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The Handmade Lotion Trials: Second Batch

Posted by on February 18, 2012 3 Comments

Look how pretty this lotion is – so creamy and smooth.  I scented it with rose and bergamot essential oils.  I actually prefer a lotion with little or no scent but I had to mask the distressing animal scent of the shea butter.  Shea butter is NOT made from any animal parts.  It comes from a tree.  However, it smells and repells me like lanolin does.  The point is – isn’t this lotion pretty and doesn’t it look perfect?

One hour later it has hardened and separated.  What the hell?!  What happened?  It was so smooth and perfectly emulsified!  From what I’m reading this may be because the water and oils weren’t at the same temperature when emulsifying.  I don’t have a thermometer.  Actually, I have two but neither of them are working.  The candy thermometer never worked and my digital one is so confusing to use that I’ve given up.

Before the gross disaster occurred, I used a little of the lotion and I liked it better than the first batch.  It has a slightly sticky feel to it which while not ideal is more preferable to me than the slick greasy feel of the coconut based first batch.  For the sake of remembering what I used I will record ingredients and amounts here:

1 tsp yellow beeswax

1/2 cup distilled water

1 tbsp glycerin

1 1/2 tbsp shea butter

2 tbsp sweet almond oil

1 tbsp wheat germ oil

enough rose and bergamot essential oils to mask the unpleasant odor of the shea butter.

This recipe is based on the Cocoa Butter and Rose Cream from the book “Natural Beauty Recipe Book” by Gill Farrer-Halls.  I couldn’t get my hands on real rose water so I used distilled plain water instead.  There is a worldwide shortage of jojoba oil right now so I didn’t want to contribute to that shortage, instead I used wheat germ oil which is used in a few other lotion recipes in this book.  After doing a lot of reading about the various butters I concluded that shea butter was the least greasy and best option for my skin, so I used that instead of cocoa butter.  The essential oils called for were rose, frankincense, and chamomile oils.  Each of these oils is very expensive.  Way out of my price range.  Luckily I already happen to have some good quality rose oil so I used that and then found I had bergamot which I love in combination with rose.  By this time – as you can see – it is barely the same lotion as the original but I kept all proportions of oils to waters the same and followed the instructions.  Except for the part about hand whipping it.

Here are my notes on making lotion up to this point:

  • I have a strong aversion to the less refined butters – the smells are repugnant to me.  This bothers me because the less refined they are the more nutrients they have to offer my skin.  The less refined a butter or oil is the stronger its scent.  So in future, if I want to have an unscented or very faintly scented lotion I’m going to have to buy the ultra refined de-scented oils and butters.
  • I might need to figure out how to reset my digital thermometer.  Or buy a really reliable non-digital one.
  • Lotion making is easy, except for when it’s not.
  • Hand whipping the oils and waters is ridiculous.  I’m all for doing things without having to plug anything in but I was whipping and whipping and nothing was changing.  No magical emulsification was happening.  My blender knows how to GET IT DONE.
  • Even when the scent of something is pleasant to me (rose and bergamot) I am bothered by it being too strong.  Luckily for me (I guess) pure essential oils (particularly the citrus ones) lose strength much faster than their synthetic counterparts.  I remember how I used to wear perfume and smoke cigarettes and I loved all that strong scent around me*.  Not so much any more.
  • What lotion works for your skin is highly personal.  You may have tactile preferences or your skin may be drier or less dry and this will dictate what feels good on it.  My mom much prefers the first batch of lotion because she likes the greasier feel of it.  The slight stickiness of the second batch bothered her, whereas I didn’t mind it so much but was super bothered by the slick feeling of the first batch.
  • So if you plan to make your own lotions, expect to do some experimentation and trials of your own.  Do smaller batches (such as half batches)** so you don’t waste too many ingredients at a time.  If you don’t like a batch for yourself have your friends try it and if any of them like the ones you don’t – give it to them.
  • Take notes on what you do each time.  If you give a lotion to a friend  because they really like it – they may want to make it again so if you can tell them precisely what you did (any substitutions or deviations from the instructions) they can remake it and you will have effectively spread knowledge and skills that individuals should not lose to industry.

