Body Lotion Recipe

I hit pay dirt yesterday! My shipment from Mountain Rose Herbs finally came in and I was able to try out this lotion recipe I adapted from a recipe I found online here, www.the-soap-dish.com/basic-lotion-formula.htm. I made some changes to the formula, mainly using different oils, but more or less using their formula as a guideline.

I made this lotion for my husband, who MUST use lotion after every bath on his extremely rough, dry skin. Unlike me, pure oils and butters on damp skin do nothing for him. Previous homemade lotion recipes that I came up with were either too waxy, leaving a residue, or too oily, leaving skin dry and greasy. He has been using Gold Bond Ultimate lotion, which works great for him, but has toxic parabens and low quality ingredients. This final recipe, is comparable to the Gold Bond and has received his seal of approval.

About the lotion:

1. It is THICK. After cooling and setting up, it has the consistency of mayonaisse. It probably wouldn't work great in a pump or squeeze bottle. I've stored mine in a glass jar.

2. It penetrates quickly. My initial reaction was that it penetrated too quickly and wouldn't be emollient enough. In my experience, lotions that work take a long time to rub in...

3. It is magical. Despite penetrating quickly and feeling "watery" when rubbing it in, immediately after rubbing it in, the skin feels soft, smooth, and moisturized. It has great emolliency without feeling greasy.

Here is the recipe and directions:

Oil Phase

1 oz shea butter

.3 oz coconut oil

.7 oz cocoa butter

1 oz castor oil

.8 oz emulsifying wax

.8 oz stearic acid

Water Phase

15 oz water

.2 oz citric acid

.6 oz glycerin

additional ingredients: .2 oz optiphen and .4 oz fragrance

Directions: Boil water and allow to cool slightly while mixing and melting oil phase. Weigh out oil phase ingredients and melt in a large glass mixing bowl. Add glycerin and citric acid to water and mix with stick blender for a few seconds. Pour water phase into oil phase and mix well with stick blender 2-3 minutes. Allow to cool 10 minutes, then add optiphen and fragrance and mix with stick blender 2-3 minutes. Allow to cool for 20 minutes, mix with stick blender and allow to cool completely before pouring into glass jar.

Just a note about fragrance, it is optional, but I really like it. I used chocolate serendipity from Southern Soapers, and really like the chocolate cake scent. It reminds me of Palmer's Cocoa butter smell, which is one of my favorites.

A note about optiphen, this is a preservative, and also optional. However if you choose not to use it, then you must store your lotion in the refrigerator and plan to use it within a month.

Summer Garden transitions to Fall!

So as I have talked about earlier, I have an unjustifiable loyalty to the notion of gardening. I've cycled through 4 or 5 gardening seasons, and put in brief spurts of strenuous labor here and there, with little to show for it. I'm TRYING here! I have to give myself credit for that. Somehow, I need to muster up the motivation to try harder.

For the summer garden, I managed to till the earth several times, build a raised garden box from reclaimed scrap wood, fill it with dirt, manure, compost. Dig rows in the ground garden. I also filled several pots for a container garden of herbs and tomatoes. In the raised garden box I planted radishes, beets, carrots, and tomatoes. In the ground garden, I planted black pole beans, squash, mustard greens, okra, cucumbers, and again tomatoes. Sounds like a ton of work right? Not to mention watering and weeding consistently...

You would think that I would be swimming in produce, right? WRONG. Not to say I didn't get anything, but not enough to live off of. Obviously, I can do better. So, I will be pulling up all the summer foliage in a few days, tilling, spreading the compost pile in the ground and letting it bake in prep for the fall garden which will be planted in September. One day, I will get the hang of this...

Another Great Couple- Peanut Butter and Marshmallow

Good Lawdy this was good! I smooshed 2 halved marshmallows between some cinnamon-raisin Ezekial Bread with a smear of peanut butter, then I pan fried it in a generous pat of butter. Wonderful!

Flaxseed Gel

I bought a pound of flaxseed a while ago, intending to use it in my diet. I did use it a little, ground up as a binder in vegan recipes, or stirred into my oatmeal, but I usually forget about it. I've seen mention of flaxseed gel for hair on various hair blogs and after watching a youtube video tutorial yesterday, I decided to finally make my own. It was very easy, just boil 1/4 cup with 2 cups of water, then strain and let cool. So I applied this gel generously to my hair and got some popping curls! I am so excited to have another all natural home-made product to add to my beauty arsenal, AWESOMENESS!

