Soap Love

While I didn’t have true New Year’s Resolutions this year, I came up with a list of four skills I want to try and maybe gain some proficiency in during 2013. The list included basic woodworking (so I can make this headboard), pie-making, soap-making, and charcuterie.

I’ve made soap once before, from a kit. And, freaked out by having seen Fight Club, I drafted a friend with a Ph.D. in Biology, who wasn’t as afraid of lye as me, to co-make the soap. Jenny did about everything that directly involved lye, and I cheered her from the sidelines. When I realized it was actually pretty simple, and the chances of blinding yourself fairly remote if you just take a few precautions, I bought soap supplies and planned to make all our soap.

This was two years ago, and I had since talked myself back into thinking it was a dangerous hobby.

And then, inspired by my friend Sharon, who has turned into a one-woman soap factory, I got up the courage one day and, well, I made soap. I’ve now made four batches in the last month or so, and spend a lot of time daydreaming about what kind I’ll make next. Saturday night, after I got Sylvia to bed, I asked Phil to take a few pictures to show the process. (This is not a soap-making tutorial; just a document of what I did. Definitely find a good resource if you’re wanting to make soap.)

First, I have learned to measure everything that isn’t caustic early on. I think the measuring and laying out of supplies, as well as cleanup, is about the most time-consuming piece. Actual hands-on soapmaking takes about 20 minutes. So I measure the water that the lye will be added to, as well as all the oils. If I’m adding fragrance, I measure that out and put out any other additives. Pretty much when I actually get down to soapmaking, all I have to measure is the lye.

Then I melt down the hard oils. The recipe I used Saturday night uses vegetable shortening (Crisco), coconut oil, and olive oil. I measure the olive oil into the pot that I’ll make the soap in. I measure the Crisco and coconut oil into a microwave-safe container and heat them in the microwave until they melt.

Now comes the scary part, or at least the part that frightened me away from soap making for years. Measuring the lye. You can’t see it, but I’m wearing eye protection as well as gloves. A lot of soap makers get cavalier after doing this for a while, but I’m always going to go the route of Safety First. The first time I measured lye without my Ph.D. soap-making buddy, my gloved hands were shaking as I opened the bottle. Fortunately, lye comes in crystals, so it’s fairly easy to work with and measure; I thought it would be a powder that could puff up and disfigure my face for life. In reality, you’d have to work fairly hard to burn yourself, especially if you’re wearing gloves and nerdy eye protection.

Once you measure the lye, you slowly add it to the pre-measured lye water, stirring until it’s completely dissolved. I was making this soap with a relative in mind who has a sensitivity to fragrance, so I wasn’t adding essential oils. Instead, I experimented with using green tea for the lye water; I’ve also done this with chamomile tea. Because I’m so new to this and every batch is an experiment, I was intrigued to find that the green tea turned dark brown when the lye was added to it. Who knew?

One word of caution that every soap resource will scream out: You always add lye to water, not water to lye. Going in the opposite direction could cause a literal explosion, in which case burning yourself with lye would be a more realistic possibility.

Anyhoo, once the lye is added to the water, the lye water gets really hot and slight fumes can come off; I mix it in the sink in front of a window, and keep the window open a little to get some ventilation. You want the lye water to cool down to somewhere between 90 and 110 degrees. You can wait this out, or you can do like I do and add cold water and ice to a pan that the lye water container sits in; this will cool it down in about five minutes.

Once the lye water is between 90 and 110 degrees, you add the melted solid oils to the liquid oil (making sure they’re also between 90 and 110 degrees), and then slowly pour in the lye water, so that it doesn’t splash.

Now you get to blend the whole mixture with an immersion blender. This is a fun step because the soap transforms from this sort of liquidy clear stuff to a creamier mixture. You’ve hit what soap-makers call “trace” when lifting the blender (with it turned off!) leaves a sort of trail on the surface of the soap.

At this point, I add in any fragrance oils and additives. While I wasn’t adding fragrance oils to this batch, I did put in some calendula petals–which, sadly, pretty much disappeared in the brown soap. Live and learn.

Then I poured the soap into the lined soap mold, cleaned up, and waited until the next day to unmold the soap and cut it into bars. The bars have to dry for three or four weeks before they’re used; this eliminates some of the moisture and makes a harder, longer-lasting bar.

