Nifty Chevy Hood Ornament

Bob made a nifty hood ornament for my 1988 Chevrolet Caprice. When we bought it a few months ago it had a cheesy aftermarket Chevy emblem strapped to the hood with a bungee cord. So tacky. Bob replaced that arrangement with a fancy acorn nut but that developed rust (drat rust, it's the bane of vehicles in Michigan) so he fashioned this new, improved custom bow tie emblem from a chunk of aluminium.

If you know us, you know we love 1980s box style Chevy Caprices. We bought this one from an old woman in Flint, who'd had a stroke and hadn't driven in a long time. She insisted she was still able to drive since she was able to see out of the inner part of her left eye and the outer part of her right eye but her sons thought differently. I feel for her. I hope I have the sense to stop driving if I become a danger on the road.

This is the second low mileage Caprice we have gotten from a Grandma type person. I told daughter Sarah that and she stifled a snicker. I had briefly forgotten that I have slipped into the Grandma category, too. I guess now the Grandmas are just shifting Caprices among us.

I hope there is, as we speak, another Caprice parked in the heated garage of a long lived Grandma who'll in about ten years decide to sell it to that nice couple, Bob and Chari. We are currently looking for another Caprice for one of the senior members of the Grandma club, my Mom. I hope we can find her a good one, too.

I wasn't always a convert to the Caprice club. When Bob and I first married I needed a new car and wanted to buy an AMC Pacer. Does anyone remember the Pacer? It looked like a small fish bowl on wheels and came in groovy 1970s colors. The seat adjusted so far forward you could drive with your nose pressed up against the windshield, if you wanted. The seat fit me perfectly and visibility even for a shorty like me was fantastic; the car was all windows. Well, Bob was very nice about it but he did point out that he wouldn't be able to drive the car since the pedals were so close together his foot depressed accelerator, clutch and brake all at once. Sigh... I saw a spring green Pacer in a parking lot last year. It is the only one I've seen in at least twenty years. Actually, they disappeared fairly quickly, starting with the back fenders. By the 1980s the only Pacers you saw were so eaten by the rust moths that parts flapped in the wind as the car chugged down the road and then even those sorry examples were seen no more.

Anyway, if you see me out and about in my blue 1988 Chevrolet Caprice take a gander at my hood ornament.

Venison Soap Success!

It looks like the venison soap project was a success! The cut bars are aging and even a week early they are pretty good for hand washing. They still don't lather much but it was pointed out in Making the Most of Your Deer by Dennis Walrod that sudsing just keeps the bubble part of the soap away from your skin where it is needed, so we are not going to fret about that. The soap does clean well and rinses clean and odor free so we are happy.

It is lye soap, though, so I wouldn't use it as face soap. We saw an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies on television the other night where Granny is helping spruce up Ellie Mae and has carried water to an old wooden tub for a bath in the kitchen. Jane Hathaway is on the mission, too, and has arrived with perfumes, soaps and fancy duds. Jane is horrified to see Ellie Mae using Granny's lye soap and protests. Granny says she has used it her whole life and they all look at her skin which Jane says is "leathery." Yep, Granny says proudly. So unless we are after the look of leather, I think the soap is best reserved for hands.

Bob cut the soap up into bars and trimmed the fancy molded ones and now it is aging. There is still a chance that some unencorporated pockets of lye could be lurking inside the bars but in all the slicing and shaping Bob found none. The soap would still be usable so I am confident in proclaiming success.

Making Venison Soap

The deer Bob shot during his November hunt was the fattest he had ever seen so we decided to try to make venison soap. Not soup, soap. I had been thinking of making soap from olive oil and so had gathered most of the supplies, including a book called Soap by Ann Bramson. Her directions are detailed and somewhat complicated. Since none of her recipes included venison tallow, I went to the library where I found Making the Most of Your Deerby Dennis Walrod. His instructions were breezy and he said making venison soap is no more complicated than baking an apple pie. Well, after having done it I'd say he's right, if you include grinding the wheat for the crust and growing the tree for the apples. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but it is considerable work.

There are a lot of supplies to gather. An accurate scale, since all the measurements are by weight, a big tall pan which can be heated over a double boiler, a sturdy glass jar for the lye that will stand 200 degrees, two thermometers, a wooden spoon, and vinegar for possible lye burns. Of course, you need fat and lye, too. The lye is marketed for drain cleaning and has to be 100 percent sodium hydroxide. I got ours at Menards. A tested recipe is essential, too.

First, you have to pare away all the meat from the chunks of fat. This was a nasty job. We then ran the chunks through the grinder Hal and family gave us, then rendered it down on the stove to make about 3 pounds of clear fat which when cool looked good enough to eat, sort of like white chocolate. I wrapped the creamy white disk in plastic wrap and stored it in the fridge.

Lye is nasty stuff. I mixed a solution of 6 ounces to one and a quarter pints of water in a glass jar and the resulting heat and fumes were exactly as advertised. I also added 1 tablespoon of borax at this point, which is supposed to increase sudsing. While the lye cooled down from over 200 degrees to the 105 degrees that is required, I heated the fat to 135 in a double boiler arrangement. Finally, the temperatures were right and Bob slowly poured the lye solution into the fat as I stirred. One set of instructions said we'd be stirring up to one and a half hours, the other fifteen minutes. Actually, it took one half an hour.

You can tell saponification has taken place when the mixture turns a creamy white and when the soap drizzled off the spoon leaves a trail on top of the liquid. I wrote words, made stars and hearts which all lay quietly on top so I figured it was done. Well, maybe not because when I poured the mix into our cardboard molds there was liquid at the bottom. Rats! One book said, no big deal. The other said throw out the mess. I bet you can guess which said which.

We covered the molds with cardboard and a blanket and let them set for 24 hours. Yesterday, we removed the soap and it is now air drying for the two weeks Miss Picky's book recommended. We tested the chunks that broke away from the molds and it does clean your hands although it doesn't suds as much a commercial soap, despite the addition of borax.

We'll carve the big bars into little ones and in the process will see if there are any liquid bubbles inside or if there are layers of different looking soap. That would be a bad thing so I am hoping the bars are solid.

I like the idea of using as much of a harvested animal as possible so I will try making venison soap again in the future. We use the meat, of course, and have tanned the hides but I had never thought of making soap from the fat.

You'd think I would have had enough for now of the whole thing but I am thinking of Olive Oil soap... I think I will look for a bargain on a big jug.