What’s up next: today I will attempt to re-heat the separated lotion and re-emulsify.  I’m hoping that if I heat them at the same time in the bowl they’ll be at the same temperature when I blend them.  All lotion making instructions have you heat the two elements separately and then blend so this might not work.  However, when I make my creamy mustard vinaigrette I put all the ingredients in one container and then emulsify – they’re all at room temperature… but why can’t I heat them together so they’re continually at the same temperature and then emulsify?  Why shouldn’t that work?  Well, today I’ll be able to report on whether it does or doesn’t.  I know one thing – those essential oils when heated can lose their scent which is why you always add them last when the lotion has cooled.  So I’ll have plenty to report after today’s experiment.

Stay tuned for the results!

*No lie.  I have always loved the smell of fresh cigarette smoke and when mixed with Opium perfume – so wonderful.  Or, at least, I used to love it.  There is a lingering nostalgia for me in those two scents but no longer any real pleasure in them because they are so poisonous to both people and the environment.

** There is a slight issue of batches being too small to be effectively emulsified in your blender so if you do half batches of recipes that are already somewhat modestly sized, you may need to emulsify by hand.  Good luck with that.

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Food Trends: The Return Of The Twinkie

Posted by on February 12, 2012 2 Comments

 

You might like to suggest that a “food” that has remained so steadily in the American consciousness doesn’t qualify as a trend but once any food finds its way onto a stick you know it’s hitting the big time and will make a guest appearance with bacon in the next couple of months.  Growing up in a hippie whole grain no-processed food household I was deprived of the opportunity to get my hands on these little treats until I was a young adult.  One afternoon  a supply of Twinkies showed up at my house via one of my room mates.  I know I had to have eaten one because the memory of that chemical aftertaste has stuck with me all these years.  More memorable than that was the experiment I conducted over the next several years in which I held onto a package of these spongy treats to see how long it would take for them to go bad.  But everyone already knows the result of that experiment: Twinkies are incapable of molding.  They just get drier and drier until they crumble when you show them to yet another disinterested house guest.  Why is no one ever as amazed as I am?

 

I predict that you will soon be seeing recipes for: Twinkies Charlotte, custard pie with a Twinkie crust, Bacon wrapped Twinkies on a stick, Twinkie Po’ Boys, Twinkies with cherries flambe, Twinkie bread pudding, and Twinkie stuffed rice krispy treats.

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Blackberry Wrangling Progress

Posted by on February 9, 2012 4 Comments

I’ve been working hard and looking like I tame lions for a living.  I have some thorns still stuck in my skin.  But it’s totally worth it and all the hours I’ve put into clearing the blackberries have been very meditative.  I’ve been meditating quite a bit about the evil neighbors who killed these brambles with pesticides without my permission.  Bastards.

I’ve also been meditating on cleaner and brighter thoughts too, such as how good it feels to be out there working in the plants and the fresh winter air.  Meditation for me isn’t about clearing my head of all thoughts, because that is impossible (I’ve tried many times), but about letting my thoughts come to me organically and letting them say their piece without interruptions.  I let the stream of consciousness be heard as it is formed.  Inevitably my mind settles down after a while into a theme and a flood of thoughts about something my mind has been chewing on gets released.  I always feel better afterwards.

I’m about a third of the way though the task.

Wait, no, more like a quarter.

Crap, maybe only like an eighth.  But who cares?  You can see part of the back fence again!

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The Benefits of Going Broke

Posted by on January 31, 2012 5 Comments

(When you’re broke and you’re trying to make your own lotions and salves a little mold in your home grown stash of calendula is a depressing discovery)

I don’t like being broke.  If I had a million dollars I wouldn’t feel bad about it.  I don’t hate money.  I don’t think being poor is necessarily more virtuous than being rich.  Bad ethics abound in both economic groups.  On the other hand, it is not my life’s ambition to be rich.  While I certainly wouldn’t mind having such security I don’t need to be rich to have a good life.

But being broke sucks.  This past month we have had to catch up on bills and it has been staggeringly difficult.  We almost had our power turned off, we almost had our internet turned off, we almost had our trash cans toted away, we couldn’t afford to buy half the groceries we’re used to buying.  And we weren’t living extravagantly before this either, so don’t be thinking “Boo hoo, so you can’t buy any brie cheese and caviar, so sad for you and your richie-pants life.”  Naw, we were already living modestly.  We have simply reached a new level of broke.

