Lotion

I am an insane religious fanatic about lotion.  Today as I was busy applying with fervor, I wondered, what did women do back in prehistoric days before lotion?  And of course the answer quickly hit me: they didn't bathe.  Done!

Almond Cybilla Soap

So I really thought I was going to confine all my soap related posts to the Soapmaking Database but now I realize that I like to babble about stuff and soap is not exempt. I'm not sure Ferret would really care for my ramblings in the Database so perhaps it's better if I do it here. So this soap is a half pound batch of my usual recipe. After my tremendous (in my mind) success with the Lemon Castile Soap (Recipe 2), I saw no reason to mess with a good thing. The process was same as before; with less water initially, the soap mixture reached light trace quite fast and once I dumped in the milk I hit trace instantly really. I'm making a mental note to add the fragrance first and then the milk next time, because it really got thick so so fast. I love it. Now about the fragrance, I used the almond cybilla fragrance oil from Brambleberry's sampler kit and nearly died the second it went into the soap. Almond makes me think of clean and cream and that's completely what this smelled like. Swoon. This is certainly going to be a fragrance I use again. My whole house is still permeated with it even though I've stashed the box into my laundry room.

(Please note the gigantic amount of coconut oil in the background.  I bought 7 pounds of the stuff from Brambleberry for a really good price and was startled to find it in that baggie thing.  Once I put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes though, it came out of the spout quite easily without muss or fuss).

And now the box. I think several posts back I might have mentioned harvesting other people's trash from the recycling. This box was one of the things. Look how completely perfect it is! Not only is it adorable, but it serves a completely legitimate function in my crafting enterprises. Tomorrow after the soap is set I'll snap the lid down and let it cure away.

Since my soaps are now reaching real trace I think I'll reduce my curing time from 6 weeks to 4.  I used some 4 week soap recently with no irritation.  I do like having texture in my soaps though, so I think next time I'll use a little foresight and have something ready to add in.  Or not.

Update (2/6/11): Over the first few days the soap darkened first to a pleasing almondy color (tan) and then to an alarmingly brown color.  The scent is still fantastic but I'm dubious about the color.  It looks like fudge, rather than anything like almond...I'm not sure if it was the fragrance oil reacting or if the milk had anything to do with it.  Although when I think back, my lemon milk soap never turned such a dark brown so I think it must be the FO.  Here is a picture, I tried to make it appear vaguely artistic.

Happiness (Number One)

I have a lot to be grateful for in my life, it often amazes me how much I have and how lucky I am.  One lucky break is being born with a naturally happy temperament.  I'm grateful I can find pleasure in almost anything and can generally see the good side (or at least the funny side) of trying situations.  Anyway, I am starting a new series for myself, of happy things.  The first thing (this will not be ranked in any way, just whatever comes to mind) is:

Food.  I like cooking it, shopping for it, eating it, reading about it, dreaming about it, everything!  The variety is endless, it pleases all the senses and captures imagination.  Food probably gives me the most pleasure because it is associated with so many of life's events.  There's nothing like eating with those you love or just celebrating with it.  At the same time, when you walk in your own apartment after a long day, there are  few things better than that quiet meal, carefully made, eaten with your own thoughts.  As I mentioned in the past couple of posts, I've been re-reading MFK Fisher and finding fresh joy in her writings on food and people.  I like being a ghost in her life, mapping out the turns by her meals and memories of the meals.  It makes me  think back to the dinners I've given for people and what I served and then I think, I should do that more.  There aren't enough excuses for people to gather and know each other better, so I should create one.  And then memories of the food I gave and the happy festive feelings attending the food will reside in those who were present, I believe even after the party is over.  This of course, assumes the dinner was a good one to begin with, with the right people and etc.  

Generally, I like that I get hungry on a regular basis throughout the day.  Mostly because each time I am hungry I have a  fresh opportunity to eat something delightful and maybe new and maybe familiar.  Happiness!

A Quiet Weekend

Whenever I'm away for more than a couple of days, Tony loses his mind and grows fat. I think he's a stress-eater. Anyway, he is usually delirious with delight when he sees me again, which means that I put up with several days of poor sleep, because a hysterical Tony likes to butt my face and paw my face and lie on my face to show he cares. To combat some of this, I've taken to stalking him a little bit during the day and prodding him awake when I see him sleeping, in the hopes this will encourage him to sleep through the night, the way I would like to. Yesterday I gazed around the apartment to do just this and spotted him comfortably napping in my dirty laundry. It was too cute; I gave him a couple of minutes of respite and then whipped out my camera to wake his ass up.

It's nice to finally be home for a spell after being away on so many trips. I did a lot of cooking and grocery shopping this weekend, mostly because I've missed it. It sounds weird to a lot of people when I tell them I have happy dreams about grocery shopping (wandering down the aisles, contemplating different brands, planning menus in my head...) but it is quite true. Despite my love for wandering aimlessly, when I do go to the store (Safeway these days), I do tend to be pretty disciplined. I have my list and only pick up little extras if my load doesn't look too heavy. Ok, whatever the load, I usually end up snagging one off-list item at least. Today for example, I saw a couple of lamb shoulder chops on sale and snatched them up for my freezer. And I bought an extra bottle of wine because I'm an alcoholic. One note: all wine in Oregon appears to be perpetually on sale. Why is that? And doesn't that just make it the regular price?

Yesterday I was all kinds of productive and did out-of-home types of things (lab, movie, grocery, coffeeshop) so today I was a vegetable at home. I don't think I changed out of my pjs until about 4pm. I DID however, make 47 more pork and leek dumplings and baked a loaf of bread (ok my bread machine did it, all I did was measure out ingredients. That counts!!) and then I made this delicious delicious dish. It's a chicken and chorizo rice dish and the recipe is from Ferret's Lydia. So easy and quite good. The recipe can be found at the database, I completely recommend squeezing a bit of lemon over it all, nom nom. A glass of white wine made everything go down quite easy...

Now I have some Chinese style soy sauce beef cooking away in the pressure cooker so I think I'll be pretty well stocked for the coming week. I notice I am better able to stay at work if I have something to eat at around 5 so I did a lot of cooking this weekend with this idea in mind. Should be good for productivity and general emotional well-being. Cooking is an act of love, even if it's just for me!

A Friday Night at Home

After being hit by a tremendous headache I decided to peace out of work earlier than usual (5pm) and make my way home.  This turned out to be a huge mistake because while catching the bus was easy, wending down the hill was not.  I'm not sure if all that traffic was typical but I made a mental note never to leave at 5 ever again.  I kind of have no patience for traffic.

Walking into my apt brought an immediate alleviation of headache and the feeling of being pain-free was soon augmented by the purring feeling of being full (see previous post about pizza).  I then sunk into my bathtub for a soak in criminally hot water (with liberal sprinklings of homemade lavender bath salts), doused myself in lotion and flopped on the bed for a while to be vegetable-like.  One note about my bathtub: while it's nice to be able to stretch out, I think I would actually prefer a smaller, but deeper tub.  I want to sit in it with my knees folded up and water to my chin.  Do they make bathtubs like this?

After coming out of my coma, I browsed through my recipe books and decided on the honey cake from Joy of Cooking.  Mostly because it was the only cake recipe I had all ingredients for.  My plan to make the Japanese kasutera cake was foiled by a lack of milk in the house.  Anyway, cake was mixed and baked and is supposedly now cooling but hungry me decided to remove two wedges and enjoyed them vastly with a mug of tea and the man repeller.  All is well in the world...

The rest of the evening will be spent with MFK while waiting for the laundry to dry.  It's certainly nice to be home.