A couple of resources I’ve loved as I’ve gotten started:

• The book Smart Soapmaking is a tiny, self-published book of soap wisdom. This finally got me over my lye fear. Also, she is the first person to say that the lye water and oils need to both be in a range (90 to 110 degrees), but not the exact temperature. Almost every soap resource I’d read to this point claimed that those two things must be the exact same temperature, which can cause some real anxiety. I only have two hands.
• I used this simple recipe for the soap I make here, with two changes. I upped the coconut oil by one ounce and decreased the olive oil by one ounce, as I found the original recipe made a fairly soft bar. Also, I doubled the recipe, as my cool new soap mold holds four pounds, and this recipe is for two pounds.

And now I’m off to do a little wood-working, pie-making, and charcuterie.

Guerilla Library

When we lived in Brooklyn, space-strapped neighbors would often shed extra items by leaving them on their stoops. It was a lot less trouble than a trip to Goodwill or organizing a stoop sale, and just about anything you left was picked up by a neighbor. Phil and I found and subsequently left a lot of books this way. The only downside to this informal stuff swap was that we were all trained that anything on a stoop was fair game. So when my landlord and his kids were out playing, got hot, shed their jackets on the stoop, and went for a walk, they came home to an empty stoop.

I’ve missed this neighborly swap culture since we left, so was thrilled on Saturday when I took the long way home from dropping Max off at a friend’s house and found this front-yard, weather-proofed informal book swap a few blocks from our house. When I got home, Sylvia and I found a few books to donate, got on our coats, and took a walk.

I left an extra copy I had of the best book I read last year, The Fault in Our Stars by Indianapolis resident John Green. To say “I had an extra copy” sounds passive — like I just noticed two copies on our bookshelf. Actually, I’d recently seen a copy of the first printing that Green famously signed, and re-bought the book. So sorry, neighbors, your copy is not signed.

Sylvia left a couple of her board books she was finished with, thus expanding the offerings into the sippy-cup set.

With tons of books on my shelf and Kindle that I haven’t yet read, I was willing to just drop off some books and go, but Sylvia insisted on picking out a book for herself.

We headed home, but we’ll be visiting often to drop off gems we want to share with neighbors. In fact, once the duck coop is reinforced for this spring’s new residents, maybe I’ll try my own hand at woodworking and add a Central Avenue branch to the guerilla library.

The Ordinary and the Extraordinary

Last Thursday, December 13, was Tommy’s Peace program, what in the old days would have been called our Christmas music program. Sometimes these music programs happen at nearby high schools in the district, but this one took place in Tom’s school. I was meeting Phil and the kids, and Phil warned me on my way from work that the gym was packed; when I arrived, I stood in the back huddled between a grandma and a business-suited dad for a while, and then I was able to find Phil and the kids and squeeze in with them by keeping Sylvia on my lap.

The kindergarteners played instruments. Tommy’s primary group sang and signed “Peace Like a River.” The secondary students did a great rendition of “We Go Together,” from Grease, with Hand Jive-like hand motions. The newly formed glee club squeezed into the available space and worked through their dance moves to “The Way You Are,” featuring an opening boy solo that about killed me, he was so sweet and earnest, and a closing, Glee-like bring-it-on-home girl solo.

Right before the last song, “Joy To the World” (the “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” version), Tom’s music teacher said to start the tape, and after a couple of notes of opening music, the tape went flukey; we all looked at each other, patient with these kind of technical issues in an elementary school music program. And then the flukiness segued to “Gangnam Style,” and suddenly a group of kids we hadn’t noticed was in the front, dancing in unison, Gangnam Style. Teachers joined in. The dozens of students on the bleachers hadn’t been in on the joke, orchestrated by a fun-loving fifth grader named Frankie, but started dancing along, too. I looked over and saw Tommy, who alternates between exuberance and reticence, swinging his arm in the air in carefree circles. The kids’ sponteneity was as moving as if they’d done a quiet version of “Silent Night” and lit candles.

