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A whole raft of stuff, but no cooking


Another mint day in Taranaki oh yay, I did a small stint as a refrigeration technician and took their aircon hatch off my bus in order to remove a curtain, then I had a crack at aborism and tried to dig a stump out………….. bloke with chainsaw required. Then I turned my hand to car painting and gave the bonnet and flares a clear coat, nothing more satisfying than painting over the gaffa tape panel beating. I also had a crack at installing some mowing strips at the bottom of my deck steps, that went surprisingly well. After all those new skills I went for pulling weeds to get a win on the board, something I have vast experience in as my place is full of them. Then I went in for a touch of cleanliness, waaaaaay off my remit! I tackled the stovetop, it was in a rare state of filthy even by my standards, all that bloody cooking and slinging stuff around for a month, I had to use oven cleaner. Then I knocked out a round of soap, and as I did not cook anything today I have shared the recipe, the photo is of the end of the stage from today with a previous batch next to it. Then just to go down to the wire I had a crack at my brothers recently developed bread recipe so I can swap it for a bucket of milk to make cheese with tomorrow, a non-contact swap or course (save me from the bloody PC health riders!) In the aftermath up I had just eight minutes to get into my cocktail outfit, do my make up and tame my rampant hair for Zoom drinks at six, it took five of those minutes to zip my dress up!




Lavender Soap

1 L olive oil

126 g sodium hydroxide

295 ml water

20ml lavender oil

Use high sided metal pans for this, carefully add the  sodium hydroxide (also known as caustic soda) to the water and stir gently until it dissolves, don’t touch this shit at this stage! It will heat up to around 60 degrees, it is a chemical reaction that is way beyond my scope of knowledge. Let it cool, once it reaches 38 degrees, have the oil heated up to 38 degrees, this does not take very long so watch it closely. Once you have them both at 38 degrees carefully pour the sodium hydroxide into the oil and add the lavender oil. Now you need to blast it with the stick mixer, you need to do this in short blasts so as not to blow your mixer up as it gets kinda hot, do this for 10 minutes and it will become thick and creamy. I line a shallow slice tin with a piece of baking paper and then pour the mixture in, I then lay a second piece of baking paper over it to smooth it out. So now you wait, after 24-48 hours it will firm up a bit, you can then turn it out of the tin and cut it into your desired sized cakes. Then put it somewhere warm to dry for a few weeks to dry and it is good to go. Cheap as chips and no plastic fucking packaging.

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