So you’d think this was a super depressing month.  Oddly enough, it wasn’t.  It was humiliating standing outside in my pyjamas begging the power guy not to cut off our power for five days, but the humiliating bits aside, I have felt oddly refreshed.  I have had to become more resourceful and creative.  I am having to become better at household management.

The Benefits of Going Broke:

  • Better Pantry Management.  I have had to pay much closer attention to what I already have in my pantry and to rely on its contents a lot more.  This is great because in years past I’ve had too much left over in my freezer.  We should be eating everything I freeze within a year.  This summer we packed it full of good stuff but still had lots from the previous year.  I am now using up older stock and am checking the canned goods and the freezer before going to the grocery store.
  • Learning new skills.  I couldn’t afford to buy the expensive Eco laundry detergent we usually use.  I mean, I could afford to buy the really cheap heavily perfumed crap but I refuse to go toxic just because I’m broke.  So I made my own detergent.  It’s easy, it’s super cheap, and it’s natural if the bar soap you use is natural.  I’ve thought about trying this for a long time but as long as I could afford to buy good stuff I lacked the motivation.  So far the home made stuff is working really well.  I did accidentally use a perfumed soap (I was tricked by packaging that hid the heavy synthetic perfume – the ingredients were otherwise completely natural) so next time I’ll be looking for a different soap for it, but the point is that it costs so little to make your own detergent and it takes practically no time at all.
  • Getting more creative in the kitchen.  When you can’t just run out and buy whatever you might want from the store to make dinner with you become more creative.  Especially if, like me, you’re used to having constant access to cheese to cook with.  I’ve been wanting to experiment with making more vegan meals or at least meals that don’t revolve around cheese.  I’m not planning on becoming vegan but I am interested in reducing the amount of dairy we consume by a lot because I don’t want to support the dairy/meat industry which is contaminating our waterways and using up land to feed the cattle instead of being used to feed people directly.  Not being able to afford much cheese has forced our hand in this direction and I’m not sorry.  Yes, some days I really crave cheese but it’s good for me to eat a lot less of it.
  • The combination of going super broke but also being able to keep our house has turned my attention back to the garden.  I have a large city lot and it isn’t being used nearly to capacity for growing edibles and herbs.  I’m pretty good at growing food and plan to get better at it.  If you have beds going all year with at least greens then you can rely a lot less on buying produce.  Prices on all foods are rising and I don’t know that it will ever go down again.  To offset it I will grow more of my own.  It does make a difference.  Even though growing your own isn’t free (water, seeds, starts, tools) it is exponentially cheaper to grow your own once you have beds in place and tools on hand.*  This year my focus will be on having at least a few beds well planned to supply us with dark leafy greens throughout winter and growing more of my own produce for canning and freezing.
  • It has made me more appreciative of the generosity of others.  When you don’t need someone’s help or largesse it’s so much easier to take it with grace and pride still in tact.  When someone is generous with you when you’re in a precarious situation it can either ding your pride and make you want to refuse such generosity (which is stupid) or you can take it, be thankful for it, and find ways to reciprocate that will keep your pride in tact.  A friend bought Max a pair of his favorite kind of shoes on E-bay (we couldn’t find any in his size here in town or anywhere near by) and I almost cried it was so sweet.  They ended up not fitting, which sucks, but that friend’s generosity was really felt by me.  I’m making her some cloth dinner napkins in return.  I may have almost no money but I have things I can make and share with others as a way to thank them for the things they help me out with.  My pride is not bothered by an exchange of things between people.  My pride isn’t wrapped up in money and I don’t have a hard time accepting gifts of money from friends and family who are inspired to do so, provided that I think how I can give back to them either now or later.  So I think being broke is making me feel more generous with what I do have and this is allowing me to not concentrate as much on what I don’t have.
  • Simplifies life.  The best thing about going bankrupt was not having any debt and not having any credit cards anymore.  We’ve been debt and credit card free for two years now.  The hard part is that when we don’t have cash to pay our bills, we’re on the line, we have zero safety net.  I worry a lot about medical issues because Philip and I both have no health insurance.  In the past I would know that in an emergency I could use my credit card for things.  We have zero safety net now.  That’s scary.  The flip side of this is that without credit cards we can only spend what we’ve got.  So there are a lot of things we simply can’t afford to do.  When you have extra resources it seems there are so many situations where there’s pressure to do things (vacation to see family, joining friends out to dinner, etc) and you find yourself squeezing things into your budget you can’t truly afford because you know you can put it on your card and pay for it later.  When you have no cards you just have to say no.  It’s that simple.  Maybe it sounds terrible to some but to me it’s freeing.

