Archives for November 2010
Orange You Glad? New SoapQueen.TV Episode!
Here’s another fun project perfect for the holidays on Soap Queen TV!
In this episode I share how to make Orange Slices, which you may remember from this series of blog posts I did in 2008. Using our Orange Spice Fragrance Oil, this project has been transformed into a wonderful Holiday treat.
Orange Slice Soaps from Soap Queen on Vimeo.
Have a question about this blog post? Come join us at Bramble Berry’s Facebook page and we can help you out with any of your soapy questions!
You are Responsible for What You Do and What You Don’t Do.
I had a conversation this week that I’ve had many times before. A good friend came to me with the same gripe I’ve heard for the last ten years, “XYZ won’t quit doing this incredibly annoying behavior and it’s ruining my life. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to see them socially and I hate my life.”
Wow, “I hate my life” is a pretty powerful statement. That’s a lot of power to give over to someone else.
The conversation didn’t end well. I pointed out, as I have for the last decade, that they have a CHOICE in how they are going to act and react to this person. I said what many wiser teachers before me have said: in a relationship, you have 100% responsibility for the relationship. You cannot control the other person. You can only control yourself and your actions and reactions in any given situation.
The conversation got heated. I feel so strongly about the concept of “Take 100% responsibility for your life” that I get worked up when I see people close to me in pain because they’re not living by this principle.
- You chose to eat the last Twinkie. Every day. For the last 15 years. Now you’re obese. That’s not the food industry’s fault.
- You chose to have that last drink at the bar. Every Wednesday. For the lats 10 years. Now you’ve gotten your license taken away for your 3rd DUI in 10 years. That’s not the bar’s fault.
- You chose to buy the big house knowing you’d have to vacuum 6 rooms and clean 4 toilets. Every week. For the last 5 years. Now you’re feeling like you don’t have enough quality time with your family. That’s not the house’s fault.
Cheddar Bacon (or Facon) Biscuits
Ingredients:
6 oz. Bacon, diced
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut or smooshed into small pieces
2 Tbs. melted butter for later
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
3/4 cup shredded Extra-Sharp Cheddar Cheese
7 oz. Buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 425. If you’re using real bacon, fry the bacon until it is crisp, crisp, crisp. Drain on a paper towel. Reserve some of the fat to prep the pan bottom. If you’re not using real bacon, you can prep the pan with melted butter.
I used Morningstar Veggie Bacon Strips, pictured above. Finely chop the bacon or use my Father’s, soon to be patented, method: death by many scissor cuts.
In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, sugar and pepper. Notice my Father’s perfect pepper grinding stance? I was thankful to have his help on this recipe.
Cut in cold butter that you’ve smooshed and generally made into smaller, workable pieces.
This means to literally take two knives and cut, cut, cut the butter back and forth until it’s in pea sized chunks.
Then use fingers to pinch the crumbs into disks. Don’t overwork the dough. Stir in the cheeses and the bacon.
Stir in buttermilk until the dough just comes together.
On a floured work surface (I used my clean kitchen countertop), roll out the dough into a 9 x 11 rectangle.
In theory, you’d be using a pie roller thingy but I didn’t have one. A liter of sparkling water did the trick. Then, fold this into thirds, rotate 90 degrees and roll out another 9 x 11 rectangle. Do this again but roll into a 7 x 9 rectangle this time. You’re looking to make layers (for an extra light and fluffy biscuit).
Using a floured biscuit cutter (we didn’t have one so we used a wine glass), cut out the biscuits.
You want them to be right about 2 1/2″ in diameter. Re-roll the scraps to cut out more biscuits. Brush the tops of all the biscuits with melted butter. Bake for 20 minutes. Check them. Do they need more time?
You can easily bake up to 25 minutes depending on your oven. This recipe makes around 12 – 15 biscuits. The biscuits are delicious! Ours came out a bit salty so I’ve taken out the salt in the recipe; the bacon and cheese have a lot of salt in them. But, if you find them not salty enough, the original recipe from Williams Sonoma called for 1/2 tsp of salt. I hope you enjoy these yummy little butter bombs. They are delicious and very worth the effort.
Waving Madly from the Weekend
I had a great weekend with family and friends. It was chock full of activity from Friday night (movies – Red) to a full dinner party Saturday to dinner with friends on Sunday night. Here are some photos from our Saturday night dinner party (my Dad is taking the first photo which is why he’s not in it!). It was a vegetarian feast with lasagna, delicious tofu noodle casserole, salad, garlic-lemon warm kale and Worthington ‘fauxloaf‘.
