Crockpot Hot Process Soap Adventures

Iiiiiit's official! I made me some SOAP! So. An important detail in this story: when we were moving here someone dropped my crockpot and broke it, not the ceramic part, but the heating element. Ye ol' husband thought it was a terrible waste to toss it (keeping the ceramic part to have two and getting the same crock pot again to use it in), so he decided he could fix it. He did fix it. Sort of. But now it cooks unevenly, burning one side and undercooking the other side.
When we started this whole "learning how to make our own soap" thing I knew I would have to come to grips with the fact that my crockpot cooks unevenly and figure out what to do about it. Fast forward two months. After scrounging around our local stores for 100% Household Lye drain opener, and NOT finding it after purchasing a bottle that looks exactly the same that I noticed had little metal flecks in it (aluminum) and looking it up on the Internet (the bottle didn't say it had aluminum, I had to go to the product website)... I ordered it on Amazon.
After wasting so much time trying to find some, and then waiting for it to be delivered (they accidentally delivered it to my neighbors who were gone for the weekend) when YOH (ye ol' hubby) brought it home I got a little over-enthusiastic (as happens to me on occasion! Hahaha) and got the oils heating right away. Oh wait, did I mention that this "fixed" crockpot also always smells like burning plastic when you use it? Talk about a major turn-off for making crockpot meals!
So, I measured my lye crystals and water and took them out on the porch to mix so there wouldn't be any fumes to poison the babies with. Mid-pour the wind changed directions and blew the lye fumes RIGHT INTO MY FACE!! So I swished around the lye water with my measuring spoon as my face got hotter and hotter until it was well mixed and I started feeling like I might lose my eyebrows to this learning curve. Luckily I had put out the vinegar on the counter "just in case there's an accident" so I doused a hand towel with it and wiped my face down REAL good. Everything was fine, so I brought the lye in to cool on the counter while I stirred down the oils to cool to 110*, not remembering that you don't have to cool anything when you're making hot process... Oops.
So when appropriate I mix the lye water with the oils in the crockpot, the oils emediately went from clear to opaque. I took that as a good sign. I STIRRED THAT SOAP FOR A TOTAL OF FOUR HOURS. Hahahahaaaaaa. Oh man. ANYway, for the first two hours I stirred it with a wooden spoon, as fast as I could without slopping the soap out of the pot. I wasn't sure my whisk would be lye-proof and I didn't want any metal melted into my soap. After Prudle-doodle's ENTIRE NAP had gone by and I could see nothing was changing with my soap I heated it back up to 110* and switched to the whisk, hoping and praying it wasn't reactive metal. It wasn't. THEN after ANOTHER hour had gone past I thought to myself "hmmmmmmm.... Lye turns oil into soap through saponification, and saponification causes heat, I wonder if heat would cause saponification??" So, being the uncertified scientist that I am, what did I do? I CRANKED UP THE HEAT!!!
After turning the crockpot up to high I whisked away for only about a half an hour before I started noticing lines in the soap as I stirred... Trace? Trace? Is it trace??? I've never made soap before so I could only guess if it was trace or not. My arm was tired though (no kidding, right?!), so I went on to the next step of crockpot soap making, turning the heat on low, putting the lid on and DOING NOTHING!!! For forty-five minutes at least.
Sooooo... Being the impatient person that I am, after twenty minutes I decided to take "just a peak, I swear!" Which revealed to me that my soap was foaming up like it's supposed to, but it was almost outgrowing the pot. Soooo I stirred it down. At this point it resembled a cross between applesauce and mashed potatoes. I could tell it was "gelling" like it's supposed to, but I could see white streaking along the side that over-cooks things, CRAP! I forgot! So I stirred a little more, freaking because half of it was over-cooking. I yanked it off the heating element, and slopped it into molds hoping it wouldn't be crumbly after it cooled from over-cooking.
I left the soap on the counter to cool overnight so I could remove it from the molds. The next day I saw the top half of the clear molds were soap-like and solid, but the bottom was like jelly. The glycerin hadn't mixed in all the way. Luckily, I had read about rebatching when things go wrong, so I (literally) ripped it out of the molds, chopped it into chunks and tossed it back into the crockpot. At this point I was glad it didn't turn out the first time because it still smelled like olive oil (this was an all veggie batch because I already had olive and coconut oil in the house), so after I got the soap all into the crockpot I added in two cups of boiled-down coffee (it was a 7# batch), a tsp of nutmeg and a Tbsp of paprika (for color). AND I remembered that my crock cooks unevenly, so I set the timer for ten minutes, and switched between low and keep warm, and turned the crock every two temperature changes. I was melting! It was gelling! Yay!
Some rebatchers say stir, some say don't stir... I decided to stir. I got out my heavy-duty potato masher and went. to. town! After all the add-ons were mixed in, I let it cook down for two more twenty-minute crockpot turns, and VOILA! Soap! I poured it into my waxed paper covered wooden mold (it holds 10 pounds of soap!), here I use the term "poured" loosely, meaning scooped and patted down with slightly dampened hands. My delightful smelling soap is now curing on top of the microwave, and I'll cut it into bars tomorrow. Whew! What an adventure.

Cut it out.

When my husband and I decided to move and commit ourselves to learning how to be self-sufficient... We had so many PLANS. We PLANNED on growing our own food, raising our own chickens and making our own much-used dairy products (probably 80% of our protein and fat consumption is from dairy products). The problem with succeeding with your plans is that you actually have to DO them.
So, first, the things we planned on doing that we are actually making steps towards doing.

1) Stop using paper products and use unstead reusable ones. We have achieved not purchasing any more paper towels, and use regular ol' terry cloth washcloths instead. We are using washable rags for wiping (pee only!) in the bathroom, but only part of the time, it hasn't really stuck as a habit yet because we ARE still providing TP for the OTHER business and guests... Planning on looking up reusable TP for all use and the care thereof this week, so I'll update about that when we succeed. We are using cotton handkerchiefs instead of tissues (this is a BIG money saver for me because I have pretty severe allergies and go through boxes and boxes of tissues in the spring and fall). We had been using cloth diapers instead of disposables until our drier broke a few days ago, and now I've reverted back to the hateful disposables. Naw dang. I've been thinking about this one a lot because not only do I want to stop using disposables that I hate, but I want to have already considered how I'll be drying our diapers when we don't have any electricity and it's winter... We don't currently have a wood burning stove here, so I can't just put a drying rack up by the stove... We recently tried putting up a line across our living room, but it took one load ALL DAY to dry, so that's not a very practical solution.
2) Stop purchasing bread from the store. This we've been working up to since moving and now it's become a real practical part of our lives. I make bread for the hubby's lunches every Monday, and make the whole weeks worth. The only part about our current routine that I don't like is that I'm still using instant yeast. I've been growing a wild sourdough starter for a few weeks, but so far I'm not thrilled with the texture. It's real... cakey. We're discussing my taking Wardeh's online sourdough course.
The other things we're working on are of course, growing our own food and getting ready for our new animals, but that's a whole other post.
Thanks for reading! Be thoughtful! Be blessed!