Sunday, February 22, 2015

Recycling the used cooking oil



I hate to waste stuff, especially oil, so I always try to find another use for stuff that is considered waste. Here in Greece we often use Olive oil for frying and since my husband loves fried potatoes, there's a lot of frying going on in our kitchen and I always feel uneasy about discarding it after use. I mean, what do you do with it once you have fried those potatoes? Do you dump it in the sink? That doesn't seam like a good idea. Dump it in the garbage? More likely, but how? Some people pour it into plastic bottles before dumping it. I didn't feel good about any of those options, and I wanted to find a way to reuse it, but not for making body soap, because I like to use clean Olive oil for that (even though I know some companies recycle waste oil and make soaps for hands and body). There is a company here in Greece that recycles oils and trades them for laundry detergent or soaps and they pass by my house sometimes, but not regularly and I still haven't pinpointed their schedule. 

Monday, February 9, 2015

Last Minute Birthday Gift

Hello Everyone! I know it's been awhile...almost four months since I last posted here, but that doesn't mean I haven't been soaping. Because, well, how can you abstain from soaping for four  months really? I've made seven batches of cold process soap since my last post and I've been reading and watching videos on how to make liquid soap. I must say that my friend Darinka from DI Prirodni Sapuni was instrumental in braking my resistance to spending four hours or so cooking soap, but more about that when I buy KOH and get to business.

For now I just thought to say hello and post some pics of this DIY box I made following this Soaping 101 video and tweaking it a bit to fit my needs.

The thing is, my kids had, not one, not two, but four (what is it with the number 4 in this post anyway...) birthdays to go to last week and while they did shop for some gifts earlier, they didn't find gifts for everyone and I had to save the day with soaps. So I took a large sheet from my daughter's aquarelle block, folded it so that one side is about half a centimeter larger than the other and cut it where it was folded.