On the right, I’m seated by my beautiful Mom and my very talented artist-friend Lisa McShane. And, you might recognize Erik, the Otion store manager and my brother and my sweet husband seated across from him. My friends Heather (from my business Mastermind group), Sylvie and Jennie also joined us for a full evening. We played Cranium and had an extremely spirited game going on until the power in Bellingham went out, leaving us all to assert that we were sure our own team would have won, had it not been for that dang power outage.
What’s New, You Ask?
Peppermint Bark Soap for the Holidays
It’s time to officially kick off the holiday season with our first Christmas tutorial of the year! Keep it clean this holiday with delicious smelling and realistic looking Peppermint Bark Soap.
- White Melt and Pour
- Clear Melt and Pour
- Goat Milk Melt and Pour
- Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil
- Peppermint 2nd Distillation Essential Oil
- Perfect Red Color Block
- Brick Red Oxide
- Liquid Brown Oxide
- Liquid Black Oxide
- Melt 5 ounces of white soap base and pour it into the silicone tray mold and let cool. Then melt 5 ounces of clear soap base and mix in Perfect Red Color Block and Brick Red Oxide (2 parts Perfect Red and 1 part Brick Red Oxide makes a perfect candy cane red). Pour the red soap on top of the white soap and let cool. Make a slurry with your red oxide by mixing it with a little rubbing alcohol before adding it to your soap. This will eliminate speckles.
- Unmold the soap and cut into small, irregular pieces. These are going to be the peppermint crumbles on top so uneven cuts make them look super realistic.
- Melt 16 ounces of clear soap and mix in ½ ounce of (delicious) Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil. To make the realistic chocolaty color, combine Liquid Brown Oxide with a skosh of Liquid Black Oxide. Let cool.
- Melt 16 ounces of white Goat Milk soap base and mix in ½ ounce of Peppermint 2nd Distillation Essential Oil. Let cool to 130 degrees, spritz the “chocolate” layer with rubbing alcohol and pour about 12-13 ounces of the goat milk soap, saving 3-4 ounces (you can totally eyeball the amount, just make sure to save a little bit).
- Once the soap has cooled, remelt the remaining 3-4 ounces of goat milk soap base to 130 degrees. Start spritzing your “peppermint” pieces with rubbing alcohol and get ready to sprinkle them on top of the final layer of soap. Spritz the top layer of soap and pour the remaining 3-4 ounces of goat milk soap then sprinkle on your “crushed candy cane” garnish.
- Once the soap has cooled, cut the soap into triangles and trick your friends into taking a bite of delicious Chocolate Peppermint Bark.
We’ll be Roller Skating in no Time
We feel so lucky that the weather has pretty much held for us (virtually an impossibility this late in the year for Washington State) and the roof got put on before the rains started. We can hardly wait to move into the new space (that is, after our roller skating party!).
No Fare for You!
I spent the weekend in Seattle with Ms. Kayla from Essential Wholesale. We spent the weekend eating (too much), watching movies (Conviction and Life as We Know It – Conviction, in my opinion, is a must-see) and hitting the spa for some (eh hem) research. Oh and of course, cupcake tasting. We ate 4 cupcakes in the span of 3 days. Even we were impressed with that amazing intake.
We were in the ‘big’ city of Bellevue, WA and delighted to walk everywhere. That is, until it started to rain. Then, we were considerably less happy to walk everywhere. We tried to find a taxi.
The first guy we came to asked where we were going and then refused to take us because it was too small of a fare.
We called two taxi cab companies. They refused to come pick us up because the fare was too small.
We finally found a cab company willing to take us for our $6.50 fare. He explained to us that many cab drivers wait in the fare line for up to 2 hours and want their 2 hours of waiting time investment to pay off big and so they won’t take a small fare when it comes up.
What if the cab drivers instead took every fare, irregardless of the size of the fare rather than sitting in the cab line and waiting to hit the lottery of the large fare?
What if you did away with your order minimum and filled every order as if it were ‘the Big One.’? What if you treated every customer as though they were the only thing that mattered? What if you kept the ‘Nordstrom Customer Service’ principles throughout your entire customer line, every day, all the time? What are the ramifications for turning away a small sale; what small customers are you discouraging that could be a large customer tomorrow?