Here's a very straightforward process for making your own liquid soap. I have a crock pot, so I'm definitely going to give it a try. The peppermint liquid soap I like is $12 a bottle, but I use it for everything like shampoo and washing. I figure I can make my own for a couple of bucks. The most expensive ingredient is the essential peppermint oil. But you could make it any fragrance/flavor, like lavender or whatever.

Making hard soap (cold process) is even easier, though more time consuming (good soap takes 6 weeks to cure, but you're not doing anything but sitting around waiting for it)... but since most cake soap is already cheap, I don't think you end up saving that much... unless you are making some gourmet yuppie soap with lavender buds or other essential oils to make as gifts. But you can use almost any fat. It's popular to use Hempseed oil now, but that's a function of the green movement, and of course you pay a giant premium for it. It used to be they couldn't give the stuff away, now it's all organic and shit... 7 lbs. is $80. 35lbs. is $400. So unless you're making soap to sell in a boutique, I'd use beef tallow or lard.

Apparently, it's tough to buy LYE in the grocery store anymore, though, because people will think you're running a meth lab.

The classic recipe, off the internet, to make 9 pounds of pure hard cold process soap is:
13oz. lye
2.5 pints cold water
6 pounds clean rendered fat such as beef tallow or lard.

A 10 lb. bucket of beef tallow is under $20. 25lbs. of lard is around $25.

What's called "castille" soap (after a region in Spain) is made from Olive oil. You don't need to use top of the line extra virgin. Just the low end crap.
tutorial

I read the instructions for the castille soap and that certainly looks doable. I'm surprised at some of the ingredients these chicks put in the soap. Ground oats? But somehow it must all work out.

According to Beck and some others, we're heading for a severe downturn in the economy in 2011. Apparently companies are reporting what profits they can (and doing what manufacturing they can) in this year before taxes go up. And taxes are going up. "Frugality" will be the watch word since we'll have little choice as these Marxist-socialist zealots continue their attack on America and prosperity itself.

Every day I hear from a friend or supplier about somebody going out of business. There are always people going into and out of business, of course, so it wouldn't do to make the mistake of the dishonest left and simply create reality based on a few anecdotes. But the state of the economy and the level of unemployment is not a selective anecdote. And when some of my longtime customers tell me their business is down by half — or worse — there's no reason not to believe them. Our business is certainly down. I may be faced with making more frugal decisions, including where I live.

Hey, maybe being homeless is the way to go. Then you are no longer under attack by Obama and his Marxist fiends. You're a victim. In that vein, here's a pdf document on how to build a cardboard house. I'm sure the plans could be scaled up. Maybe something like this.

I think the ground oats are just for a scrubbing texture. In India they put actual sandalwood sawdust, which besides the great smell, is gritty and acts to help scour off the grime.

I like the idea about the cardboard house. Also think styrofoam, which is pretty much indestructible. And holy crap, you could fiberglass over the whole thing for strength and structure. The biggest issue would be being sure you had enough ventilation holes.

My industry has been decimated. My client list has shrunk to almost nothing, and all the guys I used to work with in Corporate American are either living off of their severance packages, or have gone on, like me, to working five times as hard for 1/5th the money.

Thank heavens I still have at least some work, but I could easily, easily see it drying up in 2011 if something doesn't improve. Like liberty.

But now we could at least make soap. I'm sure I could design a beautiful label and packaging. And everyone needs soap.

People also need food, and we could all be growing some. We could be raising a few chickens from homemade coops, and collecting the eggs. Eating some, selling the rest. Did you know you can actually buy live chicks (meaning baby chickens, sorry) over the internet and have them MAILED to you by the USPS? The poor things. What a trip that must be.

Speaking of frugality, I just picked up one of these "cherry"-finish 5-shelf bookcases. I needed something at home for the growing assortment of books, DVD's, and stuff. It was surprisingly easy to put together and there was only one small casuality. One of the screws came threw the top a little but I screwed it back down and took the included touch-up pen to it. You can't see it but I know it's there which sort of bugs me.

It's actually a nice quality finish to it and I got if for 50 bucks off at $100.00. Really frugal would have meant buying unfinished and finishing it myself. But I don't really have the place to do that. Super-frugal is buying the lumber and building it yourself.

Buying it on sale is probably the most frugal. I have built pieces of furniture before like a bookcase a nightstand and a TV stand simple white pine nothing fancy. Wood is pretty expensive. Even the white pine is expensive. The material costs alone for the Office Depot Bookcase would be near $100 that is if you are using white pine. I would say double the cost if you want a hardwood.

