Next two soaps

My soap mold arrived, purchased on etsy, so I made another batch with some green oxide pigment I'd purchased with the lye.

Poured on 10/23/2014

Freshly poured, and swirled around for design.

After saponification.

The soap is 3.5 inches wide. That is standard for cold process soap molds, but I think it makes soap bars that are too big and unwieldy. When cut in half, they are quite small, so I wanted something in between. 

post soap making mess

Here is what rendered beef tallow looks like..in mason jars (which was a bad idea in hindsight. I freeze it in blocks now and wrap in plastic.)

And for my next soap 10/24/2014, I rigged up these 2.5 inch wide cardboard inserts to make a narrower bar that is comparable in size to store bought. (the cardboard was inadequate. I had some leak troubles too...and soon went to home depot and had some legit wood blocks cut for me, which I use for almost all later projects.)

These bars are better sized in my opinion. The only difference was adjusting my soap recipes from 1500 grams of oil to 1200 grams. That swirl effect was made with a clothes hangar--one of those pants ones with a waxy paper tube. I wrapped it in plastic to prevent corrosion on the aluminum. It has long since bit the dust, and I haven't got a good replacement yet. 

Soap making + first soap

I'm going to use this blog to post the cold process soap projects I've been doing over the last two years. (It's not like I'm using it for anything else these days.) I make soap and take pictures, but I've never put it all in one place. I just made my 15th batch of soap so I have some catching up to do.

Here is the first batch I ever did, 10/21/2014.  I had no mold yet and I lined an loaf pan with plastic. I didn't insulate it or anything, and the edges showed an incomplete gel phase. No picture of the cut bars for this batch.

I decided to make soap for the first time because I had some beef suet from a quarter of beef I'd gotten from a farmer. I rendered it into tallow, and then made this soap using olive oil, beef tallow, and coconut oil. And lye of course, which I'd ordered online.

I read a couple of books which were mostly unhelpful (Ann Bramson's Soap: Making it, Enjoying it is a classic but the methods are very out of date. Robert McDaniel's Essential Soap was better but didn't talk enough about cold process and all the recipes were vegan.) But I found the basic soap tutorial on humblebee & me very helpful, along with some other reading I did on the internet.

end of year

When I woke up this morning I immediately felt relieved. I can have fruit again. I don't have to eat sugar, but I can if I want to.

Since writing my last post one month ago, I have had to eliminate all dairy from my diet. Anything derived from milk, including butter and cheese, I can't eat anymore. That combined with the gluten free, fruit-free, sweetener-free, dessert-free has been tedious to say the least and quite stressful and overwhelming.

In my last post I said this year has been a failure, and that has not changed with avoiding fruit this past month. I had too many other limits on my diet to be able to appreciate what I was doing, and I have been concerned more for my health this year than any other in my life, even without the sugar. So being worried in general did not help.

I began this year being inspired by my friend Melissa, who dropped refined sugar and then subsequently dropped something like 55 pounds, most of it in the first few months. I did not expect that to happen, and it has not. I did lose 20 pounds,but that was the result of several periods where I counted calories (30 more to go!). Quitting sugar did stop me from gaining weight, however, and it was one less thing to worry about during reduced calorie periods.

Fruit-free has made a little bit of difference in terms of cravings, making them a little less. But going fruit-free after 11 months of sugar free was not the best planning, since I'd already used up most of my enthusiasm. It would have worked much better to do fruit-free/sugar-free/dessert-free from the start, and have it last a much shorter time, like 6-8 weeks. (I like this book, I Quit Sugar, that outlines a program like that).  I will probably do that program in the future, after I have figured out some of my other health issues.

I hoped to be able to say that I didn't care about sugar anymore, but I do still care. I learned that to me, unrefined sugars like honey and maple syrup are just as bad as regular sugar. And I know now I need to limit fruit intake to 2 servings a day, since more has negative effects on me.

