How to Store Soaps and Lotions Economically

Along with food, water, and toilet paper (Dude!  Do you want to go 6 months without toilet paper?), you need to think about storing enough soap and lotion to last the length of time you're storing food for.  So...why not think about making your own soap and lotion? 

It's true that you can buy cheaper soap at the grocery store.  But if you want the good stuff, that doesn't dry your skin out, it costs more--so why not make your own?

When you think of making your own soaps and lotions, you have several options.  You can make your soap from scratch, using raw materials, and the cold process or hot process method.  You can make your own lotion from scratch, using raw materials.  You can purchase melt-and-pour soap bases and add colors, fragrances, and/or other additives.  And you can purchase lotion bases and add fragrances and/or colors.

Personally, I gave up making lotion from scratch a few years ago.  I just wasn't getting the results I wanted.  After experimenting with sample lotion bases from my suppliers (listed in the Soapmaking Resources at the right), I found a couple bases--one for lotion and one for cream--that I really like.  I usually purchase a gallon of each base at a time, then make up enough to fill 3-4 bottles or jars (also available from the resources at the right) each time.  Sometimes I leave them unfragranced, sometimes I add fragrance.

What do I, personally, use for lotion and cream bases?  For lotion, I like the "Lotion Base- Gallon" from Bramble Berry.  Its first ingredient is aloe vera, so I know it's good to use after I go out in the sun.  If you don't use too much, it soaks in quickly and doesn't feel greasy.  And it gets rid of the middle-age crinklies on the backs of my hands (something my from-scratch lotion never did).  For cream, I like "Body Cream Base" from MMS.  I don't use it on my hands during the day because it does leave a little bit of a greasy feeling.  But I put it on my feet before going to bed, and it is wonderful for keeping the skin on my feet moist and supple.  It's also great for rubbing into dry knees or elbows.  All the suppliers I've listed have a variety of bases.

Now, for soap.  I make my own soap from scratch.  Really, it isn't hard to do.  There are lots of resources available:  books, tutorials on the Internet, and mailing groups.  I'd suggest Googling "soap making" and reading the sites that come up.  If you're interested, I'd recommend getting a couple books (or more!).  The Soapmaker's Companion, by Susan Miller Cavitch, has been the the bible for soapmakers for a long time.  While I don't agree with everything she says, this is an excellent resource.  Smart Soapmaking, by Anne L. Watson, is a great resource, but it shouldn't be your only book on soapmaking.  She has a radical method for telling when the soap is ready to pour into the mold.  I haven't tested her theory myself, so I don't know how good it is.  I still rely on the method of pouring at "trace".  The Everything Soapmaking Book, by Alicia Grosso, is also a good resource for the beginning soapmaker.  With any soap recipe from a book or the Internet, it's a good idea to double-check the amount of lye to use (every author makes mistakes, and some books are known for printing lye-heavy recipes).  Bramble Berry and MMS both have good lye calculators, and http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcWP.asp is another good one.

If you make your own soap from scratch, you need to deal with lye.  You can't make soap without lye.  If you use melt-and-pour to craft soap bars, you don't have to deal with lye.  But the manufacturer used lye when they made the melt-and pour.  So don't believe soap crafters who tell you their soap is better than cold process because it doesn't contain lye.  Whether you make soap from scratch or use melt-and-pour soap base, there isn't any lye left in the soap.  It has all reacted with the oils and fats you added to make soap.

There are soap artists who make absolutely stunning soaps with melt-and-pour bases.  I rarely use melt-and-pour myself, though, because I prefer cold-process soap.  But you can make beautiful soaps that are better than what you buy in the store.

Back to the subject of lye.  You have to take precautions, which I'm not going into here.  But the books listed above do discuss how to safely handle lye, and most on-line tutorials also discuss it. 

Because dissolving NaOH in water to make your lye is an exothermic reaction (it generates heat--quite a lot of it), and you want your lye no warmer than 100° when you make the soap, many people mix their lye the night before and let it cool overnight.  If you do this, be sure no one can accidently spill it or drink it.  Years ago I was on a mailing list with an experienced soapmaker you did this.  Her husband got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water.  Because he was half asleep, he forgot that the pitcher on the counter was filled with lye.  And he poured himself a glass of lye instead of a glass of water.  He survived the experience, but his mouth, throat, and esophogus were horribly burned, and permanently damaged.  The moral of this story:  Be Very Careful with Lye!