After that happy interlude, the kids did all sing “Joy to the World.” Tom’s principal, who has been with the school for years and brings her therapy dog to school every day, got up to thank the parents for showing such support we packed out the gym. Her voice caught a little, something I’d not heard in six years of our kids attending the school, when she recognized “these wonderful children” and how they’d done such a beautiful job. After the program, we went to Steak and Shake, Tommy’s restaurant choice; he got to choose because he had been the performer. It was a beautiful, ordinary night in years of our having children. Nothing extraordinary, and yet completely extraordinary.

The next day, as events unfolded in Connecticut, I wondered how many parents had had similar ordinary, magical nights with their children. It’s impossible to hear of the tragedy and not to think of the Christmas lists compiled, the Elves on the Shelves moved after bedtime, the little quibbles over Minecraft houses, the uncomfortable seating at a packed music program.

Raising kids is a hassle. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. It’s exhausting and infuriating and expensive. They’ll push your buttons and pluck your last nerve. But it is also awe-inspiring. My heart is so broken for the parents who lost kids or whose children had to witness and experience things no child, or adult, should have to.

I left work a little early Friday because I had to see my kids. I got home and there was nothing different from any other evening when I come home: Sylvia ran out to greet me, Max was looking at his iPod Touch, Tom was playing with a friend. All ordinary, and all extraordinary. I’m so thankful for this gift, and truly hope the families in Newtown find some little bit of peace this season.

The Harsh Fall

So instead of Cindy writing this post Max is.  I am writing this to inform all of the readers that we have had a very sad week.  This week, since Thanksgiving was coming we decided to go to Michigan were my mom grew up and have Thanksgiving there.  But the day before we left my mom tried to put the ducks away and they wouldnt go in the enclosure. So my mom tried four times and they still wouldn’t go in. When my mom went out the fifth time one of the ducks was on the deck standing alone. She was alive but they never did that. My mom went inside, got a flashlight and looked around. She found another duck running across the backyard torwards her.  Then she found two ducks dead five feet away from each other. My mom ran inside and called my dad. We think that it was a weasel that killed the ducks. They both picked up a shovel and carried both of the ducks and burried them.

After that we went to Michigan and gave the duck sitter strict instructions not to let the ducks out. They duck sitters did there job and did not let them out of the enlosure.  On Sunday, my mom let them out of the enclosure because they really wanted to stretch their wings. Then Sunday, I came home from a sleepover and was going to put the ducks in there enclosure and I heard quacking and thought they would be fine but I turned my head and there was a hawk eating Khakadi. I screamed and ran in the house and told my parents. They ran outside with me, Tommy, Sylvia. I ran over to my neighbor’s house and told them what had happened. Our neighbor Bob came over with his two metal rakes, and we eventually scared the hawk up into a tree. We grabbed Diamond and ran to the enclosure. Once she was safe inside we called my mom’s friend Sharon. My mom asked her if Diamond could stay with her and her animals for the the winter.  We took her over that night and all in all Diamond seemed pretty happy with her new friends.

We are very sad that we lost three ducks we loved, but we’re happy Diamond won’t spend the winter alone. She has three ducks and seven chickens to keep her company, and a pond to swim in. She seemed very happy after her hard week.

What I Did on My Blogging Vacation*

* with Martha’s Grandma’s applesauce recipe.

I’ve taken a short, unplanned vacation from this space. There was a lot going on and I didn’t have the opportunity or mental energy to yak on about what I’m doing in our little home. But I’m back and ready to yak. I’ll spare you all the details, but I did do a couple of fun things I’d like to share.

I pulled out my sewing machine for the first time in months. Months. And I got up the courage to actually sew with Heather Ross fabric, which all sewists will tell you is stashed and hoarded and fondled, but rarely cut. It’s that precious. This week I’ll show you what I made because I’m in love.

We also went to a wonderful dinner party in Chicago. The host and hostess live in a magnificent three-story condo and have no kids of their own. They invited three families, for a total of eight kids, including toddler twin boys. Brave, brave Jerry and Eileen. Amazingly, they were completely chill about the whole thing. Our hostess Eileen had tried canning for the first time this year, and I begged for her salsa jam recipe, which she’d spread over goat cheese for an appetizer. It was delicious. She gave me that recipe, as well as a unique banana butter recipe. Both come from the book Blue Ribbon Preserves, a treasure of smart preserving recipes. I’ve ordered a copy. While the salsa jam will have to wait for next year’s garden, the basket of bananas about to turn got transformed into banana butter, which is amazing on a PB&J. I think it’ll also be pretty fabulous sweetening up plain yogurt.

