Civil War Era Honey Soap | Tutorial | How To

Honey soap was a popular soap before and after the war. It was known for and its supposed "skin whitening" properties. This recipe contains honey but at the time, writings suggest that some honey soaps didn't contain honey at all. 

 I found this recipe in The Confederate Receipt Book; however, the recipe was printed almost verbatim from The New Household Receipt Book, (1853) by Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. I am always interested in the ingenuity of humans in reduced circumstances and was curious if this recipe made a decent soap or was a war-time, makeshift recipe. 

 

Other recipes of the time mention annatto for coloring so I added a bit to give it a nice honey color.  I also chose bergamot as the scent as the recipe for Honey Soap from The Druggist's General Receipt Book (1853) called for Windsor soap which was frequently scented with bergamot and caraway. Another contemporary recipe called for cinnamon oil. The 1866 printing of the Druggist's General Receipt Book changed the scent in their recipe for honey soap to oil of citronella. 

Civil War Era Honey Soap Recipe 

Ingredients:

- 2 Pounds White or Yellow Soap (Castile, Tallow, Lard)
- Water
- 1/4 Cups Honey
- Essential Oil ( Read the warnings on your oil.) 

Instructions:

Shred, chop or grind your soap. Add the soap and a little water in a double boiler (or straight over the heat making sure you keep it below 230 degrees F until melted or in "mashed potato" form). Add the honey, colorant, and essential oil and stir until combined. Pour or scoop into a silicone mold or any container lined with waxed paper. Let cool until hard. Slice the soap to the size you want and let cure in a warm dry place for at least a week.   

The Manchester Journal (Vermont) 25 Jun 1861

       

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Soap Flakes : If it's your first time melting soap, soap flakes make it easy.

Annatto:  If you want to use annatto, make sure to place it in a coffee filter and into the honey overnight and remove before using, unless you want flakes like my soap. 

Soap Colorant: If you want to use a modern colorant. 

Bergamot Oil: Cinnamon oil, Citronella, Bergamot, Rose were common soap scents during the war but in modern times, cinnamon oil can be an irritant so I would not recommend it for beginners. 

WWII Era Sweet Potatoes in Apple and Orange Cups

This recipe came from the book 250 Ways of Serving Potatoes (1941) by the Culinary Arts Institute. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are easy to grow and very filling. By the end of WWII, American farmers were growing 3 billion pounds of sweet potatoes a year!

250 ways is more ways than anyone needs to know, but this way sounded so interesting I knew I had to try it. I was not disappointed. I love the taste of sweet potatoes but we really only eat them "Thanksgiving style."

 If their sweet taste is not enough to entice you, sweet potatoes are highly nutritious. They are high in vitamin C, niacin, magnesium, manganese, antioxidants, fiber, and sporamin. Sporamin reportedly has anti-aging and cancer fighting properties. In fact, some of the oldest living humans ate sweet potatoes as 60% of their diets!

Sweet Potatoes in Apple Cups

- 4 Medium Sweet Potatoes
- 3 Tablespoons Butter
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 2 Tablespoons Sugar
- 4 Red-skinned Baking Apples
- 4 Marshmallows

Boil sweet potatoes until soft then peel and mash. Add butter, salt, and sugar, mix and set aside. Core your apples, place apples in the nooks on a cupcake pan. Fill apples with sweet potato mixture and bake on 325℉ about 15 minutes or until the apples are soft. Remove from oven, top each apple with a marshmallow and return to the oven until the marshmallows brown. 

Sweet Potatoes in Orange Cups 

- 2 Cups Mashed Sweet Potatoes
- 1/2 cup Orange Juice
- 2 Tablespoons Butter
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 3 Large Oranges
- 6 Marshmallows, quartered

Boil sweet potatoes until soft then peel and mash. Cut each orange in half, juice, and remove the pulp. Add 1/2 cup of the juice, salt, and butter to the sweet potatoes and mix. Fill orange peels with the sweet potato mixture and top with marshmallow pieces.  Place oranges in the  nooks on a cupcake pan. Bake a 400℉ for about 15 minutes.



The orange was not bad but masked the flavor of the sweet potatoes too much for my preference but I could see it being a welcome change if you had a ton of sweet potatoes to eat. I very much liked the sweet potato in the apple. Maple syrup or honey would also be delicious substitutions in this. Hope you all enjoy!

Adventures in Breadmaking

I've been trying to learn to make bread for the longest time. It never seemed to come out right. I was always interested in learning but I do admit, my interest peaked when blogger, Marmota, talked about bread in the Czech Republic and how much she missed it when she visited America.

