CheeseForum.org » Forum

I'm rather a "Jane of all trades".  I've worked several different jobs, from waitress to Administrative Assistant.  I have wide and varied interests - cooking and canning, cheesemaking, basket weaving, knitting and crocheting, soapmaking, etc.  I brew my own wine from fruits that grow on our small farm:  grapes, apples, raspberries, rhubarb.  I sew, though not as much as I used to.  I make lip balms and body butters.

In other words, I make most of the gifts that our family gives to people.

I also used to be quite a computer geek (MOUS certification in Microsoft Access), but now just play around on my laptop.

My kind of girl! I love homemade gifts. I do the same although sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. I always got excited as a kid to get gifts from my aunts because they always made them and they felt like they wrapped me in love.

I used to be a geek too. I took a few years off until my boy started school and made money building custom computers and databases for local businesses.

Another very busy person! Raspberry wine would be a LOT of hard work! I once started a strawberry wine, only to drop it after it had been perfuming the house for several days as it fermented, That wasn't the worst of it though, I then blew up the vacuum cleaner up trying to clean up all the broken glass. I can still remember the beautiful aroma! I got a number of raspberries plants this spring and have been busy collected materials suitable to make an 'containment unit' for them. Planted a lot of black currant bushes this spring too, although there doesn't appear to be much fruit setting. So looking forward to a 'glut' of summer fruits, might even have to break out the old fermentation equipment... Is soap-making very difficult and does it need a bunch of specialist resources?

The raspberry-rhubarb wine I made (my favorite) really wasn't all that difficult to make.  I found a great book at the library: "Home Wine Making Without Failures" by H.E. Bravery.  Published in the mid-1940's by a gent from Britain, some of the ingredients are unusual to me, but it was a great guideline for this new-to-me hobby.  I found a copy on Abebooks.com for about $2 + S/H and still consult it on a regular basis when making wine.

Soapmaking is a challenge, but no more so than cheesemaking, plus it has fewer variables.  As we have a steer and a pig butchered every year, I have lots of tallow and lard available to me, which was the reason I got into soapmaking in the first place.  Until now, I have used cardboard boxes as my molds, but just this week constructed wooden molds.  I line the molds with waxed paper, which was a simpler  process with the new molds.

The biggest challenge is acquiring lye.  It used to be available in hardware stores (as drain cleaner), but they had to pull it off the shelves because it is used in the production of street drugs.  I now have to order it online and have to fill out Hazmat forms (it is VERY dangerous stuff!) and a heads-up goes to law agencies that I'm getting a shipment, which means they probably watch me for other signs that I'm in the drug trade.  No worries there, though.  Since I only order a ten-pound container about every 5-6 years, I shouldn't be sending up any huge red flags.

I can't believ they make drugs from lye. Gosh they can get high from anything today! My son told me once when he was a kid in school the kids were getting high from whipped cream.

that's another reason that you can't just buy Sudafed off the shelf anymore - have to get it from the pharmacist.  I only know this stuff because we are in the midst of some of the highest production areas for drugs like crank and meth. 

It's a scary, scary world we live in these days.

Yes it is scarey! And they don't care who they hurt. These drugs are so bad the will beat up their own grandmother to steal her social security check.