Thrifty apothecary experimentations

I guess you could say we're snowed in ..

At least it's clean snow. For now.

That snowbank on the front lawn is taller than I am. It's several blizzards' worth, mind you. I'm starting to suspect the village has run out of money for snow clearing, because up til recently they were taking those monsters away every few days. Or maybe there's just no place to put it any more?

Yep.

In case I haven't yet made my point, here's the back yard ..

Now that's just sad.

Anyway, our usual ramblings are curtailed and we have some time on our hands.

Paul (my husband, heroic snow shoveller and all around good guy) needed some busy-work that didn't involve hoisting snow or tossing firewood, and opted to re-do the shelf paper in the kitchen (looks great, wow!). When I was cleaning out the drawers so he could do them too, I found my stash of pine resin from a year (or two?) ago.

Or maybe it's spruce resin. I really don't know. But it smelled nice and gave me ideas.

You see, I've been on a serious

                                             QUEST FOR FRAGRANCE 

of late. It happens every year around this time. It will be months yet til I smell something green and growing, or catch a whiff of the dew .. oh, dew, how I miss thee .. and that makes me

                                              a certain kind of crazy.

I even got so desperate I pulled out my essential oils - yes, I do own a few - and started combining them into some truly fascinating fragrances, only to end up with killer sinus issues, what a bummer that was.

All that's left to me now is to roll up my sleeves and make my own damn fragrances. From scratch.

So - I've already infused some star anise into oil. It was pretty easy, and so far (about a week in) it's already smelling absolutely heavenly.

Thrift stores are your friend!

In the pic above you'll see a small jar on a small heating pad type device. It's a "cup warmer". I picked it up at a Salvation Army thrift store, still in the original package, for $5.  Keep your eyes peeled for one, they're really handy!

It doesn't get very hot, just keeps a hot cup of tea or coffee from getting cold. I bashed up my star anise some, put it in a little jar (half the size of the one pictured above) with enough oil to cover it generously but not enough to drown it. I put a saucer on top to keep the volatile oils in, turned on the heater and walked away for a couple of hours. Well, okay, I actually checked it fairly frequently to make sure it wasn't overheating. Safety first, right? Right. When I could really smell the star anise, I turned it off, left it to cool a bit, put the lid on and I'll let it infuse for about a month .. or so.

The idea being to then turn my beautifully fragrant oil into a 'solid perfume' by adding about a third as much beeswax to the strained oil. I'll use that same little warmer to do that job, it should be perfect. Not too hot, no faffing about with contrived double boilers.

Speaking of faffing about with double boilers, the pine (or maybe spruce) resin turned out to be a royal pain to work with. Oh, my nerves .. I'd have taken pictures of the process but as I spent hours with marginally sticky fingers, it wasn't worth the risk.

I was going to do a waterbath at first, something like this from the brilliant Dan Riegler's instructions here.

(By the way, if you're into resins, go to his site!! Gorgeous hand crafted and fair trade products, wonderful writer, go, go now right after you've finished reading my post!) https://apothecarysgarden.com/

Dan's waterbath contraption.
Looks crude, but no doubt effective.

But I only had a small amount of resin, I didn't have any clamps and I figured I could do it "my way".

So I put a bowl (copper, so pretty!) over a pot of simmering water, broke up my resin from one big brown sticky lump into several small sticky brown lumps, poured twice the amount of olive oil on top and waited for the heat to combine the two. Occasionally I poked and prodded and kinda sorta stirred and all that happened was that my small sticky lumps glommed back together into one. Ha! Of course they did.

My kitchen smelled amazing but nothing was happening. Nothing. This, my friends, was down to two main issues. First, my resin was old, old, old. Second, my heat source was only coming at the mixture from the bottom. In the water bath, above, the heat surrounds the jars. Apparently that matters!

So after an hour or so of fucking faffing around I transferred the whole mess into my miniature crock pot (pictured next to the cup warmer, above). What a difference! I can't say all of the brown sticky stuff finally melted into the oil, but enough of it did that I'm content. And the fragrance got more intense, also a good sign. After a few hours I transferred the whole shebang, including the dregs, into a jar, where it, too, will infuse for a few days (or weeks).

When it's ready, I'll strain it through the corner of a clean pillowcase, then, using the third tool in the pic above (it's a potato ricer) squeeze out every last drop.

Or at least that's the plan.

The fragrance of that pine (or is it spruce?) infused oil is .. foresty. Not overly "green", I suppose because it contained bits of bark and probably lichens, it's got a nice earthy smell. I rubbed some on the back of my hand, then rubbed on some star anise and oh my .. oh MY, now that is a fragrance!

IF they end up strongly scented enough, combined with the honey/vanilla like scent of the beeswax, this might just be the fragrance fix I've been looking for. I really really hope so, because there's a lot of winter left to get through yet ..

I'll be making more infused oils for fragrance of course. Sage might be nice. All the spices in my kitchen - black pepper, cinnamon .. oooh, cardamom? have potential. Dried rose petals. Tobacco, even, when it's a good, sweet one, can have a place in a fragrance. And as soon as the snow begins to shrink enough that I can use snowshoes again, I hope to go out and get some fresh resins and maybe some poplar buds too.

And add more jars to this lovely tableau.

Oh how I love that goat.
It's fun being married to an artist!