Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the last full week of October (is it really almost November? Ack!)

"hamburger squares" -- 3 lbs of seasoned ground beef, pressed into a jelly roll
 pan, to the edges, baked in the oven and cut into 15 squares,
easier than making a bunch of individual patties

Friday
A simple meal, but enjoyed in the relaxed setting of the living room. This is the very last of the roast pork from earlier this week. I was a bit apprehensive about the flavors not jiving with Tex-Mex, but as it turned out, they were delicious!

• refried bean, leftover rice/pork, cheddar tostados, with fresh quickie salsa and a packet of hot sauce from somewhere, IDK
• leftover kale and onions

Saturday
Having items like chili in the freezer has been so handy these last couple of weeks. When I am in between cooking big, I have something to fall back on, until I'm ready for a lot of kitchen work. The herb-garlic blend I made earlier in the week is now in the freezer. I can get out pinches of it to add to butter, for garlic bread, or to add to cooking rice, easily enough. Adds flavor, but no extra work for me.

• chili from the freezer
• herb-butter on French bread, toasted
• spaghetti squash (from garden)

Sunday
I'm catching a cold, or should I say, I actually caught the cold. Today feels rough. I don't want to cook. My daughters and I will make a stop at the grocery store deli after church, to find something quick and easy for lunch and dinner, today.

• fried chicken (deli)
• deli salads, leftover from lunch, and stretched using our fruits, fresh veggies and some cooked pasta
• carrot sticks
• herb-butter toasted French bread (herb butter from last week)

Monday
We didn't eat all of the fried chicken, so I plan on adding it to a salad. Should be good. I'll also bake 2 whole squash, so I can have extras ready for tomorrow night. Odd combo, the salad and baked squash, but whatever works, right?

• Chinese chicken salad, using 2 leftover pieces of deli fried chicken, shredded cabbage, shredded carrot in Asian-inspired dressing (chive blossom vinegar, oil, soy sauce, garlic, onion powder, ginger), and topped with
• homemade fried chow mein noodles
• baked acorn squash (I baked 2 large acorn squash, to use tonight and in soup for the rest of week)
• blackberry-rhubarb sauce from freezer

Tuesday

• acorn squash soup (using leftover baked squash, and chicken stock from bones of fried chicken)
• seasoned rice (using minced herbs from last week, now in freezer)
• hamburger patties (done as a slab in the oven, making a large rectangle and cutting into 15 squares), saved the juices and fat. Will make gravy with juices, tomorrow.

Wednesday

Busy day, today. Nice to have dinner ready and waiting, mostly. I think there's enough leftover soup for Thursday, too.

• leftover squash soup
• leftover seasoned rice, to which I added some sauteed onions and beet greens, leftover from today's lunch
• leftover hamburger squares (I froze them all last night, but can pull what I need out of the freezer to reheat quickly), topped with
• gravy made from hamburger drippings, some of the beef fat, dried thyme, chopped onion, garlic powder and soy sauce for color and flavor
• leftover blackberry-rhubarb sauce

Thursday

• leftover squash soup
• slider patty melts -- more hamburger squares, served as sandwiches on
• French bread slices with herb/garlic butter, grilled chopped onions and cheese, then grilled

Something I noticed about my cooking style, when cooking big -- I tend to go all in with the work, and don't worry so much about mess, or getting my hands really messy. I'm fast and furious, trying to be as efficient as I can. The works goes faster, this way. And since I know I'm only doing this twice per week, I don't mind the big clean-up that comes with big cooking.

I used my food processor to chop 3 large onions. About 2/3 of that went into the soup and the other 1/3 I kept in the fridge to add to other items, like sauteeing with greens, for an omelet, one day, and making a quick beef and onion gravy on Wednesday, and then grilling and adding to the slider patty melts. Very handy.

I hope your week went well. What was on your menu? Do you make squash soup in fall? This batch turned out deliciously, and took advantage of some leftovers, and a small amount of chicken stock that I made with the bones from fried chicken. 

Have a great weekend!

I've been making some of the soap for gifts

I'll be gifting some of this soap in less than a month. I didn't want to make the soap too far in advance, as glycerin soap gets "weepy" with age, IME. I don't know exactly what that age is, maybe a few to several months. In any case, I wanted to make this as close to gifting, as I could, but still insure that I would have extra time, in case it didn't go as planned. (You know life -- it never goes as planned!)

This is the honey-almond-oatmeal soap.

I used a goat's milk glycerin soap base, bought at Michael's with a 50% off coupon, honey-almond soap fragrance, bought at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon, honey from my pantry, oats from my pantry, the cardboard box from some spaghetti noodles, lined with plastic wrap and sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, from my pantry, at the end of pouring, I sprayed with rubbing alcohol, from my cupboards.

Since there is so much information on making melt and pour soap, already, out there. I thought I'd just give you some specific info on questions I had for my own batch.

How much oatmeal (or other dry matter like coarsely ground herbs/flower petals) in a batch of soap?

