Pick your title.

Will the Exgoatmilker have any readers left?

or

What happens when you listen to friends.

Take your pick!

I have some dear friends at church who were discussing different ways of curling hair about a month ago.  It all came up when I told them I had tried just about everything to curl my hair: hot rollers, curling irons, sponge rollers, wet hair, dry hair, mousse, hair spray.  My hair  will look great for about thirty minutes then it slowly uncurls.  If I try to keep the hold with hair spray I end up with stringy straight hair.

Now I love my hair, I do, I love that it is straight and easy to take care of.  There are times though when I would like it to hold a curl.  Like for my friend’s wedding last Fall, it would have been fun to have curled it and done a loose up do with pretty curls.  I knew my hair would end up a straight mess if I did this though, so I left mine down while watching other girls curling their hair beautifully, s’alright.

Anyways, back to my friends and our discussion.  Every way of curling hair that I had already tried was suggested including over night pin curls.  One friend said “Have you ever tried beer?”.   I just started cracking up, what do you mean I asked?  She began explaining how she remembered wetting her hair with beer, then putting it into pin curls when she was younger.  Once the hair was dry you take the pins out and presto-chango, beautiful curls!  I must admit I was intrigued, beer in hair, who would have thought it?  We laughed over this, but they encouraged me to try it.

I went home that night and looked it up online.  Sure enough several chat pages mentioned how well it works, so I started looking for a chance to try it.

I haven’t had an opportunity to try it until this week.  Wednesday night I opened up a bottle of beer and left it out to go flat (this was recommended online).   I waited to try it until Thursday night as I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going anywhere the next day, just in case I smelled like beer

Thursday night I pulled out the bottle of now flat, room temperature beer.

Then pulled out thirty or so bobby pins.

I let the beer run through my hair making sure it all got wet (it took a little less than half a bottle), then toweled it off so it wasn’t drippy.  I then took little sections of hair and wound them round two of my fingers , slid the loops of hair off, then pinned it to the back of my head.  I don’t know exactly how many pin curls I ended up with, but there were quite a few.

While winding and pinning my hair I thought about a lot of things.  Like, “Boy I hope my hair doesn’t smell this strong tomorrow.”.  And, “Rats, I forgot I DO have to go out tomorrow to run errands, now I really hope there is no smell!”.  Also, “Please Mr.Crane Fly, stay up there, you really scare the bajeebies out of me when you fly in my face.”.

After finishing winding my hair, and thanking the crane fly for staying on the wall, I went to bed with the sweet smell of hefeweizen filling the room.

I woke up this morning with what we call “Bacon hair”.  Bacon hair happens when you spike or slick down hair with styling gel and it gets crispy, just like bacon.  It was completely dry though and I began to realize how the beer works.  It acts as a natural styling gel, cool!  Notice that in this photo my hair almost looks the same as last night?  There were very few wispies because of the great hold of the beer.   I left my hair pinned up until mid-morning and then let all of the curls down.  They were VERY stiff , crunchy and my hair  had spots where it was stuck together in weird clumps, yucko!  However, there was no beer smell!

I gently finger combed through my hair but noticed that the curls were loosening super fast.  I ended up with a nice wave to my hair, so I pulled it back on the sides and headed out on my day of errands.

As the day went on I noticed my hair felt a bit sticky, not as sticky as it would have been with gel or hair spray, but still a bit icky.  It was also still very crispy and the waves were quickly disappearing.

By the time I got home around three thirty they were almost non-existent.  I was left with somewhat sticky hair that was a bit stringy looking and oh so nice and crispy.

I ended up washing my hair and here is the interesting part of it.  After I had shampooed the dickens out of my hair the smell of hefeweizen came back faintly.  Now that my hair is dry it has disappeared again, I’m just wondering how long this will last

A few thoughts about this.  Beer would probably be a good idea for getting a bit more volume in your hair.  I would recommend wetting your hair with water first.  Then, with your fingers wetted in beer, run them up the base of your hair while lifting slightly.  Continue doing this until it starts to dry.  This should give more lift to your hair.

For those who imbibe, beer might also be a quick fix if you’re out and having a drink and notice a few stray hairs, slightly wet your fingers with beer and tuck the wispies into place.  Also, if you want to try this, enjoy the first half of the bottle of beer before letting the rest go flat, talk about waste!

Vanilla

About fifteen years ago some friends gave us some homemade vanilla for Christmas.  It was some of the best stuff we had ever had!  Ever since then we have been making our own vanilla.  Making your own vanilla is easy, inexpensive and just makes sense if you love to bake.

This is what we used to buy, a little 2 oz. bottle that cost way too much and did not last us very long.  I phoned into our local grocery today as I had NO idea what this size bottle was running lately.  The house brand of vanilla extract is currently $5.29 for a 2 oz. bottle!  It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.  I would not be able to bake like I do if we had to pay $5.29  for vanilla every two batches of chocolate chip cookies I made.

The vanilla extract you buy in the grocery store does have alcohol in it, alchohol free vanilla is very hard to come by.  Most imitation vanilla extracts also have alcohol in them, so don’t be put off by the following recipe for homemade vanilla.  Trust me, this stuff is tasty.

First grab a bottle of vodka from your local store.  We usually pick up whatever is on sale

This bottle of UV probably cost us between $7.99 -8.99.  We usually don’t spend anymore than that per bottle when making vanilla, or lavendar spray.  For a 1.75 liter bottle I use 3-4 vanilla beans.  There are all sorts of vanilla beans out there Tahitian, Madagascar, Mexican.  We’ve been using Tahitian beans for years with great results.  The above links will take you to Amazon where they have 12 bean packs for $14.95-17.95.  You can also buy larger or smaller quantities from their site.

Take your vanilla beans and slice them down the middle.

This smells so incredibly good, I can not even describe the sweet smell of vanilla that will fill your kitchen if you try this.

Take the vanilla beans and put them into your bottle of vodka, give it a shake to loosen the insides of the beans.  Label your bottle so you know when it will be ready to use.  I allow the beans to soak for at least three months.  The longer the better, but three months is good.  I store our bottles of vanilla in a cool dark place and give them another shake every once in awhile.

You can see in this photo how dark the vodka gets after the beans have been sitting awhile.  I believe this bottle is four months old.  All of the little black flecks you see in the bottle are from the vanilla bean.  If you don’t care for these just run your vanilla through a fine sieve.  We always leave ours grains of vanilla in the bottle.

Last Christmas I made a bottle of rum vanilla.

I prepared it the same way as with the vodka and have used some a couple of times in cookies and ice cream.  It has a much stronger flavor (as to be expected) and is a really tasty change in recipes where you would like a little more flavor.

Here is the finished rum vanilla, super yummy!

So, lets do a final cost break down.

Bottle of vodka (approximately 25 oz.) -$8.99

Vanilla beans- package of 12 for $17.99 divided by three- $6

Total cost for a 25 oz. bottle of vanilla- $14.99 or  $1.20 for two ounces.

To store your leftover vanilla beans there are a couple of things you can do to keep them fresh.  One way is to vacuum seal them into bags or jars.  The other way is to put them into freezer bags, squeeze all of the air out of them and then stick them into the freezer until you need them.

The price difference is incredible and you know what is going into your vanilla.   Three months is quite awhile to wait, so get busy, make your own vanilla.  I promise you’ll like it.   If you don’t you can just mail your bottle to me

The weekend