Hopefully this month will not be quite as brutal as last month but there’s always something.  All our pets are due for vaccinations and I’m really working hard not to think about the leaks in the house and all the things that could go wrong that I can’t afford to have going wrong.  I’m choosing to focus on the fun of being literally forced to do what I love best in the world: getting back to urban homesteading.

And writing.  Writing is always free.

*In arid desert cities where water is much more scarce and droughts are common water tends to be way more expensive and sometimes rationed so this may not actually be true in those places.  I live in the Pacific Northwest and one of the blessings of living in the land of rain is that water is rarely scarce.)

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Winter Squash Ricotta Pasta Recipe

Posted by on January 29, 2012 4 Comments

I love winter squash and don’t get tired of eating it.  I love it roasted, made into smooth soups, or made into chunky Thai soup with tofu and curry, and I love it mashed up with butter, salt, and pepper.  This pasta dish is my new favorite to eat winter squash.  One of its charms is that it doesn’t call for a lot of ingredients and another of its charms is how fast and easy it is to prepare.  I have made it several times in the last few weeks and always in a huge batch because I need leftovers for lunches for three adults.  I give you the recipe for a regular sized batch but if you want a giant pot of this just double the recipe.  The sauce will become very thick after cooling so you can add a little water when reheating if you like.

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Winter Squash Ricotta Pasta Recipe

6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion
  • 1 cup winter squash (cooked)
  • 1 cup ricotta
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or pressed
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/8 tsp cayenne
  • black pepper to taste
  • 12 ounces angel hair pasta

Instructions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a pot on med/high heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent and browning slightly. While sauteeing the onion, fill another pot full of water with a pinch of salt and bring to a boil, then add your pasta.
  2. Puree the winter squash, ricotta, water, and all the seasonings in a bowl using an immersion blender (or you can use your food processor for this). When it's completely smooth add it to your onion and let it come to a boil and then turn the heat down to med/low while your pasta is cooking. Stir frequently. Take off the heat when your pasta is done cooking.
  3. Drain the pasta, add it to the pot with the sauce and toss it well.

Notes

This whole recipe comes together within fifteen minutes for me. I suggest having all your ingredients measured out before you begin so you don't have to mess with it while everything is cooking. If your onion is done but you aren't ready to add the sauce to it - be sure to take it off the heat so it doesn't burn. If you want your sauce to be thinner - just add more water. You can use broth, of course, but this recipe doesn't require broth for flavor. One other thing - I've played around with the cayenne amounts and I like it somewhat spicy. If 1/8 tsp seems like too much for you then start with less.

What kind of winter squash you use is up to you. I prefer rich dry squash varieties such as butternut, buttercup, hubbard, or Queensland blue. To bake squash you cut them open, gut them of seeds, halve or quarter them and put on a baking sheet and cook in an oven at 375 degrees until soft. There is no need to cover in foil or oil the baking sheet or the squash.

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Winterizing Your Home: Plugging Up the Small Holes

Posted by on January 18, 2012 2 Comments

Our farmhouse is over a hundred years old and consequently it has many funky charms such as several non-standard door sizes (tall people sustain more surprise head injuries in our house than anyone else) and windows installed at floor level upstairs.  We love it.  What’s less charming about a house this old is that it’s had plenty of time to be worked on by all kinds of unskilled people who have made a bungle of things.  This dryer vent is a perfect illustration.  Clearly the house wasn’t originally built to accommodate an automatic washer and dryer.  Some clever jerk decided that this wasn’t a problem.  To install dryer vent: sledgehammer a hole into the outside wall the approximate size of a dryer vent et voila!  All set.  Don’t mind the big gaping corner through which light and air travel freely – this allows you to breath fresh air even in mid winter.

