i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
My muscovies have started laying which means Spring has sprung! This year I’m desperate to replenish my flock, after having warred with a really resourceful raccoon who was getting into the coop before I locked them in for the night. A fierce battle ensued that …
My bronze fennel is a reliable plant that has really just kept on giving. It produces beautiful crops of fragrant fennel seed, and its tasty fronds are great in dumplings or salads, or for an accompaniment to seafood. The anise flavor is divine. It seems …
Imagine my surprise when, before even my serviceberries and sweet tree cherries have bloomed, my Korean bush cherries were out in full force. Prunus japonica is a beautiful plant in the same family as regular cherries and plums. However, these grow in bush form (although they do reach a nice height) rather than as a tree. These are related to Nanking cherries.
Relatively drought tolerant, my two little plants I planted a few years ago have established themselves quite nicely. This is the first year I’m seeing flowers, so perhaps I’ll get a crop of fruit. Supposedly, the flavor is tart but cherry-like. I’ll update if/when I get fruit.
They do well in USDA zones 4 – 8, and can grow in part shade to full sun (although they prefer full sun.)
By the end of this lockdown period, I’m probably going to be up to my ears in plants as I spent this time rooting cuttings for fun. So far I’ve done elderberries and currants, with a 90% success rate! This is one of the easiest …
In my house, my youngest is firmly Team White Sauce while my oldest is Team Red Sauce. I am mostly Team Red Sauce, due to an unfortunate incidence where I once threw up a chicken Alfredo and developed an aversion that lasted me throughout my …
The poached egg really ties this dish together, the creamy yolk mellowing out the tang of the lemon juice. I have been dreaming of this dish for a while, first conceived when I took stock of the fridge right before the Covid19 lockdown.
This is a painfully simple dish to make, but hearty and delicious with a bright burst of flavor that has me dreaming of summer. I use the truffle sea salt I have on hand, but if you have fresh truffle, it works wonderfully as well. I add the truffle sea salt in at the end because I find it tends to lose flavor if put on high heat for too long.
Be liberal with your lemon zest, it’s what provides the lemony flavor without overpowering it by being too sour.
**I was invited to watch a Twitch stream from a friend of mine who runs a BJJ gym out in Georgia (Apex Conyers) which was actually completely unrelated to martial arts–his wife was cooking an amazing looking orzo dish, and I learned you can microwave a lemon (or any citrus fruit) for 20 seconds in order to easily be able to squeeze out all the juice. Where has this cooking tip been all my life?**
So… I rarely use my blog space just for jotting down my thoughts—most of my posts are recipes, DIY’s, or tips and project progress. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel so this post is decidedly NOT a DIY facemask post, but is rather a …
The Covid-19 situation on Long Island has gotten to the point where my husband is now working from home, and my daughter’s school is closed for the next week. We also closed down the dojo for the next two weeks to give our medical infrastructure …
My DIY’s are often hit or miss, and I had thought for sure that my mini activated charcoal shampoo bar with tea tree oil was going to be a miss… and it was, until I tried one last thing. Turns out a lot of melt and pour soap bases make soap that are pretty, but don’t have that much of a lather. In my case… there was no lather… until I used the last trick I had up my sleeve (which you’ll read about in a moment.)
The motivation for creating these mini shampoo “bars” (or marbles) was actually because I was wrestling with what to do about providing shampoo for overnight guests that would align with my attempts to go low to zero waste. Most people don’t enjoy sharing their soap bars (because who knows where they’re going) and I imagine shampoo bars would have the same ick factor. Unfortunately, shampoo bars are expensive compared to soap (although I’m not entirely sure why) and can often be found at $15 a bar. I needed some way to provide low cost, small amounts of shampoo without worrying about plastic packaging to guests. This is not fully zero waste as the added oils came from glass bottles that unfortunately had plastic tops (but that I will hopefully be able to recycle!)
With young kids in the house, I didn’t want to mess around with lye and cold or hot process soap (and given that I am not as graceful as I could be, my house could have been in ruins at the end of those attempts.) You can buy melt and pour soap bases from many places, but make sure you keep an eye on the ingredients. I prefer a soap base that’s made with less chemicals, so I chose an organic coconut oil melt and pour soap base. The thing with coconut oil soap is that the soap you end up with is moisturizing but very hard—which is just what I want for shampoo since I would hope it lasts for a long time. I had a silicone ice cube mold to make mini ice marbles that was perfect for this. My plan was to keep a (glass) bottle of these mini solid shampoo marbles that guests could help themselves to when they stay over. I excitedly ordered the ingredients and set to make an activated charcoal and tea tree oil recipe. The activated charcoal is said to be great for pulling out impurities (?) and tea tree oil is anti-fungal. For scent, I also ordered rose oil, and because I wanted it to be moisturizing, I also got vitamin E oil. I was so excited and ready to start!
Except… after I made them, they didn’t lather. Frustrated, I turned to Google to ask why the melt and pour soap base (which I also attempted to later to very little avail) would create such a poor lather—aggressively punching in “how to increase lather in melt and pour soap”—and was essentially told that melt and pour bases had generally inferior lather to hot process or cold process soaps. I was devastated. It was fine as far as cleaning went but I needed the lather to work into hair, and these marbles gave no lather whatsoever. I thought I might have added too much of the oils, which would affect the lather, or that my water was too hard—yet my regular soaps were fine.
However, I had one more thing I was willing to try, even though I had basically given up hope, and that was using a mesh bag. I had a polyester mesh bag that came with my first ever shampoo bar that I still use, so I threw a few in, not expecting much but not wanting it to go to waste without at least an attempt.
Lo and behold, that little mesh bag made all the difference. For proof, you can see it in action on my Instagram here. You can purchase natural soap bags on Amazon or crochet your own.
I was so excited that it worked up not only lather, but a generous amount of it so I plan to make compostable cotton mesh bags that guests can use and take a couple of the marbles from the jar for themselves. This way it would be low cost and low waste and just be generally an awesome thing to have. What I like most about this recipe is that there’s a conditioning component to it due to the coconut soap base and the vitamin E oil, so it causes less tangles.
Be aware that coconut oil melt and pour soap bases melt slow but set FAST, so you’ll have to work smart with it—cut the base to smaller pieces first before melting and keep it in the double boiler until ready to pour.
Tip: If you are an avid bento maker like I am, the animal silicone food separators are perfect for adorable mini animal molds.
Edited To Add: Also, unfortunately (or fortunately) some friends of mine mentioned the shape and method may be… suggestive. I suppose I might have to get other molds to avoid… that problem. I love them but now I can’t stop thinking about it! *Angrily Shakes Fist*
There are a few negi miso recipes out there, including a really simple one I use in my yellowtail collar (Hamachi Kama) recipe and shortrib donburi recipe, using just miso and chopped negi scallions. It retains the bite of the scallions since it uses raw …