 She referred to the"white, tasteless sponge that the Western world calls 'bread.'" The more I thought about it, the more I agreed that American white bread is severely underwhelming and sort of tastes like white glue.  It is very rare in the US for people to make their own bread or to buy anything other than a prepackaged loaf full of preservatives and who-knows-what. I am slowly trying to move away from pre-made foods and transfer to raw ingredients and homemade food. I developed a lot of bad eating habits in college due to time constraints and stress.

I eventually want to learn to make artisan loaves but I thought a good place to start would be to use a bread maker and work up to formed loaves.

As it's been on the list of things to do for a few years, Andy and I finally went out and bought a bread maker at a thrift store and had a ton of fun learning to use it. I hope to use it more often and if anyone has some good recipes to try, please leave me a comment.

Potato Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

-2 Cups cooked, mashed Potatoes
-1/2 cup Water from cooking the potatoes
-1/2 cup Milk + more for glazing
-2 Tablespoons Sunflower Oil
-4 1/2 Cups Unbleached White Bread Flour
-1 1/2 Teaspoons Salt
-2 Teaspoons Sugar
-1 1/2 Teaspoons Yeast

The ingredients were placed in the bread maker according to the maker's instructions, which simply enough involved keeping the yeast, sugar and oil separate from each other. At about 20 minutes before the loaf was finished, we glazed the top of the loaf with extra milk using a pastry brush.  The bread maker took care of the rest and out popped a delicious loaf.

I'd like to learn more about converting bread machine recipes to oven baked ones. I really hope to find a very yummy whole wheat sandwich loaf. For those of you interested in purchasing a bread maker, they really are handy.

Secret Life of Bloggers Blog Party: Post 6

Power outage dinner.

This post is going to be a little different than my other blog party posts. This week has gone by fast but it allowed me to collect my thoughts and do a lot of thinking that I normally do not have time to do.  The huge storm that hit in the area left 500,000 without power, including my house and my job.

We have a problem as a society.The power was out for 2 days and people were flipping out. I'm not talking about the elderly, they seemed to be taking it just fine. But adults in fine health were complaining about how they had no TV or internet at home. What were they going to do? Their kids were going to be so annoying without the TV to watch. People have forgotten how to live without electricity and electronics. People asked me, crippled, what they should do when they got home.   

Audible Noise

I always look forward to power outages. It is not ideal to be without heat in the winter, but I love the removal of developed noise. We are so used to the sounds that our heaters, fans, computers, microwaves, appliances and electronics make that the sounds are almost invisible to our conscious thought. Take them away, and you immediately realize just how loud they've been.

Mental Noise

What is exponentially worse than the audible noise is the mental noise our electronics create.  With electronics, we are constantly multitasking despite the evidence that multitasking is not good. The internet makes it all too easy to fall in the rabbit hole every time you are trying to concentrate. But being constantly distracted is taking it's toll. Our brains no longer have the time to sort through information or think. Our brains and souls remain voiceless. We are too distracted to listen.

Power Outages

Power outages snap people back to reality. Suddenly they have to concentrate on what they are doing. They have to read a finite books and think about what they are reading. They have to sit with their families and talk. They have to think about how and what they will prepare for dinner. They have to plan ahead. They have to help their neighbors out and make sure everyone is safe.

I am as guilty as everyone. As a blogger, researcher, and photographer, I clearly use the internet and technology a lot. Modern technology is amazing to me. It has allowed me to meet friends I never would have without it and learn things and have hobbies I never would have been able to have without it. But I can't say I hate the relief I honestly feel when I know there's no facebook or email to check. No rabbit hole of the internet to distract me and my quiet thoughts and family close by.


2-1-2014

While pulling a tissue out of my pocket, I accidentally dropped my change. I felt them falling and was anticipating the widespread fall that was bound to happen. I looked down and the pennies dropped to the floor almost as if a magnet attracted them. They didn't bounce at all and were all facing heads. Four lucky pennies. :)

2-2-2014 

Groundhog day. For those of you that don't know, it's a holiday that originated in PA and has now spread to other places. I can't definitively say who still celebrates it but I know they do here. One of a few fluffy groundhogs, that normally live in a library, is put into a log and let out. If the groundhog "sees his shadow" and turns back, there is supposed to be a few more weeks of winter. (Oh wait, there's a movie about this. Everyone knows what it is.) :D

2-3-2014

Big snowstorm, again.  About 7 inches. Because we almost ran out of it...

 
2-4-2014 

2-5-2014 

Start of the ice storm.

2-6-2014

The ice chunks falling from above. The ice on the power lines and trees showered with each blow of the wind.