WRONG.  Anyone living in an old house knows that one of the biggest problems is paying to heat them.  They are famous for these “creative” bits of crappy handiwork that let the heat drain out.  You don’t even need gaping holes like this one, there are so many ways the heat gets out.  So this weekend, because we got a really high heating bill we couldn’t afford, we set about identifying some problems and fixing them.  One problem is that we didn’t put all our storm windows down.  Duh.  Let’s not talk about how dumb that was.  All the functioning ones are now in place.  This hole in the laundry room is something I was vaguely aware of but didn’t think too much about until we got our highest ever electric bill.

You probably don’t have this exact problem in your house.  So I’m not offering this up as a tutorial on how to fix the hole around your dryer vent.  You might, however, have some other little gap letting heat out of your house.  If you have the money (or ACTUAL skills to fix holes properly) you will obviously do it the professional way.  We have no money.  We are so strapped for money at this moment I’m stressed out that I’m going to have to buy cat food today*.  So how do you go about plugging up holes in your house with zero money and no professional house-fixing skills?  You get creative is what you do.  Some day I’ll have that gap fixed with plaster or something but this weekend I came up with a good workable solution:

My main concern was that a dryer vent could potentially get hot.  I know it isn’t likely, especially if you dry all your clothes on low heat – but I’ve had a house fire and I’m paranoid about creating flammable situations.  At first I was going to make a cotton tube and fill it with dryer lint.  We thought that had a kind of poetry to it.  However, cotton is quite flammable as far as fibers go.  So is lint, for that matter.  Wool is not very flammable.  You can burn it but the fire goes out very quickly.

Philip told me this and I didn’t actually believe him.  In an effort to locate a piece of 100% wool in my craft room I did burn tests on swatches of what I thought was wool.  I discovered two things, a) most of my wool fabrics are not 100% wool but are wool and synthetic blends and b) real wool doesn’t burn easily.  The real wool I found was a pant leg from an old vintage pair of army pants.  I trimmed it and sewed it into a tube and stuffed it (loosely) with cotton batting.  Then Philip stuffed it around the dryer vent like a collar – pushing it into the gaps.  It worked perfectly.  No more air flow at all and no more light.

So how can you use my solution to help you come up with your own?  If you have the money or skills, fix your holes professionally.  If you are in a similar situation as I am then think about how you might fill small (or big) holes or cracks to stop drafts.  Some ideas to consider:

  • Fabric scraps can be very useful in plugging up holes.  The more dense the fabric, the more effective.  Tight weave fabrics are your best bet.  Wool is a fantastic insulation fiber so if you have any wool scraps on hand, consider them as a great material.  As long as the hole you’re filling isn’t near a heat source (like a heater vent or a fireplace or a stove) cotton is perfectly good too.
  • Another way to stop drafts from coming through doors is to sew tubes of fabric the length of the door and fill it with rice.  You place this along the bottom of the door and it will block drafts.  This will also work for drafts coming through windows.
  • Caulking.  If you find really small holes in your house letting the heat out you may be able to caulk them.  This is cheap and doesn’t take great skill to do.  As you can see, my hole was much too big to fill with caulking and we also needed to be able to take the vent out if necessary.  But there may be other small holes or gaps that can be closed with caulking.

So when you’re looking around at the many ways heat is escaping your old home, consider what materials you have on hand and be creative in thinking about how they might be used.

*Don’t worry, I can cover the cat food.  It’s just THAT tight that it stresses me out every time I see we need something.  If it came down to having to borrow money from a friend to feed my cats I would have no shame in asking for help.

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The Best Beginning

Posted by on January 11, 2012 7 Comments

We just found out on Monday that we were approved for the HAMP loan modification that we applied for so that we won’t lose our house.  This is the best possible way to start the new year.  I don’t deal well with uncertainty and we’ve been going through this for two years now.  Well, truly, almost from the day we first moved in here four years ago.  If you want more of the details and thoughts that go along with this news you can read about it here.  So I’m feeling deeply relieved and deeply thankful for this news.

In the past couple of years I have been more focused on just coping with stress from day to day, trying to help my kid with his challenges, and I have retreated into my writing – all of which was good and necessary but leaving my garden to do its thing has resulted in a giant mess.  A colossal mess.  Now that we get to stay we have some real things to face.  The first is much more extreme budgeting.  This is not going to be easy but it is necessary in order to make this work.  (No, the bank didn’t reduce our loan by much money – they fixed some other things that would have forced us to move soon, such as the adjustable rate and other things I can’t be bothered to go into.)