(Pardon the poorly lit, unstaged photography. It’s a busy morning, and getting busier.) You might say the secret ingredient in this delectible spread is love. Or rum.

Also, I got together with my friend Martha and her mom to can applesauce. Martha and I have been friends since my first job as a technical writer long, long ago. I won’t tell you how long ago, but Marth and I were both wearing navy-blue double-breasted suits, white hose, and chunky earrings that matched our blouses, if that’s any indication. Martha was the one who showed me canning is nothing to be afraid of, and I’ve been hooked for more than 15 years. Sylvia loves going to Martha’s house to do projects, and I was thrilled Marth’s mom, who I adore, came along for the canning ride. We girls had a blast.

Last year when we canned, we used the recipe Martha’s Grandma painted during her retirement toile-painting phase. Since I’ve known Martha, she’s lived in four houses, and the plaque has been on the wall of each kitchen. We only realized last year that it could actually be used as, you know, a recipe. My kids loved the applesauce, seeing as they usually only get natural, unsweeted applesauce, and this one is filled with love. Plus sugar.

This go-’round we just cooked the apples in a bit of water, strained them through Martha’s mom’s heavy-duty food mill, then added about a cup of sugar. A little less sweet, but still delicious. The apples had a pink skin that colored the sauce a beautiful pink color. I think I’ll hoard this until the dark days of winter when we need a little extra color to lift winter’s gray.

If you’re wanting to make Martha’s Grandma’s applesauce, but she didn’t paint you a  plaque, here’s how.

Country Applesauce

12 red apples, quartered
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

Simmer the quartered apples, water, and sugar for about an hour. Strain, using a food mill or by running the cooked sauce through a sieve or colander to remove the seeds and skin. Add the lemon juice. Serve warm or cold.

Green Tomato Relish

A while ago I shared a Hot Pepper Jelly recipe, which is my favorite jam/jelly recipe. But my absolute favorite thing I’ve ever canned is Green Tomato Relish, which is a delicious savory/sweet combination that leaves Hunt’s in the dust. I discovered it last year and made a bunch of jars and then hoarded them until late in the winter because, like a rich man with a mattress full of more money than he’ll ever spend, I feared the tragedy of inadvertently running out before grilled hot dog season. And we used it. A lot. But it was still clear that we weren’t going to use it all, so I got less stingy later in the year and shared some with people I love.

This year, Phil had to pick all the green tomatoes while I was away for my annual knitters’ weekend. So I came home to three grocery bags of green tomatoes, which I figured I’d get through in a couple of nights. I haven’t. I’ve been rearranging them and culling any that are starting to turn rotten. I’ve arranged and rearranged them in big bowls. I’ve frozen any that are starting to turn red (or yellow, or orange, or whatever their heirloom color is). This weekend I spent Sunday afternoon canning green tomato jelly, green tomato pickles, and green tomato relish. This made a pretty pile on our kitchen table, but five hours of canning only got rid of maybe a third of the remaining tomatoes.

Last night I made more relish. Tonight I’m making more pickles. This weekend we’re having dinner with several families at a friend’s house, and I’m taking a green tomato pie (a depression-era substitute for apple pie). I’m starting to see green tomatoes in my sleep.

So the relish. This recipe makes about 7 pints, and I’ll probably be making another batch soon. So if you’re a friend, family member, neighbor, well-wisher, or anyone who has had casual contact with us, I’ll probably be pressing a jar of relish in your hands sometime soon. Be thankful. It looks fairly pedestrian, but it’s so good.

Once you do a tiny bit of prep, this recipe has almost no hands-on time. Start by finely chopping all the vegetables in a food processor. I don’t have a full-size food processor; I have a little one that can fit on my blender. This step takes me maybe 15 minutes with my little processor. If you have a bigger one, it will be faster. If you don’t have one, you’ll be chopping for about four days.

