Whoa! It's Spring and we have so many plants....I'm so excited about gardening I think I've gone a little overboard.

 I've started putting them on the roof of the garage...Which is really hard to get to.

I

 That's a hop plant!!

Evan's taken to collecting moss and "cultivating" it in our basement.  You don't realize how much moss is around until you start looking for it!

I'm currently looking for Nettle in the parks around Pittsburgh because I've heard it's really tasty, and I have a book that calls it an "Essential Healing Herb".  No luck as of yet though.

Homemade Soda

 

I got this book out of the library the other day.  It is so awesome, I think I'm going to have to buy it.

 It has recipes for root beer and tonic water, and easier stuff like cream sodas and herbal waters.  The first recipe I have tried from it is "Peanut Cream Soda".  It sounds a little strange, but trust me it is totally delicious.  It tastes like peanut butter ice cream.  Yum.

Peanut Cream Soda

from Homemade Soda by Andrew Schloss

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

3/4 cup half-and-half

1/4 cup smooth natural peanut butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and stir in the half-and-half and peanut butter.  Let cool to room temperature.  Stir in the vanilla.

For one serving, combine 1/2 cup of the peanut syrup with 1 cup of seltzer and stir just until blended.  Add ice if desired.  

The syrup should make enough for 3 servings, and keep refrigerated for 2 months.

 

Soap!

I made soap this week!  

Soap making can be a little bit scary.  If you start to look into it, to discover the multiple ways things could go wrong- dangerously wrong.  Lye, an ingredient in all hard (as opposed to liquid) soap, is toxic and can not come in contact with your skin.  So you want to be careful not to splash when making soap, or to mistake your lye-water for your water-water.  I've read soap books that insist that you need to add your two main ingredient groups (oils and lye-liquid) at the exact same temperature, but I don't buy it. I'm going to share a super simple, unfussy soap recipe that you can make with ingredients found at your local grocery store. If you don't find lye in the cleaning stuff isle, the hardware store should have it with plumbing stuff.  It doubles as drain cleaner.

The most important things to remember are:

1.  Never substitute oils or alter oil amounts in a soap recipe.  Different oils have different properties, and different fat contents, so if you switch one for another your soap may come out too harsh, or may never harden. 

2.  Always use a scale and weigh your ingredients, and never use volume in place of weight.  It is just not exact enough.

Easy Oatmeal Bar

8 oz Palm Oil (Spectrum Organic Shortening is 100% Palm Oil)

6 oz Coconut Oil 

2 oz Olive Oil

2.4 oz Lye

6.4 oz Water

1/2 cup Oatmeal

You will also need something to use as a mold (a brownie pan works, but you should get one just for soap), as well as a blender.

1.  Add lye to water.  Never add water to lye.  Most resources recommend using gloves and goggles whenever handling lye...be careful. 

2.  Measure oils and combine them in a stainless steal pot.  Heat them just until melted.  

3.  Wait until both lye and oils have cooled. We're shooting for about 80 degrees and this might take about a half hour for the lye.  Just feel the outside of whatever the lye water is in to gage its temperature. When they have sufficiently cooled, combine them by pouring first the oils, then the lye water into a blender.  

4.  Cover the blender with it's lid, then a towel as an extra precaution.  Blend on low in short bursts until the liquid traces.  This is when everything has thickened enough for a drizzle of some of the mixture to leave a trace that takes a while to sink back into the mixture.  It will be about the thickness of cake batter.  

5.  Add oatmeal and blend for a few seconds.  If you want to add any essential oils for scent, now is the time to do so.  

6.  Pour the soap into your mold. 

7.  Cover and insulate the soap with a few blankets to prevent it from cooling too fast.

In a few days, if your soap has hardened you can cut it and pop it out of the mold.  It now needs to age for about 6 weeks before use.  Just make sure it gets plenty of air circulation when aging.  (I usually wrap mine in newspaper). If a white layer of ash forms on top of the soap, just cut it off.  

Enjoy your all natural, hand made soap!!!

 

A Warning

I don't know if you drink box wine, but I do.  My old roommate Katie really turned me onto it.
I am fully converted.  No opening a bottle and feeling pressure to drink the whole thing! Plus, it's four whole bottles of wine! The downside to this is, if you get a box you don't like, you have four whole bottles in a box to drink.

It's never been a problem for me, I'm no wine snob.  I can stomach a small glass of almost any wine. Or so I thought, untill this week, when I sprung for the Bully Hill Vineyards Banty Red box.  It is seriously the worst wine I have ever come in contact with.  Not in a "this isn't to my taste" way but in a "this isn't really wine" way.  It tastes like slightly funky grape juice, and I can not imagine anyone, ever has enjoyed it. 

Cool Box though. 

Hello There!!  Welcome to my new blog...where I will be sharing crafty, thrifty things!

And meet Fiddle, my #1 fan....