We got our first bit of frost last night, and there's a freeze warning for tonight, so I think we'll be having some fried green tomatoes tomorrow night with our leftover steak.
It was Jim's 81st birthday yesterday and our usual routine is for the birthday person to pick a place for dinner; but this year, with his back bothering him so, he said that what he would really like would be for me to just buy a couple of steaks. So I found some prime steaks at Costco, made a Caesar salad with home made garlic croutons, and stuffed baked potatoes with sauteed pieces of mushroom and onion mixed in. Those steaks were beautiful, melt in your mouth like butter quality, and had no taste, even though I rubbed them with garlic, and salt and peppered them. I hadn't tried their steaks in well over a decade, and sad to say they are still tasteless. Guess they just don't age them enough, or at all!
The rest of my day was busy with my new passion - soaping. I didn't make any soap, just spent a lot of time trying to create recipes, watching soap making videos, reading old messages on the soap making forum and putting away and cataloging two recent orders of colorants, oil, etc. I'm still waiting for the order with the vanilla stabilizer so I can make my first Cold Process soap.
I also, finally found a embed mold source for making those cute little embeds that are used as part of the inside of the soaps or as topping. That supplier had pages and pages of them; but I used a great deal of discipline and only ordered the smallest raspberry mold.
Watching those soaping videos on You tube is how I found the source for those molds, as well as the name of a soap software that I want to check into a bit more. They sell both hobby and pro versions. The pro version will analyze your recipe; but the hobby one doesn't have that feature. You would think the hobbyist or newbie would need that more than the pros! The pro version also gives you a product cost breakdown/profit amount, inventory tracking, as well as lye and fragrance calculators, etc. etc. I just need to see if anyone on the soap making forum is using this or has a used copy for sale, or maybe some other software suggestions. My reasoning for purchasing this type of software, is that having a really good software that will analyze my theoretical recipes, can save me a lot of time and money spent on ingredients. It will also be a good learning source.
Meantime, first thing this morning I fed my sourdough starter so I can make some breakfast bread this afternoon, and then, I set up a folding table in the guest bedroom to hold my over wintering plants. Unfortunately, the window shade isn't working so after breakfast I'll have to move the table into the dining room. Then I want to re-melt my leftover melt and pour soap, and get that poured.
This afternoon I'll be out in the garden harvesting whatever I can, and bringing in the lemon grass, cilantro, etc.. If I have any energy left over, I may just get in the studio and get all those wadded soda pots back on the ware cart and clear the slab roller and move my Cold Process soaping tools to that table so I can make my first batch as soon as my other orders arrive.
Dinner is going to be easy, vegetarian Indian - a welcome change after some heavy eating yesterday. Jim says his weight is up two pounds this morning and I'm sure the Eggs Benedict birthday breakfast didn't help! I didn't have Eggs Benedict, but I'm still not going to get on that scale today!
It was Jim's 81st birthday yesterday and our usual routine is for the birthday person to pick a place for dinner; but this year, with his back bothering him so, he said that what he would really like would be for me to just buy a couple of steaks. So I found some prime steaks at Costco, made a Caesar salad with home made garlic croutons, and stuffed baked potatoes with sauteed pieces of mushroom and onion mixed in. Those steaks were beautiful, melt in your mouth like butter quality, and had no taste, even though I rubbed them with garlic, and salt and peppered them. I hadn't tried their steaks in well over a decade, and sad to say they are still tasteless. Guess they just don't age them enough, or at all!
The rest of my day was busy with my new passion - soaping. I didn't make any soap, just spent a lot of time trying to create recipes, watching soap making videos, reading old messages on the soap making forum and putting away and cataloging two recent orders of colorants, oil, etc. I'm still waiting for the order with the vanilla stabilizer so I can make my first Cold Process soap.
I also, finally found a embed mold source for making those cute little embeds that are used as part of the inside of the soaps or as topping. That supplier had pages and pages of them; but I used a great deal of discipline and only ordered the smallest raspberry mold.
Watching those soaping videos on You tube is how I found the source for those molds, as well as the name of a soap software that I want to check into a bit more. They sell both hobby and pro versions. The pro version will analyze your recipe; but the hobby one doesn't have that feature. You would think the hobbyist or newbie would need that more than the pros! The pro version also gives you a product cost breakdown/profit amount, inventory tracking, as well as lye and fragrance calculators, etc. etc. I just need to see if anyone on the soap making forum is using this or has a used copy for sale, or maybe some other software suggestions. My reasoning for purchasing this type of software, is that having a really good software that will analyze my theoretical recipes, can save me a lot of time and money spent on ingredients. It will also be a good learning source.
Meantime, first thing this morning I fed my sourdough starter so I can make some breakfast bread this afternoon, and then, I set up a folding table in the guest bedroom to hold my over wintering plants. Unfortunately, the window shade isn't working so after breakfast I'll have to move the table into the dining room. Then I want to re-melt my leftover melt and pour soap, and get that poured.
This afternoon I'll be out in the garden harvesting whatever I can, and bringing in the lemon grass, cilantro, etc.. If I have any energy left over, I may just get in the studio and get all those wadded soda pots back on the ware cart and clear the slab roller and move my Cold Process soaping tools to that table so I can make my first batch as soon as my other orders arrive.
Dinner is going to be easy, vegetarian Indian - a welcome change after some heavy eating yesterday. Jim says his weight is up two pounds this morning and I'm sure the Eggs Benedict birthday breakfast didn't help! I didn't have Eggs Benedict, but I'm still not going to get on that scale today!
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