There is a big difference to building a bookcase and assembling one. Assembling a bookcase might take 1 hour 2 tops. Building one takes on a whole host of needs and skills from tools to working space. It will take serious man hours to build a bookcase.

My conclusion after undertaking the endeavor especially for bookcases it is definitely cheaper just to buy one than build one your self.

Nice bookcase by the way.

I like those commercial grade metal storage shelving units. They're sturdy, practical, and cheap. They go together with no tools, many of them.

I'm the kind of guy with the skills to build my own bookcase if I wanted to, but I don't really have the DESIRE to waste my time doing it. These metal shelves go up or come down in minutes. And a fairly big sized unit is maybe $70 tops.

With food prices being so high, I have totally gone FROOG (frugal). My latest strategy is this, fuck deli roast beef. $7.99 a pound.

My toaster oven has a rotisserie in it, and I just got an Angus oven roast, about four pounds. I believe the cut is top round. It was on sale for about ten bucks. So deli roast beef would have been $24 bucks, and now I have a flavorful, rare roast beef for ten. It only took about an hour on the spit. I like sandwich roast beef blood rare.

I rubbed the roast with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. Let it sit out to come to room temperature before applying the heat. Skewered it onto the spit, and let it rotate, easy peasey. After taking it out of the oven, I let the meat rest right back to room temperature, which insures juicy and tender sandwiches.

My problem is, I don't have a deli slicer, so you need a good, razor sharp carving knife because you want paper thin slices. You want to almost be able to see through them.

It's not a very fatty roast either, so for the diet conscious like me, it's nice to have a good lean protein.

And it came out just delicious. A roast beef sandwich like I remember from New York. Piled High with lettuce, tomato, onion, and while I would have loved to slather on the Hellman's, I just put about a tablespoon.

If you got sick of rare roast beef cold sandwiches, I'm sure you could heat the slices in a pan and make a philly cheese steak, or have the beef warm with gravy.

Anyway, $14 savings while getting a week of superior sandwiches and meals is good froog. I wonder how it freezes.

[mouth]water[mouth]

I'd like one, please.

What's great is how EASY roast beef is to make. I'm really glad I finally used the rotisserie attachment on my (GE) Toaster oven ( this is the one I have), but really all you need is an oven.

The hardest part is slicing the meat thin enough. That takes patience and skill and a good, sharp knife. And I mean sharp.

I think my next attempt at rotisserie roast beef will be with the EYE ROUND. It's just a neater package, a nice cylindrical cut of beef, and I think will cook more evenly on the spit.

It's another cheap, somewhat tough cut... but cooked rare and sliced thin, and I think we're talking good sandwich roast beef.
picture of an eye round.

I read a recipe where companies that supply roast beefs to delis use the equivalent of kitchen bouquet (that ubiquitous gravy-darkener available at all grocery stores in the spice aisle) with the rub. It's basically just caramel coloring with a sort of bullion base. And yet my first roast was great with just the salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder.

Cooking temperature is what it's all about. To make sure the roast is cooked rare, but not raw, you need a meat thermometer to do it right. After you take a roast out, while it's resting, it will actually continue cooking and go up maybe 10°-15° from the point you removed it from the heat source. This is called "carryover cooking". Thank you, food network.

But for crap like this, where you REALLY don't want an overdone roast, and you want rare... you've got to cook to about 120°

Of course you don't need a rotisserie. Just an oven. Roast Beef ain't rocket science. But boy oh boy is it good.

Now I'm thinking of other things I can rotisserie, though. I bet I could make some kind of Gyro, and slice the browned pieces off as it rotates.
I think Gyro is a mix of lamb and beef shoulder cuts just slapped on to the spit into a solid mass. You serve the slices in pita bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onion, and greek yogurt sauce (I like it with fresh mint), a squeeze of lemon juice. Oh man, another thing I miss from NY. Drool.

Best sandwich in the world:

Roast pork
Sharp provolone
Steamed broccoli rabe (with oil and garlic)
on crusty french bread

It's apparently a Philly classic, the main rival to the cheese steak. I made it today, and it's truly epic.

Oh man that is awesome looking. I love roast pork too.

Leggers! Would like to take a bite now

Rarely do I find a sandwich where the ingredients are so perfectly married, that there is absolutely nothing I would add or take away. This one has that. Everything compliments everything else. It's like pizza. When it comes down to it, the perfect pizza is sauce, crust, and cheese. Those things work together in harmony.

