No morels yet? Make soap?

[SD51555]

I'm really getting down about the weather. It's been too cold by me to expect any movement on mushrooms. I can't plant trees until next week. I was so bored this week, I bought a book on making soap at home and just finished up my second batch.

The first pic is a 2lb batch of safflower oil soap. Scented with real citronella and clove extracts. I made it last night, poured around 11pm, and cut today around 2pm. This one seemed to have turned out really nice.


This second pic is a batch I just completed. It's 50% pastured pork lard, 40% apricot oil, 10% almond oil. Scented with clove and cinnamon extracts. This will get dumped out of the mold around noon tomorrow to be cut.

 

[Buckly]

I made soap once. For what that's worth.

 

[John-W-WI]

Pretty cool.

Where do you get the fancy ingredients?

-John

 

[SD51555]

Pretty cool.

Where do you get the fancy ingredients?

-John

Any high flying health food/organic grocery store. They should have a large section of oils to choose from. The essential oils to add scent are very expensive ($4-$18/10 milliliters). But they are also pure and very potent. In most cases, a dab'll do ya.

I had to go to hardware hank to get the lye. It's in the drain cleaning section. I was blown away to find that the store I was at charged $1.49/oz for soap like this. I figure I've got 5 lbs of it from my batches.

It's not a terrible hobby to pick up. I'm no expert on it, but I'm hooked having been involved in it for a whole 24 hours now. It's also something that can at least pay for itself in cost savings.

 

[chummer]

No mushroom but it is leek season at our place. Ironically we fried them with mushrooms one night and backstraps the other night. The trilliums are also out and we have lots of both.

 

[SD51555]

I'm puzzled. I think it's been too cold for too long where I'm at. The ground cover in the forest is starting to get green and thick, but there are no signs of leeks or morels yet. I was out again tonight and struck out. I did get two ticks and see a deer though.