Now that I've scared you about lye, let me say that it can be handled safely.  You just need to be careful.  You can't go on autopilot with lye.  You have to think about what you are doing.

So, why would you want to make cold process soap?  Because you can make a rich, creamy, soap that doesn't dry your skin out, and that smells better than anything you can buy in the store.  If you want to go the natural route, you can use essential oils to fragrance your soap.  Or you can use one of the many [non-natural] fragrance oils available for soapmaking.  Personally, I almost always use a fragrance oil. 

As a teaser, here are some pictures of soap I've made.

I just made this green soap today.  I wanted it green because I used Woodland Elves fragrance oil, which smells like Christmas trees with some Christmas spices.  For the color, I used Yellow #10 die in the entire batch of soap, plus Seafoam Green pigment in a couple cups of soap that I then swirled into the yellow soap.

I made this blue-swirled soap last year.  I used the Woodlands fragrance oil from Sweetcakes.  It's a knockoff of a Bath & Bodyworks mens' fragrance.  It doesn't smell like trees, as the Woodland Elves above.  But it's a wonderfully sexy men's fragrance.  I used blue ultramarine (cosmetic grade, of course) to color this.  You may notice the the blue swirls have little blue speckles.  That's because I made this soap before I discovered that you really need to blend the colors in with an immersion blender--stirring isn't good enough.  Also, I experimented with using the silicone baking molds you can get in the kitchen department of grocery stores.  The ones I got worked well, except that the sides of the loaf mold bowed out somewhat.  But the soap un-molded very easily.  I've heard reports of soap picking up some red dye from some of the red silicone molds, but that didn't happen to me.

This is a batch of soap that is still in the mold (or was when this pic was taken).  I used Vanilla Hazelnut fragrance oil from MMS.  This is one of my all-time favorite fragrance oils.  But like most vanilla fragrances, it turns soap brown (the vanilla part oxidizes).  In this batch, I left some of the soap un-fragranced so it would stay cream-colored.  And I swirled that into the fragranced part, and fluffed up the top. 

This soap is my most beautiful attempt to make a nice, scrubby gardener's soap.  I made the lye with chamomile tea instead of water, and put ground-up and whole calendula petals in it.  Chamomile and calendula are both supposed to be good for your skin, and I figured that gardener's hands need a little extra help after they've been out digging in the dirt.  I added a little bit of Yellow #10 for color, and cornmeal for scrubbiness.  But the cornmeal was too scrubby--it hurt my hands.  I'm still experimenting with gardener's soap.  I haven't gotten one I like that's as pretty as this soap.

This is a picture of a couple bars of soap I made some time ago.  I don't remember what they are, but I suspect they're my two favorite ones.  I believe the one on the bottom is a bar of Vanilla Hazelnut, and the one leaning against it is a bar of Honey Almond.  I usually put ground hazelnuts in the vanilla hazelnut soap, for extra cleansing.

So, what about storing your soap and lotion?  They should be stored in a cool, dry, location just like your stored food. 

I have soap that has still been good 5 years after I made it.  The fragrance was mostly gone, but the soap was still good.  So you can make several batches of soap and store them wherever it's convenient.  If you cycle through your stored soap as you do your stored food, you shouldn't have any problems.  You probably shouldn't store it too closely with your food.  Your food should be sealed so I shouldn't pick up any fragrance from the soap, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

You have to be more careful with stored lotion.  Most of the manufacturers say their lotion should be used within a year of the date purchased.  Kept cool and dry, lotion can probably last longer than that, but you never know.  Remember that lotion is a wonderful environment for growing bacteria, molds, and funguses--that's why they require a preservative.  I don't store as much lotion as I do soap.  I'd recommend keeping at least a few month's worth in storage, and cycling through it as you do your soap and food.  I keep mine in the gallon jugs, and only make up (add fragrance and put into bottles) a few bottles or jars at a time.

Man Does Not Live By Food Alone

It's great to store food for when times get tough.  Having food in the pantry is like having money in the bank.

But if you ever need your food storage to live on, you'll need a lot more than food:  medicines, soap, and toilet paper, for starters. 

But the most important thing to store is water.  We need at least a gallon of water per person per day.  That's roughly 1/2 gallon for drinking, and 1/2 gallong for cooking and sanitation.  And that is a bare minimum.