• no more than 1/4 cup ground oats (1/3-1/2 cup rolled oats) per 1 lb of soap base. I used about 3 tablespoons of ground oats, per pound and a quarter.

What form of oats to use in soap?

• the type of oats used in bars of soap is somewhere between colloidal oatmeal (finely ground, like a flour/meal), and quick-cooking oats. I took my regular rolled oats and ran them briefly through my coffee grinder, to get the right grind.

How much honey to add to soap base?

• some recipes called for as much as a couple of tablespoons of honey per pound of soap. I used 1 tablespoon of honey per pound and a quarter.

What to us for a mold?

• I used a long, narrow spaghetti noodle box, roughly 10.75 inches by 2.75 inches. This will give me 4 almost square bars of finished soap, that I will cut with a chef's knife.

How do I prepare the box for a mold?

• I used duct tape to tape the open end, closed. I used glue stick inside, to glue that opening flap on the inside, shut.
• I used an x-acto knife to slit the top of the box, down the center, and then the ends of the box, so that once slit, I had "flaps" that opened up the box, for a long, narrow tray, about 1  1/2 inches deep.
• I sprayed the inside bottom of the box, very lightly, with spray adhesive. This isn't completely necessary, but I wanted the plastic wrap to stay in place, when un-molding the soap. A little glue stick would also work. I allowed the glue to partially dry, for 20 minutes. It was tacky at this point. See notes on reusing box, as it didn't go perfectly.
• I then lined the box with a sheet of plastic wrap. This was tricky, at first, but ultimately worked out. I was able to reposition the plastic wrap, as needed, when lining the box.
• before pouring in the soap, I lightly sprayed with non-stick cooking spray -- this step was super helpful in un-molding the soap.

How do I find out how much soap to use for my box mold?

• I didn't want a bar as thick as the depth of the box, but one that was a little over an inch thick
• I calculated the cubic measurement of my box, with about 1  1/4 inches as my depth (width multiplied by height/depth multiplied by length)
• I entered my cubic inches into this calculator online to convert cubic inches to liquid volume
• for my box, my cubic inches was 36.95, and I used 1  1/4 pounds of soap base
• my resulting bars are about 2.68 inches by 2.75 inches, but only 1 inch tall. A lot of soap seemed to remain in my melting can. So, for future bars of soap, in this box, I'll add about 2 extra ounces per pound, of soap base. I can always pour extra soap into a yogurt container.

How do you keep bubbles from forming on the surface of the soap, after pouring?

• immediately after pouring the soap into the mold, I sprayed/spritzed the surface of the soap with rubbing alcohol, using the spray top to my fine-mist spray bottle (a repurposed body mist bottle)

How do I keep the sides of the box from bowing out, after filling with soap?

• I used 2 hardbound books -- before pouring the soap, I set a book right up against each of the long sides of the box, holding the sides of the box in place -- a very lightweight, make-shift vise of sorts. It worked well-enough for me, to yield bars with straight sides.

How long do I keep my soap in the box?

• I left mine in overnight. The next morning, I tried flipping the box over to un-mold and the soap wouldn't come out. So, I put the box into the freezer for half an hour. 

Will it come out of the mold easily?

• I had trouble getting my soap bar out of the mold. I used a table knife to loosen it. It was primarily stuck in the corners. I undid one of the taped ends of the box, to retrieve my soap.

Can I reuse my box mold?

• this is why I went to the trouble to adhere plastic wrap to my box. I want to make a differently fragranced set of soap, when this batch was done, using the same box. Ultimately, I did get the soap out of the box. I will reline the box with new plastic, I think, and try to reuse the same box.

What do you do about the lines and marks from the plastic wrap?

• I wasn't careful enough with lining the box with the plastic, so the obvious answer for me is to be more careful to line the box next time, without wrinkles, as much as possible.
• otherwise, you can smooth out many imperfections on your soap, using a plain terry towel. I simply buffed my soap until the markings were less obvious. This is homemade hand-crafted soap, so some imperfections are to be expected, and desired. Having added oats to the soap worked great as a camouflage for some of the imperfections. My next batch will have semi-ground lavender buds in it, again concealing some of the imperfections from pouring into a make-shift mold. 

How do you cut the large bar into individual bars?

• After measuring and lightly marking my long bar, I used a chef's knife, with a quick push downward (no sawing). Worked like a charm.

I like how this hand-crafted soap turned out. It was easy enough, and the cost was reasonable. I was able to buy the 2 ingredients that I lacked, the soap base and the scented oil, with coupons, substantially reducing my cost per bar. Each bar came to just under $1, including tax. The top photo shows 1 bar of hand-crafted soap along with one of my hand-crafted spa cloths (at about 80 cents each). Those two items together, tied with a pretty ribbon, would make a nice gift, and the total cost is under $2.

To wrap each bar of soap, I will use some cellophane that I have here. I have a large cellophane bag that  I will repurpose, by cutting into squares for wrapping individual bars.

Next week, I'll make the lavender soap, to pair with the lavender-colored spa cloths that I knit.