Soap-making

[Guest guest]

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999, COM: Samba (das) SDG (Mauritius) wrote:

 

> [Text 2493346 from COM]>

> ...One other question.

> Sometime back I requested and received some data on soap making, which was

> good. The only thing I need now is soap recipies using only pure vegetarian

> ingredients, based on various oils, coconut, olive etc.

>

> Thanks

>

> YS Samba das

>

 

Mrs. Garland explained that soap is made by combining two ingredients:

lye and fat. For lye, she simply uses "Red Devil Drain Cleaner." I

believe that old timers used to obtain lye by straining boiling water

through wood ashes, but I'm not positive.

 

So for fat, either fat from meat can be used or vegetable oil, it doesn't

matter. It just has to be fat. I imagine you could even use butter.

 

Sometimes people wonder how they will make pea soup with no pork fat.

It's no problem, just use butter or olive oil instead.

 

So similarly, at least as I understood from her presentation, if you have

a recipe for soap made with tallow, just use a vegetable oil like coconut

oil instead of the tallow.

 

 

The Acres U.S.A. book catalog lists 4 soap-making titles:

 

Merilyn Mohr -- *The Art of Saop Making* $10.00 (This is the one Mrs.

Garland used.) 127 pp.

 

Casey Makela -- *Milk-based Soaps* $13.00 107 pp.

 

Elaine C. White -- *Soap Recipies* $24.00 224 pp.

 

Susan Miller Cavitch -- *Natural Soap Book* #15.00 182 pp.

 

One nice thing about the different soap recipes is that many of them

incorporate different herbs, such as lavendar, etc. for antiseptic,

fragrance or therapeutic effects.

 

Mrs. Garland says that the soap industry is one of the biggest rip-offs,

because it only takes you a few pennies to make a bar of soap yourself.

 

your servant,

 

Hare Krsna dasi