There are lots of resources on the Internet for how to store water, so I'm not going to go into it too deeply.  But I found one thing recently that I wanted to mention because I've only seen it mentioned one other place:  the WaterBOB(R). 

Many of use who live in rural areas know that if a storm is predicted, we'd best fill our bathtub with water because we'll need it if the power goes out.  But although that water is great for flushing the toilet, it isn't very good for drinking.  It'll pick up any bits of skin flakes, soap scum, cat hair, and dust that may be in the tub.  And you don't want to drink those.

Enter, the WaterBOB.  It's a plastic bladder that fits inside the tub.  You fill it with water, and use the manual pump on top to get water out of it.  It seems to be designed for the scenario I mentioned above, fairly short-term preparedness where you have some warning.  The website says it'll keep the water clean for up to 4 weeks.

I don't know whether it's recommended for longer storage.  Obviously, you wouldn't want to leave it in your bathtub all the time.  And you have to fill it before the power goes out.   But I'd think a reasonably handy person could build a bathtub-sized box to contain and support it, and fill it with purified water.

Anyway, it seems worth looking into--for short-term, predicted, situations like storms.  I'll put the link on the right side of the screen.

You Can Grow Hundreds of Pounds of Food in Your Yard

Did you know that you can grow--potentially--hundreds of pounds of food in your yard every year, without as much work as you might think.

By carefully selecting fruit trees, bushes, and vines, you can grow hundreds of pounds of fruit a year without much more work than growing strictly ornamental varieties.  You can have a gorgeous landscape.  And you get lots of fruit that is often much tastier than what you get at the grocery store--because you can select your favorite variety and pick it at just the right time for best flavor.

Need a beautiful tree in your yard?  Sure, you could plant a flowering pear tree--they are gorgeous.  But why not plant a self-pollinating fruiting pear tree that's almost as beautiful but that also produces awesome pears.  Or how about a persimmon tree?  Many varieties have gorgeous fall foliage and yummy fruit.

Need some shrubbery with fall color?  How about a few blueberry bushes?  Want an evergreen bush?  How about an evergreen huckleberry?  They taste better than blueberries and they stay green all winter (at least, here in the Pacific Northwest).

Got a patio or deck that is too sunny?  Why not build an arbor or pergola over part or all of it, and grow kiwi or grapes over it.

With any of these options you can have a beautiful yard and grow armloads of fruit that you can eat fresh, preserve (can, freeze, or dehydrate), trade with neighbors, or whatever you want.  That fruit can be wonderful now.  But if you ever need to rely on your food storage, it could be life saving.

We're lucky here in the Pacific Northwest, because we have two awesome nurseries that specialize in fruiting plants (trees, bushes, and vines) for home growers:  Raintree Nursery, and One Green World.  Not only are they great suppliers, but both their catalogs contain a ton of information on growing the fruits.  If you're interested in growing fruit, I highly recommend you check out these two nurseries, or any similar nurseries in your area.  The links to both of these nurseries can be found on the right side of the screen.

A Couple Pictures of My Yard

OK, I admit that this isn't food-storage related.  But I took a few pictures while walking around my yard the other day, and I can't resist posting them.  It was a nice, sunny winter day, so there were no leaves on the trees and bushes.  So it was easier to see mossy stumps than it normally is.  For some odd reason, I really like mossy stumps.

This first one looks like it was probably a douglas fir tree.  The trees around it now are fairly young big-leaf maples.  And there's red elderberry, some salmon berry, a red huckleberry, and some sword fern.

Spiced Cranberry Apple Fruit Leather

I'm making spiced cranberry apple fruit leather.  It's still drying.  In fact, it's taking a long time to dry.  But I think it's going to turn out really well.  The puree sure tastes good.

Ingredients:
1 47 oz jar unsweetened applesauce
1 or 2 12 oz bags cranberries (mine were frozen)
sugar to taste
cinnamon to taste
pinch of nutmeg
water

To make the sauce, put the cranberries into a 3-quart saucepan with one or two inches water.  Bring to a simmer, and simmer until the berries begin to burst when you stir them up, 3-4 minutes.

Being careful to not burn yourself, pour the berries and water into the blender and blend until they are pureed (add more water if needed).  Pour the puree back into the saucepan, and add sugar a little at a time, stirring and tasting between additions, until you like the sweet/tart balance.  Then add cinnamon to taste and a little bit of nutmeg.

