crafting: Just Under The Wire

Remember when I said I wanted to complete a crafty project a month this year?  And that the first thing I wanted (needed) to complete was cutting and hemming some drapes?  And that it wasn't exactly what I would call a fun craft?
 
Well, as expected -- by me, anyway -- I put it off and put it off until January was almost in the books.  I finally got the job done yesterday, just in the nick of time.  Thank you, dear blog readers!  If I didn't have you to be accountable to, all eight panels (our bedroom and Kat's) would still be dragging the floor.

I promise to be more punctual with my next project.  I'll succeed by default since there are only 29 days this month!

Small Batch Old-Fashioned Cornbread

Here is one of the recipes from the Small Batch Baking cookbook I reviewed yesterday.  This cornbread is unlike any I've had in the past.  For one thing, it contains no flour.  For another, it has a deep dark molasses flavor that I think will be a big selling point for some and a deal-breaker for others.  I love it, but if you don't like molasses, this may not be the recipe for you.  Or maybe you could substitute honey for the molasses.

The recipe says to bake this recipe in two jumbo muffin pans, but I used two mini loaf pans with good results.  I also ground my own cornmeal from organic popping corn, so the bread had a fairly course texture that paired well with the steak soup I made last week.  A more finely milled cornbread would probably yield a less coarse bread.

I couldn't think of anything I needed the yolk for by itself, so I used the entire egg instead of just the white.  It turned out just fine.


Old-Fashioned Corn Bread
(from Small Batch Baking)

1/3 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons light or dark molasses
White of 1 large egg
1/2 cup yellow or white cornmeal
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons unsalted butter, melted (I used olive oil pan spray instead)

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 450°F.

Place the buttermilk, molasses, and egg white in a small bowl and whisk to blend.

Place the cornmeal, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a medium-size mixing bowl and whisk to mix well. Add the buttermilk mixture and whisk just until the batter is blended.

Place 1-1/2 teaspoons of the melted butter in each of 2 muffin cups.  Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, dividing it evenly between them.  Fill the empty muffin cups halfway with water to prevent them from scorching.  bake until the corn bread is crusty around the edges and springy to the touch, 9 to 10 minutes.  Remove the muffin pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes.  Carefully pour the water out of the empty muffin cups.  Turn the muffins out of the cups and serve hot or warm.  (They are best eaten the day they are baked but will keep for up to 1 day in a plastic bag at room temperature.)

Makes 2 large corn breads; serves 2.


I have linked this post to the Hearth and Soul Hop for 2/7 with Premeditated Leftovers.  Click through and check it out!