Vinegar Cheese

Uses 1 gallon of goat milk
1/2 cup vinegar

Bring goat milk to a boil. Remove from heat, and stir in vinegar. When milk curds, wrap in cheesecloth tightly and squeeze out extra liguid. Leave wrapped in cheesecloth for 4 hours or over night, unwrap and slice cheese. You can place it in a colander with a bowl under it or hang over a bowl so that it drips.  You can add a little salt when stirring in the vinegar, too.

You can add anything you like to this cheese, onions, garlic, chives, mint, etc.  Use your imagination. 
This cheese will not melt you can add it as a filler in foods or fry some up for breakfast, it makes a tasty snack too.

Simple Goat Milk Soap

2 cups of Lard (or any other solid fat, i.e., crisco)

3/4 cup of Goats Milk

2 oz of lye

I freeze my goats milk before making soap.  I freeze it in glass quart jars in either 3/4 cup or 1 1/2 cups (depending on if I am doubling the recipe).   Measure everything exactly.  I use a stainless steel pan to melt the lard on low/medium heat.  While melting the lard, I pour half of the lye onto the frozen goat milk, as the milk starts to melt I stir and add more until all of the lye is mixed in with the milk and it is all melting.  By this time all of your lard should be melted.

Remove the pan with the lard from the heat, pour the milk/lye mixture into the melted lard (NEVER POUR THE HOT FAT INTO THE MILK/LYE MIXTURE), I then use an electric mixer to mix this to trace it takes about 27-33 minutes for the recipe, if you double it it takes about an hour to get to trace.  Once you are at trace you can add any herbs, ground oatmeal, essential oils or fragrance oils at that time.  I only add about 2 oz of any additional liquid, but add about 1/2 cup of ground oatmeal or herbs, depends on the size of the recipe.

Once at trace, pour into your mold and cover the top with either saran wrap or wax paper to keep it from ashing on the top.  After 12-24 hours take your soap out of the mold and cut it into the pieces you want and let cure for at least 3 weeks.

For molds I use just about anything, an 8x8 pyrex dish lined with wax paper, cleaned pringle cans, velveeta boxes lined with wax paper, anything you can think of.  You can also purchase soap molds.

**Note - Please be sure to wear gloves - this is a very caustic mixture and will cause chemical burns if gotten on your skin***

Here is a link to a lye calculator, you should always run your recipes thru a calculator. Lye Calculator
 

Laundry Detergent

You can make your own laundry detergent and save lots of money.  I took a recipe and modified it (of course if you know me I cannot follow a recipe without changing it) to get it to where I like it and it even cleans my two legged kids clothes and my sweaty hubby's (if I put stinky hubby's - he would be offended).

1 bar of Zote* grated and chopped into small pieces in the food processor

1 cup of grated goat milk soap [GMS] (I use the soaps that didn't turn out and were to hard to cut - so I grate them and use them for laundry soaps)

1 box of Borax 76oz - found in the laundry isle of your store

1 box of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda 55oz

I use about half the bar of Zote (I use goat milk soap) and a cup of grated GMS, then mix in about half the box of Arm & Hammer and about 3 cups of Borax.  I use the big plastic folgers cans to mix all this up in and shake it all around, with the lid on of course, to mix up well.

I use 1-2 tablespoons for a large load of laundry.  If it is my hubby's dirty, stinky, oops I mean sweaty clothes I will use 3 tablespoons of detergent and it works great and doesn't cost an arm and a leg, plus it lasts a long time.

I use the food processor after grating the soaps so that it is very fine and will melt in the washer, otherwise you could have pieces of soap all over your clothes.

*Zote can be found in the laundry aisle of your store.