This sandwich is like that. I wonder where it's been all my life. I made cuban sandwiches a while back (which is roast pork, ham, swiss, pickles and mustard, grilled)... another classic combo, but this one of roast pork, sharp provolone and broccoli rabe, kicks the cuban's ever-lovin' ASS.

And I think most grocery stores have the ingredients. A good pork roast, you want not tenderloin, but loin, eye of loin, the kind of thing you'd slow roast in the oven. Sharp provolone usually won't be in most deli counters, unless they have imported italian cold cuts like a NY deli. Rico will have no problem. But it's usually available in with the fancy cheeses.

Here in New England I get an American brand called BelGioioso in the grocery store, which I believe is out of Wisconsin. They make an "Italian Extra Sharp Provolone"... aged about 12 months, and it's magnificent. That's what you are looking for, a good sharp provolone. If I go into the city, where there's an italian deli, I know I could score an expensive sharp imported right from italy, for twice the price.

Broccoli rabe you can find anywhere. Some people cut all the stems off. Not me, fuck that. I trim off just a bit of the ends, rinse, chop, and put in a pot with a little water, olive oil, and sliced garlic, and let it simmer until tender. I drink the broth of cooking these greens like soup, it's so good.

Good bread is also key. You need good and crusty. I went to my local yuppie market/bakery. Their prices are through the roof, but they have the best bread in town. $3 for a baguette and worth every penny. Most grocery store baguettes are leathery and insipid, baked off from frozen. You want a bakery where the oven has a steam jacket. You can usually see it, a pull chain like a toilet pull chain, near the oven... that releases steam into the oven during baking.

I gained a pound just looking at that picture.

It's hitting me how expensive going out for a sandwich for lunch is. When I was busier than I could handle, back before 2008, I used to go out for lunch almost every day. Now, not only can I make a sandwich better than the sandwich places, it's cheaper to boot. For the cost of two sandwiches out, I can make double that or more.

This thread is prescient. Wait a couple years. We'll all be making our own sandwiches. We might even be using back issues of Macworld for toilet paper. Glenn Beck is a bit over the top (or just early) with all the doom and gloom, but we are a Greece in the making. It may soon be survival of the handiest.

I say if we're gonna be Greece, I want to live in Sparta. We do need to be tough, handy, and have a code. OK, so Sparta's code was a little bit over the top Klingon, a warrior culture. But give me a constitution-lash for a code, and a pioneer-lash for toughness. I ain't sayin' let's be Luddites, but we definitely need to APPRECIATE technology, and emphasize what we can DO with it, other than waste time.

For all the apps and gizmos, nobody is really doing squat. These things are crib toys, when we could be doing great things. We need to start seeing this stuff as tools, a means to an end... instead of handheld idiot-making slacker toys.

Homemade Spanikopita. I made this because when I went to get bread at yuppie/liberal central the other day, I saw they had it for $2.99 for a small triangle. Two bites. Nah-ah. Froog it. Make your own...

Ingredients:
bag of frozen spinach, thawed and with all the water squeezed out of it.

Feta cheese, 6 oz. or thereabouts, crumbled

A nice aged cheese like provolone or Asiago, 4 oz. shredded

Sour Cream, 1/4 cup

2 eggs

4 or 5 scallions, finely chopped

Dash of Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper to taste

Filo dough sheets (you buy frozen in any grocery store) thawed

Melted butter (or cooking spray)

Mix the filling: Spinach, cheeses, sour cream, eggs, seasonings. Set aside

Lay out a sheet of Filo dough on a cutting board that will fit it. Working with filo dough is like working with moth's wings, they want to break and blow away, but have patience. Brush the sheet with melted butter or spray with cooking spray. Lay another sheet over top. Cut in half the long way, by just drawing a sharp knife through the two sheets. This will leave you with two long strips of 2-layer Filo with butter in between the layers.

To assemble:

Put a heaping spoon of filling near the right end of the top strip. Fold the corner of the dough over the filling to the edge of the strip to make a nice triangle. Then fold the triangle over itself like you're folding an American flag, lining up the edges and making successive triangles. By the last fold, you should be left with a nice, neat triangular package. Then do the same for the other horizontal strip.

Repeat the process until your Filo dough or your filling runs out.

This page gives you step-by-step pictures for the folding. But their filling is different from mine. I don't put dill or mint. The whisper of nutmeg, scallions, salt, pepper, cheeses and spinach is all you need for world class spanikopita.

Arrange on a baking sheet (use foil) Bake at 350° until golden brown and crispy.

(using gerald butlers voice>

This... is... SPARTA!

<throwing food inside mouth at record speed>

Yummy!