The important thing is that now that we’ve been approved for this adjustment we know the bank isn’t going to kick us out and as long as we can make our payments, we’re here for good.  I have to admit that there have been times when I fantasized about getting kicked out because then we could move to Portland out of this god-forsaken little town of ours… but truly, I love my weird house and I’ve become accustomed to being a freak in the Oregon bible belt and we know most of the cool people here.  Plus, it’s pretty around here.

So here are a few things I want to work on around here as time allows:

Budgeting:

  • Soft spendy cheeses for special occasions only.
  • No beer except for very rare occasions (cheap wine instead, but only a few days a week, not every day).
  • No second pots of coffee.  When first pot runs out, make tea.
  • Cut Kung Fu classes.  (We can still practice the Kung Fu we already know)
  • Meal planning.  (I have the toughest time with this but every time I do it, I spend less money on grocery shopping.)

In the Garden:

  • Continue to cut back and uproot all the blackberries.  Huge job.  Long-term.
  • Prune the roses so we have a great crop of them this year for filling vases and cheering our poor asses up.
  • Have Philip relocate a couple of the roses that are too close together.
  • Clear out the two empty square beds in preparation for spring planting.
  • Plan the spring garden.  Just list the things you really want to grow, all your priorities, and roughly plan where you want to put them.  The more food we grow, the less we have to buy.
  • Prune the fruit trees by the end of February and apply dormant oil if you can find some that isn’t petroleum based.

Inside the house:

  • Get on a regular cleaning routine.  Starting this Saturday.  Just concentrate on: washing and changing sheets, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, mopping kitchen floor.
  • Apply diatomaceous earth to all floors in the house.  (This was a tip from my friend Ann that our vet agreed was an effective and non-toxic flea control.  Pippa, it turns out, is very allergic to fleas so we need to be on top of this)
  • Curtains on Max’s bedroom window.
  • Wash and sew new covers on all his comforters that have become gross and ratty and depressing.
  • Continue to work on the home-made lotion trials.

That’s plenty to focus on.  It’s important not to overwhelm myself before I even get out the gate.  I have writing to do as well, but these other things need to be given more priority than they have been.  Such improvements will help ease my overall depression which has been so bad lately that I literally want to sleep all the time.   While that’s a classic symptom for many people with clinical depression, that’s not been one of mine.  I don’t sleep well at night, ever, and then I just want to stay in bed all day.  Anyway, fixing up some of the things that depress me that I see every day is a step in the right direction.

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The Handmade Lotion Trials: First Batch

Posted by on January 3, 2012 10 Comments

I ran out of my usual lotion last week.  I have been using St. Ives for years.  I’ve enjoyed various formulas they’ve come out with.  Generally speaking they use very mild scents and they’ve always been affordable.  All natural they are NOT.  I have branched out time and time again to find an all natural replacement for it but no formula has met my needs.  My skin is sensitive and very dry.  I use hand lotion obsessively.  I am very picky about what it should feel like and how it should perform.  I think everyone’s skin responds differently to moisturizers and so what works for me will not necessarily work for others.

When I got down to scraping the bottle of my St. Ives lotion I bought a replacement for it, once again telling myself that some day I would just try to make my own lotion.  I had a neighbor once who said she and her mom make their own lotion every year and said it’s really easy.  However, needing lotion RIGHT NOW TODAY THIS MINUTE I brought home a familiar formula of St. Ives called “Intensive Healing” and opened it up and slathered it on my dry legs and was instantly overwhelmed by the most potent fragrance – perfumey and strong enough to knock a horse out.  This was new.  They don’t usually have such obnoxious fragrances and usually the fragrances smell pretty natural.  This scent that accosted me from my own skin reminded me of a certain cologne-stinking produce man I have a secret and strong dislike for.

Not okay.  Not only that, even if I could stomach such a strong scent on myself, I am not okay with accosting other people with chemical fragrances that may give them headaches or worse – make them sick.  So I hit the lotion isle at Rite Aid hoping to find one last bottle of my tried and true lotion.  They didn’t have any.  I read every lotion bottle on the shelf.  Every damn one.  I’m pretty sure I made the Rite Aid employees very nervous.  The ingredients lists, even on the “natural” bottles, read like foreign languages.  Partly this is due to the fact that most of the companies list ingredients like vitamin E in fancy-pants science lingo.  Still, do I need all that crap in my lotion?

