Bay Rum Aftershave and Soap

 

For the men in my life I made something a little different this Christmas.  I found this recipe for bay rum aftershave and had to try it.  This recipe uses a West Indies bay leaf, Pimenta racemosa, which is a different type than what you buy at the grocery store, making it hard to find!  What I did find was too expensive, so I bought a bottle of Pimenta racemosa essential oil on ebay. 

Apparently sailors in the West Indies used to rub the bay leaves on their skin to cover odors.  Eventually the bay was combined with the local rum and bay rum was invented to be used in extra manly colognes and aftershaves.

8 TBSP Vodka

2 TBSP Jamaican Rum

Pimenta racemosa essential oil (I used 2 or 3 drops per bottle)

Orange essential oil (1 or 2 drops per bottle or add fresh orange zest)

¼ TSP Allspice

¼ TSP ground cinnamon

Basically I just mixed everything together in a 2-liter bottle.  Let it sit a couple days, shaking it up every once in a while.  Then strained it through coffee filters and bottled it up in recycled yeast bottles.

Yeast bottles worked perfectly for the aftershave and I added a label on the lid along with a tag explaining the origin of bay rum. 

 

 

 

I’ve wanted to make soap for a while, and I didn’t realize how easy they had made it!  This company makes several varieties of vegetable based soaps.  You can just buy blocks of… soap basically, at craft stores.  Just melt the soap, add oils, herbs, etc. and pour into molds.   I used the olive oil base and added the bay leaf oil, a few drops of orange oil, crushed dried sage, cinnamon and allspice. 

 

 

 

 

I wrapped each bar in wax paper, tied with ribbon, and made muscle man labels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all I spent about $50 on ingredients and made thoughtful, handmade gifts for 6 people.  Plus I have quite a bit of rum left!  I tested both products on my boyfriend and they met his satisfaction.  And mine, he still smelled very manly after a full day of work!

 

 

 

Dad’s B-Day Gift – Crushed Red Pepper Flakes and Seeded Rye Crackers

 

For my Dad’s birthday this year I put together a jar of my homegrown crushed cayenne peppers and these seeded rye crackers with amaranth, sunflower seeds and fennel from the garden. 

 

My dad like’s spicy food, so I figured he could get some use out of my peppers!  Here is my post about drying the peppers, and then I simply crushed the dried peppers up a mortar and pestle until they were nothing more than seeds and pepper flakes.  So good!

 


This was my first time making crackers.  I didn’t have much wheat flour left, but I had a whole thing of rye flour.  I followed this recipe as my base and added seeds and more rye flour.  My adjusted recipe goes as follows:

½ CUP plus 2 TBSP rice milk
3 TBSP olive oil
1 CUP whole wheat flour
1 CUP rye flour
½ TSP baking powder
1 TSP garlic salt
2 TSP amaranth seeds
¼ CUP sunflower seeds
1 TBSP fennel seeds

 

Mix the milk and oil together.

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until dough is formed.

Roll out on a floured surface and cut into cracker shapes (either into squares or use a cookie cutter).  I flattened the dough to about 1 cm, but you could make thicker crackers too, just cook a little longer.

 

Place the crackers on parchment paper lined baking sheets and cook for 18 minutes at 350°F, rotating about half way through.

 

They taste great!  My dad will love them.  I put my goods in glass jars and made a couple personal labels using sticker paper and permanent markers.

(I grew Joe's Long Cayenne Pepper's; I crossed the "E" in Joe's out and put a "Y" above to spell my name, Joy :) )

Father's Day Gift Box

I always have a little trouble coming up with gifts for my dad.  If I had lots of money it would be no issue, because I’m constantly seeing cool gadgets and tech stuff my dad would love!  But I like making my gifts anyways, so when Father’s Day snuck up on me this year I decided to go with an old staple gift… hot sauce!  I made my first batch 2 Christmas’s ago (for my dad!) and I’ve been hooked.  Hot sauce is super easy to make and a great way to use hot peppers up at the end of the summer.  I’m still experimenting with different recipes, and trying to create my own perfect recipe; so this time around I tried Pepper Joe’s Island Hot Sauce Recipe.  It turned out great!  Super spicy with a hint of garlic, onions and lime!  I put it in a Mason jar and attached a sticker on the lid where I stamped out “dad’s fire breath”.

 

 

I also bought him a couple nice beers from this cute little craft beer store around the corner called The Listing Loon.  I needed something to put it all in.  I found this awesome list here that someone composed of tutorials for all different shaped gift boxes.  Using a couple of these as models, I cut a box from a larger cardboard box, glued it together, cut out handles and decorated the outside.  Then I put my gifts inside, and stuffed some ripped up paper in between the bottles so they didn’t break.  I even made my own confetti from the cardboard scraps.  I just cut them into strips and then pulled apart the layers of paper.  Easy, cheap and 100% recyclable!