Add the jar of applesauce and stir with a spoon until well blended.  Spread the mixed apple/cranberry puree onto lightly-oiled leather trays (or mesh trays covered with parchment) and dehydrate for several hours until leathery but not tacky.

Peel the leather from the trays, roll into tubes, and cut into bite-size pieces.

The more sugar you add, the longer the puree will take to dry.  Also, the more water you add while blending, the longer it will take to dry.

Depending on how dry the leather gets, it may be difficult to cut with a knife.  I find it easier to cut with an electric knife.

I Made Beef Jerky From Hamburger

While grocery shopping at my local Fred Meyer store one day a couple weeks ago, I discovered that they had a "Jerky Express" on sale for $19.95.  It contains a Nesco dehydrator and their jerky gun with three different nozzles, 5 sample packages of jerky seasoning, and 5 packages of jerky cure.  A jerky gun is like a cookie press, but instead of making spritz cookies, you make jerky strips from hamburger.  Even though I already own a dehydrator, I just "had" to have the Jerky Express.  The jerky gun kit alone is normally $20, so it was like getting the dehydrator for free.

So I went home with the Jerky Express and a pound of hamburger to try out.

I mixed the hamburger with a package of teriyaki-flavor seasoning and a package of the jerky cure.  I used my hands to mix the seasoning in well, as if I were making meatloaf (the spoon in the picture was for scooping it into the jerky gun. 

Then I loaded up the jerky gun and pressed out some jerky strips.

The press held a little less than 1/2 pounds of hamburger.  Pressing it out in strips the way you see here, I almost filled 4 dehydrator trays.  Then using a lamp-timer set to 6 hours, I turned on the dehydrator and went to bed.

When I got up the next morning, the hamburger had dried into leathery strips.  I put them on a cookie sheet and stuck them into a 160-degree (F) oven for an hour to make sure there were no nasty bacteria.  Then I pulled them out and blotted the grease off with paper towels. 

I took the jerky with me when I went to visit family for dinner the next evening, and we darn near polished off the jerky, so I had to make some more a couple days later.  It was that good.

The Jerky Express came with 1 each of 5 different seasoning flavors, so the next batch I made was the Original Flavor.  While this one tasted good, I found it too salty.  The little booklet said that if it's too salty you can make it with 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger instead of just a pound of hamburger.  So I'll probably do that next time.

All in all, I'm happy with my purchase.  I like the hamburger jerky:  it's cheap to make, and it isn't as hard to chew as sliced jerky.  And even though I already had a dehydrator, it's handy to have another one with the same size trays.  Both are expandable to 7 trays, so I can use the trays from the new dehydrator to expand my first one. 

The Jerky Express dehydrator isn't as powerful as the one I already had.  It's only 350 watts, and my other one is 425 watts.  But it worked will with the jerky.  I made fruit leather with it today, though, and it did take longer than with my other one.  It's good to have options.

Making Celery Powder

I hadn't done much with my dehydrator yet this winter, so I thought I'd better get started (before warm weather gets here and it gets too hot to run it).  So I decided to make celery powder.

Celery powder is very easy to make.  Simply dehydrate chopped celery until it's hard, then process in a food processor or blender it's as powdery as you want it.

But it takes a lot of celery to make celery powder.  I started with an entire bunch of celery from the grocery store, and when it was all done I had about 1/3 cup celery powder.  Fortunately, the flavor is concentrated, so a little goes a long way.

Here's how I made it:

I got one bunch of celery from the grocery store.  I chopped it up and spread the pieces on 4 dehydrator trays.  I used flexible fine-mesh tray liners, because the pieces get very small.   Then I dried it for 6-8 hours.  It needs to be dried until the pieces are hard.  Here are the dried pieces in a stainless bowl, and then on the cutting board.

Then I put the celery pieces into the blender and blended until they were in very small chunks.  I put the powder in an 8-oz. spice jar.  You can see that one bunch of celery processes down pretty small.

This powder can be used to flavor soups or stews, spaghetti, salad, or anything else that goes well with celery. 

In Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook, she recommends processing asparagus this way and using it to make asparagus souffle.  She says it's fluffier than souffle made with asparagus pieces because the water in the asparagus weighs down the souffle.  You don't have that problem with dehydrated vegetable powder.

You can make powders out of all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  Mary Bell also recommends making strawberry powder from dehydrated strawberries.  You can mix the powder with sugar for strawberry sugar.  It's great on cereal or for sweetening...anything that tastes good with strawberries.