Let's Talk About About Homemade Soap and Lutefisk

Home made soap. It used to be something people made at home. My husbands Grandma used to make it with lye and pork lard! When you add lye to melted pork lard, it chemically reacts and turns into a chunk of soap. The chemical reaction is called 'saponification.'

I read about saponification somewhere, long ago. I read about it way back when Grandma was still alive. Making homemade soap. It's one of those words that is rich in syllables. Six, right? [sap-on-if-i-ca-tion] It is apparently what happens when you make homemade soap.

My husband's grandma was very creative. Grandma used to make soap using pork lard and lye. She'd heat up the pork lard, get it melt-y and apparently add the lye to it and stir. It would change chemically, or saponify, and become hard.

She'd then cut it into blocks and the family would use it for soap for their hands and the laundry. It worked very well. [Making it sounds dangerous to me.] I cannot actually say I ever watched her do it. I remember seeing tables with cake pans and cookie sheets sitting around, but the soap was already done by this point, and ready to cut.

Did you know that the container of lye says 'do not get on your skin or ingest'?

Which makes me think of lutefisk. People used to have Lutefisk dinners around Minnesota. Maybe they still do. I have never had it nor been around it, so I cannot say for sure if my facts are correct. I'm just thinking about it. Lutefisk is fish that is cured by being soaked in lye, somehow, and then they eat it. Cooked, I guess, or hope. Yikes! Scary.

Does that sound good to you? Doesn't lye say 'not to ingest' it right on the label? U-m-m-m-m, 'hello!' Do not eat it.

... maybe it is one of those 'don't knock it until you've tried it' dishes? I do not know. Perhaps lutefisk is a greasy fish? H-m-m-m-m. Does that sound delicious to you? Not to me. Sorry.

I just thought of the soap thing again. A picture of a washboard came to mind. I am picturing people carrying their clothes to the river and smacking their wet clothes on rocks.

Around Minnesota, they wouldn't have been able to do that very well. First of all, our rivers freeze solid in the winter. Second of all, the rocks by our rivers are usually covered with a brown or green goo. [I would imagine fish poop or something.] Probably some white goo from birds, too.

E-w-w-w-w-w! I am sorry, but that river stuff is certainly nothing you'd want to get on your clothes.

... sorry I brought it up!