81 North Blog

After making soap, I thought I would put together a list of supplies I needed to order for next week’s batches. I thought about making something with Babassu oil in it - but couldn’t for the life of me, remember what the main component i this oil was. Was it lauric or oleic? Or Myristic? Darn, who knew?

I ended up searching via Google and came across Anne Watson’s site. I had read through some of her soapmaking journal entries when I purchased her book "Smart Soapmaking." I stopped searching and decided to read through some of the newer stuff and came across a little gem of an idea.

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Although I’ve had a few bell peppers and even some tomato’s (in salsa), I’ve cut out the one nightshade plant that seems to give people the most trouble - the potato.

In the time since cutting out MSG by all it’s names, and not eating potatoes, I can say that my thyroid seems much more stable, as does my heart rate. While I haven’t had the biopsy or Fine Needle Aspiration of the thyroid yet, I feel like I am more well than before.

All this past fall and winter, I’d bring home potatoes that had hints of green under their skin. The bags of potatoes, hidden from the light by the brown lined paper bag even seemed to be the worst. And yet the green means exposure to light, and increased solanine levels. Those are spuds that will make you feel worse.

I served the better-half some breaded onion rings the other night, and he was happy about that. We both prefer onion rings to french fries. On other nights, we have sweet potato, pasta or basmati rice. There are so many things you can eat that don’t have to be from the nightshade family.

This week is "soapmaking" week. We were completely out of my soap and had to order 4 bars online last week, to get through. The bars I received were small! Very thin, and they are going to be used up quickly.

My favorite soap, and I share this opinion with my better half, my MIL and assorted relatives, is French Clay with Lavender, Rosemary, Thyme and Clary. So I made a 20 pound batch of that (using 105 temps for fats and lye water) and let it go through gel and cool down. Then I sliced it into manageable pieces then shredded it all. Once shredded, I re-batched it in the oven, adding just a tiny amount of milk to help it melt down more quickly. It stayed in there for about 4 hours, after which I added the essentials oils and globbed it back into a slab mold. Although a bit softer than it will be in a few weeks, it’s ready for us to use right away. Big relief. And by re-batching like this, I don’t loose the low flashpoint EO’s.

Today, I created a new recipe, because I still had 8 ounces of Majestic Mountain Sage’s coffee butter. That’s coffee bean oil blended with soybean oil. Smells delicious so I wanted to use it. I decided to create a recipe using some leftovers, so I weighed everything out, wrote down what I had, then went to the computer and calculated the lye and water. I also calculated the INS value and to my surprise, it was 151.4. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

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Last Saturday I was browsing through the local Borders Bookstore and came across at title I had been considering during a recent Amazon.com visit. I didn’t purchase it from Amazon because I really wanted to look at this book in person before committing to the purchase. I was pleased to see it on the shelf.

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