2-7-2014

It snowed yet again today and the power went out again.


Even as I was writing this post I had the overwhelming urge to check facebook and my email, even though I know neither of those things was urgent or would really add to my life. 

Don't Shop on Thanksgiving or Black Friday

There's a joke going around that "only Americans would trample on top of each other to buy new stuff the day after they give thanks for the things that they already have." Unfortunately I agree with it.

 The holidays are increasingly not about spending time with your family but about shopping, materialism and presents. We are more focused on giving our friends and family members the tangible, material goods that they desire but we don't give them our time, which is infinitely more valuable and wanted.

Shopping on Thanksgiving and "Black Friday" further put an emphasis on things instead of family. It doesn't matter how much money you save on something. It is not worth missing a day that could be spent with your family or perpetuating a culture of materialism. 

I understand that for some people, shopping on Black Friday and recounting their experiences is a family tradition. There are better traditions to be had. You could shop for presents as a family on a day where people won't be disregarding human life to save a few dollars.

Stores now stay open on Thanksgiving and other holidays to meet the demand of people wanting to do last minute shopping. It might be convenient but many people do not get to spend the holidays with their families because they have to work. In the past, people planned ahead and made sure all shopping was done ahead of time because they knew no stores would be open.

If you are with your family this holiday be thankful for being able to be. Keep in mind that many people can't be.   

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you are with your families, enjoying freshly baked Turkey and enjoying each others company.

If you would like to read about Thanksgiving in the past:

-The First Thanksgiving Celebration

-Thanksgiving Letter from an African American Civil War Soldier

A Second Summer, A Beautiful Fall

We are having a beautiful fall. The leaves are beautiful and the weather, warm.I've been doing a lot of things and have visited a lot of places. One of the downsides to being a blogger is that you sometimes feel the need to record instead of just enjoy. I believe this week cured me of that.

I had 4 posts planned out and was upset that I was away so much that I didn't get a chance to write. I had a ton of fun and took 400 photos over the week.  I couldn't believe how effortlessly these posts were going to write themselves. I did all of the fun things you're supposed to do in fall.

I admired the changing leaves. Ran through a corn maze. Observed the migratory birds in their flight. Collected the fall harvest. Roasted marshmallows on breezy night. Went camping, sailing and hiking.   

I couldn't wait to get home and write those posts.

My computer took hours uploading my files off of my camera card. It was so slow I couldn't really do much while they were uploading, including write. The next day I try to open my files, but every time I opened one, my computer would freeze. After one more day of trying, I decided I was just going to upload them, sight unseen based upon the thumbnails.

I try to upload to the internet, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work a second time. I have to upload each image individually. So here is my photo post, in no particular order. And next time I think posting will be very easy, I know better.

A cloud pretending to be a sail.

Do You Use The Things You Own?

Unread books and new planner.

I'm trying to go minimalist. Every once in a while I just want to get rid of everything. My goal is not to live with as little as I possibly can. My goal is to pare down what I have and actually make use of the things I own.

Most people have natural chances to minimize: they go to college and have to pick only the possessions they use most often, or they move and only have so much room to pack. I've pruned a ton in the last few years, but I have never moved so I've never really been forced to evaluate and prune everything. 

I have read about people whose choose to only have as many possessions that will fit in a tiny suitcase or others that keep their number of possessions under 100. Some even fight to get their number as small as possible. I find it admirable a beneficial to make do with less but I am not going to whittle my possessions down to an arbitrary number. As long as I am actually making use of an item, not just keeping it around, I see no reason to part with it.   

I am using criteria that I haven't really used before. I ask the simple question of "Do I use it?" Before, I was content with answering "Is it useful?" But have come to understand that just because it is useful doesn't mean that I make use of it.

This exercise has been very beneficial. There were things I hadn't touched or used in forever. It was easy to get rid of these things. But there was this group of things that I kept because I wanted to use them but never did. This was the group of items that hurt the most. I would look at this stuff all of the time and think of all of the reasons that I didn't use them: "Not enough time," "Don't know what to do with it," "It's not perfect for what I was thinking."

I have a large stockpile of books I want to read and art and craft supplies. I knew the "to read" books were a problem so put all of the "to read" books on their own shelf and put a sticky note on them with the date they were placed there with the intention of giving them away if I didn't get to them in a year. I've read plenty of books since, but I've revisited the shelf and I couldn't believe that most of the books had been on there for 2 years.

So I've reevaluated the books for if I still want to read them, re-tagged them, if so, and added an extra 30 minutes of reading a day specifically for these books. I've also decided to date any other items that I am not sure I use enough, and in a year, I will see how many times I actually use those items. 