Sweet Summer!

There are a few things that make the sweltering summer heat not only bearable but welcome in my opinion. One of those things is cold watermelon and it just so happened to be my breakfast this morning... this is the less common yellow meat variety, juicy and sweet!
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Hair day!

Sunday, when I went to the beach I had my hair loose and free and paid no mind to the salt water and wind. I washed it when I got home, applied conditioner and wet bunned it... without detangling. Last night I lightly washed my hair and applied a henna treatment overnight... again without detangling. This morning after dunking my hennaed head into a bucket of water twice to remove most of the paste, I washed and rinsed my hair, applied a deep conditioning treatment and sat under the hooded dryer for about 30 minutes. I then attempted to rinse out the deep treatment in the shower, it was too thick and oily to be rinsed away without shampoo, but since that would be the 4th time shampooing in 3 days I just rinsed best I could and stepped out. At this point it became clear that I was in for one hellacious detangling session. As I raked my hand through my hair it felt as though locs were already forming. I didn't have much detangling leave-in conditioner so I watered down what I did have so I would have enough to distribute throughout my whole head, which effectively watered down the detangling power of it. I was too lazy to finger detangle thoroughly and used my detangling comb for most of the job. I noticed quite a few broken hairs on my palms- not cool. I two strand twisted each detangled section, ending up with 8 greasy twists. I guess I will make another batch of leave-in conditioner and then wash my hair a little later today, then prep for a twist-out. I'll come back and post a pic of the final outcome...

ETA: I didn't rewash my hair, I re-two strand twisted my hair after it air-dried.

A time to buy!

I enjoy shopping... however I am incredibly indecisive at times. Especially with online shopping because it feels much more final to me and the items aren't tangible before purchase. None the less, online shopping has become more and more prevalent in my purchasing experience due to the fact that I live in a super small town and getting some items locally is either impossible or prohibitively inconvenient.



I have filled and emptied my online shopping cart more times than makes sense and now I realize it would be better to wait until payday so I can pay down my credit card before making any additional purchases...

I am going to limit my purchases to these 3 items: citric acid, emulsifying wax, shea butter

Hopefully, I will not be strayed between now and then...

A Day at the Beach!

Back from a day at the beach, it was intense! I had a blast and really enjoyed watching Manny frolick in the water and shovel sand with his cousins.

1 Chicken- 3 Ways

Since the other members of my family like meat and kind of want it on the regular, I have to figure out a way to get them off my back. I bought a frozen whole chicken, thawed it out, ripped it apart with my bare hands, flinging salmonella rich chicken juice all over the kitchen walls and clean dishes in the other sink, as well as on my face and body and possibly in my slightly ajar mouth (ajar from the sheer effort, my concentration face). The whole event was peppered with me shrieking hysterically at my husband to get the baby out of the kitchen and growling exorcist style at him for daring to attempt to wash a plum in the same sink I was wrestling with the chicken in.



I got almost as much out of this chicken as I could. I could have made some faux foie gras from the innards but I'm pretty sure no one, not even the dogs, would have appreciated it. I baked the legs, wings, and back at 350, after sprinkling with some Cajun seasoning. I grilled one chicken breast, seasoned with salt and pepper. I ground one breast and 2 thighs in the food processor, seasoned lightly, formed in 1/2 inch balls, rolled around in Panko crumbs, and fried until golden...my version of chicken nuggets.



My husband had the 2 wings and 1 leg for dinner with some veggies. The chicken breast will be served to him for lunch in a salad. The back and remaining wing will be served in another dinner to him with more veggies and couscous. So that is 3 meat laden meals. That should get me off the hook for at least 2-3 days.



The chicken nuggets are for the baby. He seems to like meat a lot. He ate 5 or 6 nuggets, which is a good bit for him. I made about 2 dozen. Possibly I will freeze some for future use in bento boxes.



I'm glad its over and this whole ordeal just re-confirmed why I hate food prep when it involves meat. Nagging from my husband be damned, it will be a while before I do it again. I am posting a picture below, not because I am proud, but because I think the image perfectly conveys the level of throw-it-togetherness I approached this task with...