Remember: skin is the largest organ of your body and what you put ON it goes IN in it.  Into to your system.  Toxins enter your system easily through skin.

I complained about my lotion problem to my mom and she got all excited to try making our own.  I love this about my mom.  She is the greatest inspiration to me to make my own medicines and go the natural route.  She brought me up that way.  So we consulted our Rosemary Gladstar herbal recipes book and found she has a “perfect” lotion in it.  Last night we made it.

What it has in it: Coconut oil, sweet almond oil, grapeseed oil, 8 vitamin E capsules (emptied), linseed oil (a tiny bit), beeswax (we used 1/2 ounce for this batch, the recipe says 1/2 to 1 ounce), filtered water, aloe vera gel, and some essential oil (grapefruit).

How did it turn out?  It’s thick, which is what I like in a lotion.  It smells like coconut, which I don’t like (though it’s a huge improvement on the nasty loud smelling bottle I have to ditch on someone who likes that kind of thing).  It has a greasy feeling finish, which I don’t like at all.

How hard was it to make?  Easy!  It worked really well following Gladstar’s directions.  It didn’t separate on us and it didn’t require any special equipment.  Cleaning my blender and the bowl we used may require a trip through the scouring hot dishwasher to remove all trace of the beeswax but that’s a small price to pay.

Is it less expensive to make your own than to buy it?  That is highly dependent on what oils you choose to use.  It is also difficult to cost because this recipe called for a tsp of lanolin but we had to fork out $11 for a whole bottle of it.  Stored properly the lanolin will last a very long time and we can use it for many batches (maybe as many as 10) which makes the cost difficult to determine.  We also had to buy vitamin E in capsules, we only needed 8 of them but had to buy a whole bottle.  That was another $10.  I think if you use inexpensive oils you can make a very cheap lotion.  While cheap is good when on a budget like we are, I insist on good quality so I’m willing to spend more for sweet almond oil.  Buying bulk oils online is probably the best way to reduce the cost of making it.

How much does one batch make?  We got a total of about 16 ounces of lotion.

I have two other books with lotion recipes in it and I also have a friend who makes lotion professionally who has offered to let me make some with her.  My plan is to devise a master formula to meet my personal preferences and learn enough about how to adjust it so that I can make suggestions to others who want to try their hand at this but who may want a different sort of performance from their lotion.

Biggest question I need answered: what controls how greasy a lotion feels?  The main ingredient in lotion is oil and obviously oil is grease – is it the amount of water that tempers the greasy feel?  Or does the beeswax also temper it?  Are there certain kinds of oils that are more or less greasy feeling?

I’ll report back when I’ve made my second batch.

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Vegetarian Split Pea Soup Recipe

Posted by on December 30, 2011 5 Comments

This soup post is dedicated to the three animals that make our every day life incredibly rich and funny: Pippa, Penny, and Chick.  We love all three of them in spite of the fact that they wake us up in the wee hours for various reasons, they shed, they get fleas, they create enormous inconveniences… and yet:  every single day we have them in our lives they make us laugh, they repay us in kind for the things we do for them, they curl up and keep us warm on cold winter nights, they cheer us up when we’re depressed for no reason.   And Pippa, most especially our funny bow-legged, silly, sweet Pippa who helps Max get to sleep every night and suffers our stifling affections for her and her antics which we know she can’t help, being a little weird in the head from being abandoned at 4 weeks old by her mother and suffering malnutrition (also the cause of the bow legs).  Without Pippa we would be so much less than we are.

I’m linking this post to Branny Boils Over‘s ASPCA donation challenge (for every soup post that’s linked up to theirs dedicated to a loved pet they will donate $1 to the ASPCA).  The deadline to participate is January 31st so there’s plenty of time for you all to join in and raise some money for the care of animals!  Please note that you don’t even have to have a blog (or if you have a blog but it’s not a food blog – no problem) please go over to Branny Boils Over to read how you can be part of this too.