But what I am most excited about is the art stuff. I've decided that I'm not going to buy any new supplies until I go through my stockpile and evaluate whether something i already own could work, even if it's not the perfect thing. I have found for me, the less I have, the more creative I have to be. Having too many art choices stop me from getting anything done as I wait around for the perfect thing or can't choose between so many options.

Recently, I had wanted to get a new planner and a smaller sketchbook for on location watercolor. I found a tiny notebook I hadn't used and an old watercolor pad that only had a few pages left on it and made some impromptu, crude solutions. They aren't perfect but they were fun to make and I'm actually using stuff I already own and creating more. I'm so excited. :) 

New sketchbook.

I'm strangely appreciate running out of things, lately. It means I'm using things. :)   So, do you really use the things you own?

Wild Raspberry Picking: Imagination is a terrible thing to waste.

Raspberry Preserve

"It's a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty and hot," said Diana practically, peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl would have.

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with one's best chum would have forever and ever branded as "awful mean" the girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just got enough to tantalize you.

The way Anne and Diana went to school was a pretty one. Anne thought those walks to and from school with Diana couldn't be improved upon even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so unromantic; but to go by Lover's Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was. - Anne of Green Gables 

Today the girls at summer camp spent their day in the woods picking wild berries. One for the basket, and a juicy one for their mouths. There was a group of young ladies who stuck by me in the kitchen, filling up buckets of water, sweeping, and helping cook the meals, even though there were numerous fun activities going on.

These girls already reminded me of me in my childhood. I was a constant dreamer. But unlike Anne Shirley my wild imaginings almost never involved queens or beautiful women with frozen cream skin and raven hair. I was more often a servant doing her daily chores, a colonial girl on the way to a one-room schoolhouse or a slave escaping to freedom than anything else. 

"Older sister," the girls said "We found a new patch of berries on Berry Hill!"

Knowing I would be confused, they introduced me to the "imaginative new names" of the places around the farm.  

Slapjacks to share.

It was extremely fun today to get to be the "older sister" of a bunch of dreaming Anne-girls. I would have loved to have spent a day collecting berries in the "Colonial times." It was fun to finally be a Josephine Barry, kindred spirits with the adventurous dreamers. I also realized how impossibly hard it would for me to be a Marilla Cuthbert. :)

Blogging is Dead! The Benefits of Blogging

Many sources have been reporting the death of blogging, saying that no one reads blogs anymore, blogs aren’t relevant to readers today, and blogs are now only business tools.   

I’ve been keeping my blog going for a few years now and even though the blogosphere has changed in that time, I still feel that keeping a blog is valuable. Many people my age have stopped blogging due to increased obligations or changes in interests.  Some feel that their interests have changed so much that their current interests and writings no longer meet the goals of the original blog. Others mention that they have turned to “micro-blogging” or “photo-blogging.”

Even with this decrease, there are many benefits of blogging. Blogging helps keep up your writing skills, which may deteriorate as we get older and aren’t writing as much for school. It helps keep us in contact with what are friends are doing and creating. It also gives an extra push on those days when you just don’t feel like doing anything.  I blog for all of these reasons but most of all I blog because it gives me a very in depth look at where I was in my life at a given time.  I don’t feel that facebook, twitter or instagram really give much insight into what we are thinking and doing. When I read a blog post I have written in the past, I remember my thoughts, emotions and interests at that time. I am also impressed at how many projects I completed.  

I definitely like to see what my friends are up to and what they are thinking. I know there has been a decrease in the community aspect of blogging. Some of this is due to spam blockers making it harder for people to comment, but it also has to do with how people read blogs now. Many people read on their mobile devices which don’t allow for commenting or make it difficult to comment. Many bloggers hear over and over again “Oh, I read that post and wanted to comment!” or “I’m still reading even though  I don’t comment so much!” 

Also many people are busier than ever and there is more and more content vying to be read every day.  Even I find myself culling my reading list (which I recommend.) There’s only so much time in the day and you can’t keep up with everything. It only makes sense to cull and only read what is meaningful to you. 

Even with these changes, there’s still a lot of value in blogging. Blogs are inspirational and “aspirational.” (You know that made-up word that describes that feeling you get every time you open pinterest.) J  Many bloggers are good role models and looking at their lives, encourages me too start doing those things I really want to do.  Sometimes they show me some things I thought would be very hard really isn’t anywhere near as difficult as I thought.

So even though I don’t blog as much as I used to, I still plan on keeping it up and still love getting to look at the lives of other bloggers.

