Mountain View Barbecue--Green Cleaning with WARHORSE Multipurpose Cleaning Soap and be kind body soaps

Mountain View Barbeque Goes Greener: Innovative and Creative with Be Kind Solutions

Mountain View Barbeque is Western North Carolina’s (maybe in the entire state) first restaurant to use a green cleaner and natural soaps made from its own kitchen and vegetable oil. Shane and Holly’s soybean oil is recycled with Be Kind Solutions. Also, Elizabeth Russell, Holly’s sister who usually greets customers from behind the counter, introduced biodiesel and glycerin soaps to the Be Kind family fours year ago. Liz made biodiesel and soap for her senior graduation project. So, it’s natural that Mountain View’s oils are pioneered into biodiesel. Then, the biodiesel’s glycerin is refined and handcrafted into Be Kind’s non-toxic, chemical-free WARHORSE Cleaning Soap and Primitive Body & Foaming Soaps, completing a truly innovative, sustainable circle.

soybean plant is harvested, pressed and makes soybean oil




used vegetable oil is filtered, processed, cleaned, and becomes biodiesel
and glycerin. Glycerin is distilled and refined for 40 hours, and used
to make glycerin-rich, non-toxic, awesome cleaning and body soaps.

Yes, our WARHORSE Multi Purpose Cleaning Soap and Primitive Body & Foaming Soaps are handcrafted from recycled vegetable oil. This vegetable oil has cooked the food you have eaten, and vegetable oil is a recyclable and natural product. So, Mountain View Barbeque’s potato chips are prepared with and contain the very same soy bean oil that we use to make biodiesel and glycerin soaps. From plant, to oil, to Mountain View Barberque, to Be Kind Solutions, to recycled byproduct, to biodiesel and glycerin, back to Mountain View. And, Mountain View recycles their gallon vinegar jugs with Be Kind as well. Businesses helping each other.

Visit Mountain View for great barbeque, grilled salmon on spinach salad, tasty wraps, and awesome homemade potato chips. You can purchase Be Kind's WARHORSE and PRIMITIVE soaps as well.

Tired of Scrubbin' Clothes

This woman, about 107 years old, probably made her own soap from the pig tallow that came from Oscar Mayer's butcher shop, located on the north side of Chicago. It was brown too, just like Be Kind's Shower Gel Soap. However, hers didn't have essential oils or a fragrance like Kudzu Blossom, nor was there sweet almond oil. And she certainly wouldn't have frittered away local honey in her lye soap. Gosh, she looks tired...and wishes her father-in-law had taken Oscar's advice about expanding their family bakery.

Before the days of ph test strips or digital ph meters, this woman
would have put a dab on the tip of her tongue to see if the soap
was too "hot," or akaline. If it stung the tongue, she added fat and threw some more wood on the fire.

The chemistry for natural soap making is essentially the same--oils + lye + water = soap. Today most soap makers use fixed vegetable oils such as castor, coconut, grape, or almond. Each oil adds a particular attribute to the final soap. Be Kind uses glycerin (cleans, softens, attracts moisture to skin), saponified soybean oil, castor oil (lather), sweet almond oil (moisturizing). With all the glycerin that we keep in the soap, the basic recipe doesn't need much--maybe some vinegar to adjust the ph and an essential oil or fragrance. Just like the wash woman, I taste my soap as well. Then, I follow up with my handy dandy digital ph meter, calibrated before each use.



I like making soap like the wash woman did--a primitive process, I guess. But, she didn't have all the advanced tools that I do--my boat paddle. And I'm sure glad we have a GE front loader and not that wooden bucket. Sometimes, if the work clothes are bad enough, they go in a bucket of water and some WARHORSE, then left to dry.

Food And Soap: THE ANALOGY: It just keeps happenin'

Seems like I've traded one type of cooking for another. The biodiesel setup looks like a cross between a giant pressure cooker and a moonshine still...or something much more sinister; and my pic where I am stirring my concoction has gotten a few comments including, "witch...brew." See, boat paddle keeps me out of the witch category--they don't stir their potions with boating equipment....Yes, my "brew crew" did get a little out of hand on bottling night...overkill on the goggles. Here's the pics from the blog to recap what I'm talking about. You can visit the blog articles to get the ugly details...


....soap witch...glamorous...glycerin brew and the paddle...


...witch's flying monkeys...

There's just some simple cooking going on: Pizza Upstairs, Soap Downstairs...

Carl, the tireless-Kansas-oil-pump, makes a pizza in the real kitchen.


That bottle says Ragu, but really holds my homemade
pizza sauce. Really.


Ed and Petey hope Carl gets a little sloppy with
the cheese...


After pizza, I go down to the soap kitchen


Pots and bowls, ugly brown soap on a rack



But I'm still cooking, with natural, local ingredients.




Be Kind Soaps--almost good enough to eat. But don't, it is soap.