RAW chocolate smoothie

Whenever I am totally bored with preparing food, which is sadly pretty often, one thing that always perks me up is experimenting with vegan and raw recipes or even coming up with my own. I'm not religious enough to commit to either of these lifestyle choices 100% of the time, but I flirt with the idea often enough to get my husband all up in arms.



Typically, I make fresh coconut milk 1-2 times a week. I'm not sure why I do it so often because usually I am trying to figure out ways to use it before it goes bad. Today was no exception to that routine. On top of that I had a bag of raw cocoa nibs and some medjool dates that had been sitting in my cupboard ignored for longer than I care to think about.



Usually, if I have a breakfast smoothie it consists of fresh coconut milk and frozen bananas and possibly whatever other fruit I may have on hand, but I used the last of my frozen bananas 2 days ago and also I have a raging sinus infection that has been marked with violent enough sneezing sessions that I believe I actually threw my neck out during one of them, if that is even possible... The bananas come into play in that they seem to make me more snotty, so yeah I won't be re-upping on them.



So I decided to soak the dates, grind the nibs finely, and whir it up in my blender. Also, I want to note that I used 1.5 cups of the cream (the stuff that separates to the top) of the coconut milk, in hopes that it would make the smoothie thicker. I used 2 heaping tablespoons of the nibs, and about 7 pieces of dates with the pit removed.


After whirring in my blender, I finally accepted the fact that the nibs powder wasn't going to dissolve completely and while the taste of the smoothie was great the texture was grainy. I immediately added this experience to the list of reasons justifying the purchase of a $400 blender, ya'll know which one I'm talking about. No really though, I must figure out a way to make this recipe work and still maintain its RAW-ness. I'll update when I do.

Bento Box- 2nd attempt

Manny is off to Nanny's house today and I decided to send him with another lunch. I made efforts to improve on the first bento box lunch which was mostly fruit, no veggies, and heavy on heavily processed pre-packaged snack items. This time I included a homemade eggroll, sweet potatoe patty, some fresh blueberries, broccoli florets, and a small piece of a Luna nutrition bar. I really just included the nutrition bar to take up some space on the side and also because he seems to like them. He always eats mine! He loves fruit as well and since I have plenty of blueberries on hand, I figured it wouldn't hurt to include those as well. I can't wait to hear how he liked it!

Bento Boxes

So if you haven't heard of Bento Boxes before, it is basically a portable meal that is proportioned and packaged/presented creatively. Since discovering this style of meal prep, I have taken a renewed interest in presenting my 19 month old with solid food. He isn't terribly interested in eating solids when I am around, but when I am not around he eats well from what I hear. The other day I dropped him at his great-grandmothers with a Bento Box lunch and she said he LOVED it. My heart smiled and I immediately began thinking of ways to improve these meals. The first one I made wasn't all that balanced and had quite a bit of processed food and no vegetables. Either way, it was a step in the right direction!

Garden Update!

My banana trees died and even though I spent about $30 on them with shipping I just don't feel like sending them back. Many of my herbs didn't even germinate. Chamomile seeds germinated into cotyledons that died from lack of water I suppose. Radishes, beets, and carrots are coming up niceley, along with a row of spinach. Me and grandma made four rows and planted purple hull peas, some cucumber plants, tomatoe plants, and mustard greens. Anyway, just wanted to go ahead and log that into my journal...

Spring Gardening 2010!

Yeah baby! Spring is in full swing and I actually got off my ass enough to build a raised garden bed (well actually, Jarvas did a lot of it) and do a whole mess of other things to get my container garden ready for planting. Sowing the seeds was the easy part, now all I have to do is wait... Anyway here are some pics of my work. Hopefully everything will grow in and look beatiful in a couple of months. I planted lots of herbs, 3 kinds of tomatoe, 3 kinds of lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, and radishes. Later I hope to plant some pole beans, we will see...

Garden Update

I started my seedlings in egg crates a couple weeks ago and had them germinating on top of the fridge under a fluorescent light. They came up quick and grew well for almost a week, then they wilted and died... so sad. I put so much effort into it and I'm not terribly sure where I went wrong. Possibly, I shouldn't have started the seeds in a compost mix that I baked to sterilize it? I am going to start seedlings in pots outside in about a week. Hopefully that works, I really don't know how many set backs my optimism can take before curling up to die...