Most people know split pea soup as a smooth porky flavored comfort food.  Not in my house.  Being brought up vegetarian, my mom had veg versions of most of the classics and this is roughly based on the version she made for me growing up.  It’s the first soup I ever mastered on my own.  It has chunky vegetables in it but the peas become smooth as it cooks for a long time.  I prefer to use fresh dill whenever possible but I’ve failed to get it established in my current garden and no one local sells it here.  So I use dry these days.  If you’re looking for something that mimics the taste of ham-hock, this is not the soup for you.  But for everyone else – this is an amazing split pea soup!

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Vegetarian Split Pea Soup

8 servings

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 3 carrots, chopped
  • 3 stalks celery, chopped
  • 3 quarts stock (or water)
  • 2 1/2 cups split peas
  • 2 potatoes, diced
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
  • 2 tsp dill (or one whole bunch fresh, minced)
  • 2 tsp salt
  • pepper to taste
  • 1 head cauliflower, cut in small florets

Instructions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot and once it is hot add the onion, celery, and carrots. Saute them until the onions are translucent and the edges starting to brown.
  2. Add the stock and stir in the split peas. Bring the stock to a boil and then turn it down a little to med/high heat. Add the potatoes, garlic, dill, salt and pepper.
  3. Cook the soup for a long time, stirring every five minutes. When the peas begin to break down you need to pay more attention, stir more frequently to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat down to med/low. It usually takes a minimum of an hour for the peas to start breaking down. It will take a minimum of a half an hour after that for them to get silky and fully cooked.
  4. Once the split peas are completely soft add the cauliflower. This will not take long to cook. When the cauliflower is just tender the soup is done.

Notes

It is very important to note that you must be intuitive about the amount of water/stock needed. I've given the minimum amount that I find I need every time I make this. Depending on how quickly the peas break down you may need to add more water. You add more water when it becomes thick and the peas aren't yet done cooking (that means they need to absorb more water to be done or they'll stubbornly adhere to the bottom of your pot) and you add more water if the soup is thicker than you like it once the peas are done cooking.

The smaller you chop your vegetables the more quickly they'll break down and blend with the split peas. If you want to have chunks of vegetables when the soup is done, cut them into larger pieces. This soup usually takes 2 hours to make. I realize that's hard to fathom in this day of FAST recipes. It isn't fast and it's completely worth the time it takes to cook. You can, of course, cook this in a slow cooker but I'll be honest - I've done that and I hated it. So I obviously can't personally recommend that you do that. I add the cauliflower last because it doesn't take long to cook and I like to have whole cauliflower pieces in the soup.

If you want to make a cauliflower garnish as I've done for the picture - cut a 1/4" cross section from the middle of the whole head of cauliflower before cutting it into florets. Brush the cross section with olive oil and broil it in the oven on both sides until browned.

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http://stitchandboots.com/vegetarian-split-pea-soup-recipe/

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Rosemary Polenta Recipe

Posted by on December 9, 2011 3 Comments
I have made this dish for over 20 years. I never had a recipe to start with. I was inspired to make this by the amazing bowl of rosemary polenta I once had at Kuletto’s Italian restaurant (on Powell Street in San Francisco) back when I was still a fashion design student. It is almost single-handedly responsible for making me get into the kitchen at a time when most of my friends and myself subsisted off of cheap diner food and boxed pasta. This is the perfect warm sustaining dish to eat on cold fall and winter nights. Served with a big pile of sauteed greens or a salad it is absolutely perfect. Obviously, for those of you who eat meat, it can be a great side to a meat dish as well.
Ingredients

  • Print
    Rosemary Polenta Recipe

    6 servings

    Ingredients

    • 1 1/2 cups polenta (I use a fine grind)
    • 6 cups water
    • 3 Tbsp olive oil (or butter)
    • 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
    • 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
    • 1 tsp salt
    • freshly ground pepper to taste
    • 1/2 cup Parmesan, grated (optional)

    Instructions

    1. Mix the polenta with 2 cups of the (cool) water.
    2. Bring the rest of the water to a boil, then turn down to low and add the polenta, whisking it as you pour it in.
    3. Add the rest of the ingredients, and mix well.
    4. Cook on low for 20 minutes (if you're using a coarse grind you'll need to cook it for at least 45).
    5. Serve hot in bowls.
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    http://stitchandboots.com/rosemary-polenta-recipe/

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