Would I do it again? No. Would I recommend it to others? I don't know. I did learn a lot this year. I think going without added sugar for a few months would help any person struggling with their relationship to sugar.

My new mantra going forward is not to avoid any types of sweeteners, but rather to eat treats only after dinner.

the end.

1 month to go

I have about one month left of my sugar free year. So far, the experiment is a failure. I have not lost my cravings for sugar at all, even with avoiding dessert the last 5 months (including over thanksgiving and christmas--which was brutal). Some people do well with honey instead of sugar, but for me it seems to make no difference at all. I always craved sugar, even when I had not had it in months.

And so I will do one last attempt before the year is up. I will continue to cut out all sweet things (which I did for 5 months except for one week in there I had unrefined sweetened treats again), but now will no longer eat fruit. I know I get sugar cravings when I eat more fruit, so I'm interested to see what happens without it. I eat enough vegetables that I am not concerned with any loss of nutrients.

I may extend the year a few weeks so that I give fruit-free a good run.

random stuff

Ila peed in David's shoe a couple weeks back. I know I should be upset or something but it is the best place she could have peed, seriously. Like the proverbial dog:) It was hilarious!

Clyde is 1 now. I sorta skipped posting that. In fact, tomorrow he is 13 months. He has finally started to feed himself a little bit, which is great since it makes things easier for me. He still pick up bites I put on his tray, but if it is something really tempting and I put it into his hand, then he'll eat that. And he can drink from a sippy cup now, and can hold his bottle! He would not have anything to do with either until a couple weeks ago. I finally bought a new sippy for him to try and it helped a lot.

Ila sings or talks all the time. She has long convoluted sentences with multiple clauses and has a large vocabulary. I'm thinking of trying to teach her to read in a home schooling format soon. She already knows all the letters and sounds, so maybe she could do it. David supposedly started reading at age 3, so maybe Ila will too.

6 months later

Today is 6 months exactly since I first started no refined sugar. I have changed the commitment from no refined sugar to be no treats or treatoids.  I haven't lost any weight, but I did discover that I have fructose malabsorption (thus honey is a bad sweetener choice for me) and that I don't think the Costco brand of maple syrup is worth eating (or buying) compared to other brands I've tried. I think my lack of weight loss was because I was just replacing regular treats with honey sweetened ones. Which is really not helpful. So the end of that. I think I will be ok with still eating dark chocolate, so long as it is 85% or more. That stuff is not a big temptation for me. Also, naturally occurring sugars in carob and whole fruit I think are fine. But not fruit juice.

the end.

Things of note

I was running last saturday. Out of nowhere a 60 year old woman comes jogging up to me and starts running with me and talking. "You were my inspiration this morning," she says. She goes on to say how when she saw me running so slowly, she knew she could do that. She gets frustrated with running and getting tired too fast, but at my pace, she could go for a long time.
Well. I am glad to have inspired a 60 year old woman with my slowness. Though I had not thought to inspire anyone by running slower than my husband walks...I am glad I did:)

Clyde is happy again. He was sad for a while. He has 7 teeth now and is 10 months.

My 3rd half marathon is coming up on saturday. This one looks to be the worst time ever, considering I didn't run for 2 months and just started again last week. I don't really care though. I'll just stay ahead of the SAG wagon. (The wagon that picks you up if you are below 16 min/mile pace.) I will try not to SAG. The run last saturday (where I inspired the lady) was only 6 miles. And it is my longest run in 2 years. So we'll just see about 13 miles on saturday.

Also. Four months after moving into our (purchased) house, our rental contract is finally over at our old place. I am SO glad to be done with mean landlords and subletting. Hopefully never again.

There were more things of note but I have forgotten them. Alas.

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Update: I did finish the race ahead of the SAG wagon. 3h 15m total. Not bad for hardly any training and walking half the race! Also. Clyde is 11 months now and has 8 teeth:)