Put the chopped vegetables in a strainer so that a lot of the liquid can drain out. I just throw the veggies in the pasta basket of a large soup pot and let the liquid drain into the pot. It sits like this for about an hour, and a lot of liquid drains off. You can throw this liquid down the sink, but I usually pour it on our garden out the door, since it’s got some extra nutrients that plants like. I’m sure our depression-era forebears who invented green tomato pie would use it in soup, but I don’t. I’ve potty trained three kids, so a big pot of yellow liquid isn’t something I’m inclined to eat.

Then just mix in the rest of the ingredients, boil them together for a few minutes, and can in a water-bath canner. Here’s the recipe.

Green Tomato Relish

12 (give or take) large green tomatoes, stem cut out
3 cored and deseeded bell peppers (make 2 or 3 of them red or orange)
2 peeled large sweet onions like Vidalias, or about 4 smaller onions
1-1/2 Tbsp. celery seed
1-1/2 Tbsp. mustard seed
1/2 Tbsp. salt
2-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar

Chop up the first three ingredients in a food processor. Let these chopped vegetables drain for about an hour to remove extra liquid. Pour the drained vegetables into a large stock pot, and then add the celery seed, mustard seed, salt, sugar, and vinegar. Bring to a boil and let gently boil for about 5 minutes. Fill sterilized jars with hot relish. Process in a water bath canner for 30 minutes. (Go back to the Hot Pepper Jelly link if you don’t know how.) Once the jars are removed from the canner, have cooled, and have sealed, pop open a jar and eat from the can with a spoon. Or serve it with hot dogs and sausage, if you’re a traditionalist.

Universal Frittata Recipe

So I was gone for four days knitting and relaxing with friends. Why did I volunteer to make risotto for dinner last night before I checked to be sure we actually, you know, had enough aborio rice to make risotto? I do not know. I picked up mushrooms and a bottle of white wine on the way home, knowing we had neither ingredient. And then I got home, set out my ingredients, rolled up my sleeves, and went to the pantry to find we didn’t have aborio rice.

I made the kids some food from cans (they were thrilled), and Phil and I ate a little after them, making a large dent in what has become a mounting pile of eggs.

Frittatas are so easy because you can pretty much make them any way you want with what you have on hand or need to use up in the fridge. Here are the basic steps:

1. Cook the ingredients going into the frittata. If you’re including things like onions, garlic, or greens, you want them cooked down so that they don’t taste raw in the frittata; cooking the ingredients in the eggs will get ingredients hot, but won’t be enough time to, say, make crunchy vegetables like peppers soft. So pre-cook.
2. Put the filling ingredients in the pan if they aren’t there already, and then pour on the eggs (about 6 – 8) mixed with about half a cup of some kind of shredded cheese, a bit of milk or cream, and seasonings.
3. Cook the frittata over medium to medium-high heat for a minute or so. When the egg filling is a bit cooked, sprinkle a half of cup of cheese (more cheese!) on top. You can also top it with things like chopped scallion greens.
4. Lower the heat to medium-low and cover the pot. Cook for about 7 minutes — until the frittata is relatively firm (but not dry).
5. Uncover and put in the oven, broiling the frittata to brown the cheese a bit. This takes 1 or 2 minutes.
6. Enjoy tonight’s dinner, and dream about tomorrow night’s risotto.

Here’s, specifically, what we did last night.

Potatoes and Chard Frittata

A large of bunch of chard (about six large stalks), leaves stripped off the stems
1 Tbsp. olive oil
3 small potatoes (the end of the summer potatoes!), sliced thinly
8 duck eggs
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup shredded white cheddar cheese

Rip the chard greens into pieces. In a small frying pan, wilt the greens in a bit of water; I washed them first and didn’t dry them, so they had plenty of water for wilting. When they’re wilted, put them aside for a bit.

In a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, pour in the potatoes and cook, browning both sides but not burning.

Combine the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and Parmesan in a bowl and whisk together. Put the chard over the browned potatoes in the skillet, making sure it stretches across the entire skillet. (In other words, don’t put a big lump in the middle, or the frittata will have chardless edges.) Pour the egg mixture over the chard and cook, uncovered, for a couple of minutes to loosely set up the eggs. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese over top, turn the head to medium-low, and cook for about 7 minutes. Once the eggs are set but still glistening, put the skillet in the broiler for 1 to 2 minutes to brown the top.

Bon appetit!