Terrific Tuesday!

Woo Hoo!  That means I have three more work days to maintain sanity before reaching the goal of 10 days of winter vacation. 

Early on duirng winter vacation I plan to spend an entire day in the kitchen cooking, prepping, and freezing meals for a month.  It saves me a lot of time and money to have those meals at my finger tips ready to go.  All of the major mess and fuss is behind me, and after working all day I can pull a nice meal together in a matter of minutes.  No more wondering what to fix for dinner, it is alreadey planned out and ready to go.  I don't use any special books or recipes, I use what I know we love and will eat.

The benefit of having all of those meals in the freezer is that if you get sick, like I did, there is still a meal waiting in the freezer for the guys in the house to eat, without you having to fuss over it.  It is also helpful when you've been sick and your hubby volunteers you to fix a pot of chili for the local snowmobile club winter cookout and you already have it made and in the freezer. 

My favorite weapon of choice to pull off these all day cooking events, FOODSAVER!  If there is one piece of equipment every kitchen should have,  it is one of those beauties.  Mine is rather old, but still gets the job done.  I also know that if this one fails, Ashley has her brand spanking new one stored at my house and it will come out from hiding and be put to use. 

After I get all my meals in the freezer that will leave me a lot of days to spend in the soap room playing in the bubbly fun!  I can harldy wait!  :)

Getting Back in the Groove

I am feeling better today, and even returned to work, although I pretty much stayed in my office all day.  Even though I sat at my desk the majority of the day, I was pretty tired when I got home this afternoon. 

 

I am staying away from the soap room until this persistent cough subsides.  When I work in my soap room  I wear a mask, hair net, and gloves but I don't want to risk passing any stray germs into the soap I make.  I also feel I need to not over-do it and end up with a relapse. 

 

Obviously, I have no new soap photos to share, but I wanted to share a cute photo I snapped of my daughter's cat, Maci.  I caught her sleeping on the couch the other day and found her pose to be quite comical.  She was born with the bob tail which I find to be the cutest thing ever, and she has the longest whiskers!  

 

Saturday Fun in the Soap Kitchen

Logs of Kitchen Soap

I have the day to play around in the soap room.  First off I needed to cut bars out of the logs of Kitchen soap that were made the other night to make room for more soapy creations in the works for today.  This batch turned out much darker this time because I increased the amount of coffee used and it was a darker roast than I have used in the past.  To achieve that dark coffee color in the soap I mix the fresh coffee grounds into the lye water when I mix it together which in turn "brews" the coffee and turns the lye water a very dark brown, almost black color.  When the coffee/lye water is mixed with the oils the color becomes a more muted brown color.   

In the lot of soap making supplies that I purchased last weekend, there was a soap cutter  guide which I was delighted to put to use.  The old method of cutting soap was to pull out the tape measure, mark, then cut the bars.  Often the bars were uneven in size, and harder to keep my cutter from going down straight. With this nifty gadget I ended up with a bit more even size bars, and it was so much easier to cut the bars.  I would have never considered purchasing a cutting guide had it not been included in the purchase, but now I wouldn't cut the bars without it.  I ended up with less waste and one more bar of soap compared to cutting them by hand. 

Cut bars of Kitchen Soap

The bars are now cut and on the rack curing.  Now that I have made room for more molds to be put to use, it's time to head back into the soap kitchen and be creative!