The Expense Book: Finances in the 19th Century

There once was a time when many people wrote down every purchase made in a household. Today this seems ludicrous as we make so many small purchases on a daily basis. We even make scheduled payments that we don't even think about. Running a home is like running a small business, it only makes sense to keep the same kind of records.

Many books from the time period recommended that income in and expenses paid were calculated weekly to make sure that the family was not spending more than they were making. 


Many books for new housekeepers demonstrate basic record keeping as it was seen as a very useful skill for a wife to have. It was the bane of many men to have a spendthrift wife who had no inclination or want to spend wisely. It's really a great skill to learn in modern times. Due to our culture and lifestyles, many people never learn to manage money to their own detriment. It might seem like a complicated thing, but once you find a system that works, it is really a helpful tool.



Benefits of Keeping an Expense Book:

-You know if you paid something or if someone owes you money. This is the biggest reason, as accounts get more complicated, sometimes it's easy to forget what needs to be paid or how much income you will have coming in.

-You spend less. Writing down and holding yourself accountable for purchases makes you think about purchases more and you're likely to not buy as many little unimportant things.

-You can spot trends. You can spot trends you'd like to promote and trends you would like to see decreased. With an expense book, trends help you spend your money more wisely. $7.00 lunches from work everyday may not seem like a lot but it comes to $35 a week or more than $1,500 a year. You can also see that you aren't spending enough money on important things. For instance, if it's a goal of yours to eat healthier, you may want to dedicate a little more money to do so.

-The more watchful you are, the more leeway you have. This is closely related to "waste not, want not." If you are aware of your fixed expenditures, you can spend a bit more on necessities. It also brings people closer. If you know you and your spouse only have $10 for entertainment this week, you can brainstorm ideas and learn to work together to make the most of it.     

-You have a year to year record. You can see when you bought important purchases and how often you paid for maintenance on big items.

-It's just cool. Yes, it's actually really neat for historians to see what people bought, how often and money spent in any given time period. Remember when your grandparents told you they could see a movie for a dime? You can show our grandchildren the going rates of items and what you bought when. You also can help create a good historical record so historians can learn straight from your life. It's interesting to note that in modern times, we spend the smallest percentage of our incomes on food than ever before. Something we could not have known without expenditure books.   
 

I am old fashioned and use a modernized version of the record sheet in the top page scan. I leave one page for each week. I keep my receipts in an envelope in my purse and total up my purchases at the end of the day to simplify things. It's an especially helpful record for people who have multiple sources of income or irregular paychecks. After you keep a book like this for a while, you can start to create a realistic budget which will allow for economy, which is not learning to do without but learning to do more with less. It's always fun to see how our predecessors did things.

Today we have computer programs and phone apps that do this kind of thing, but I still find the actual writing helps me. Is there anything that you find particularly helpful?

Ridiculous Overabundance

I was waiting for the bus today with the frigid wind biting my fingers. My pocket had decided to tie the mother of all knots in my earbuds and I spent the time thinking about what I used to do before my Ipod.  I remembered how awesome my portable CD player was at the time and how goofy that would look today.

I remember how awesome it was to have the gift of music with me wherever I went. My CD player also had something special: skip protection. Remember that? (For all you kids who missed this, it means that I could sit on the bus with my songs only skipping when the bus clobbered over big bumps, not the little ones.)

The memories brought me to thinking about how nice and convenient is to have a whole music library with you and how we no longer need CDs around, cluttering our houses. I can’t help but thinking that we’ve reached an age of overabundance that would astound our predecessors.  We are now at the point that we have so much stuff, we pay money for non-tangible goods.  That is such a bizarre concept. Non-tangible goods have no resale value. Could you imagine explaining to your great-grandparents that the store you just bought is a "virtual" store and not an actual establishment?  

We are surrounded by so much stuff, we pay for less stuff. Regardless of the overabundance that surrounds each of us, we still buy more.  I took an inventory of things that I use every day. I was sort of shocked that I really only use a small portion of what I own on a daily basis. I could probably pack those things in a suitcase. In fact, I do every time I travel. Laptop, camera, ipod and kindle top the list of things I use everyday, assuming I'm not counting necessities like my hairbrush or my pillow. 

I feel like our gadgets do more and more with less space, but we are still surrounded by more things than ever. Our stuff makes us feel secure. We feel it will help us through a time of scarcity. We've hit the point that scarcity would, indeed, be rare. Maybe we, like our gadgets, need to start doing more with less. Less stuff means less distractions from the things that really matter. We need to bring back the human element to life. We need to foster deeper relationships and friendships. Let go, and trust that we can rely on each other in tough times. We should stop trying to be tiny islands onto ourselves.