Coconut Elvis Granola and Evil Canola Oil

You may already know this, but I am not a superfan of cereal.  Most of the time I feel like it is a little bit of a worthless thing, but that is because it is mainly marketed as something you eat for breakfast and it is (usually) loaded with sugar.  I am a strong advocate for eating something savory in the morning (after your 16 ounces of water, obviously) as it sets the tone for your palate for the rest of the day.

But.

Sometimes you hear something that just inspires you.  I used to eat cereal.  Growing up, that was breakfast.  If I was lucky, it was going to be Lucky Charms (with as many marshmallows as I could possibly get).  As I got a little older, I thought I would refine my tastes with muselix or granola.  You know how that is - it's the fight in your mouth.  The challenge of the hard clumps that cut the top of your mouth - really, I've heard it said that there's nothing like it to wake up to (except maybe a good set in the chlorine).

Because I never buy it, my children think that it is Christmas, their birthday, and Superbowl Sunday all in one if we have cereal in the house and they end up acting like they are some kind of deprived and starving animals and eat it for dessert and the $6 box is gone in a day and a half.  (Well, that was worth it.  Not.)

Today is some sort of snowpocalypse and everyone is out of their minds.  People aren't going to work; children aren't going to school.  Instead, they are playing video games, skiing, and going to trampoline parks. 

This was the day that the granola was destined to be made.

I had a recipe from a friend that was called "Elvis Granola".  Out of all of the people I know, this friend is the all-time world champion of granola eating, so I knew that it was going to be legit.  This "Elvis Granola" contained peanuts and chocolate, so even though it was basically dessert, I figured it was worth a try, even if that try was going to actually be dessert and not breakfast.

There was only one problem.

The original granola recipe called for canola oil.  Excuse me?  Canola oil?  No.  No way, José.  As if I would use poison in my recipe! 

What's my problem with canola oil?  Well, first of all, approximately 90% of canola oil is made from genetically modified ingredients and sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate - made by Monsanto).  Glyphosate is a known carcinogen.  That looks like a bunch of cancer all over the place.  I'll pass, thanks.

The other problem that I have with canola is that it is inherently modified.  Canola oil wasn't invented until the 1960s in Canada, and it was invented because of a demand for a cheap oil (olive oil had a price point that was too high for manufacturing of faster foods).  It was derived from the rapeseed plant (within the mustard family).  Using it as rapeseed oil without hybridization led to a host of issues mainly because of its toxic levels of erucic acid (which can also be found in other members of the Brassica family, but has high concentrations in rapeseed and canola), like blistered lungs and skin. 

Good news, though.  It is used to make paint because it will adhere to wet metal, which is great for ocean vessel applications.  Mmm, practical AND tasty.

By 1978, chemical companies figured out how to get the erucic acid levels lowered a bit so that we could escape the pesky business of lesions on lungs and other problems, and so they could market it to manufacturing as a cheap alternative. 

In 1995, the brilliant scientists found a way to inject the DNA with a bacteria so that it could be resistant to Roundup, making it possible for farmers to spray mass amounts of Roundup on their fields, killing all of the weeds, but the canola plant would survive.  Genius?  Yes.  Diabolical?  Probably.

Canola oil is highly processed and also very reactive to heat, light, and pressure, causing oxidation.  (That means rusting in your body.  That means premature aging and degenerative diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, and WRINKLES.)  When canola oil is heated, it produces high levels of butadiene, benzene, acrolein, formaldehyde and other related compounds.  Have you heard of any of those?  Yeah.  Poisonous carcinogens.  Awesome.

This study shows the unfortunate side effect of how canola oil decreased levels of vitamin E so drastically that some animals died.  (They supplemented vitamin E to see if and how that would help.)

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I decided that I would sub out the toxin for coconut oil so that when my offspring saw homemade granola and decided to go on a wild binge, I wouldn't be contributing to their early deaths.

Here is what I did instead.

Coconut Elvis Granola

Preheat oven: 275 F.

 Mix these guys in a pan: 1/4 cup organic coconut oil, 1/3 cup maple syrup, 1/4-1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter,  1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon.  Stir.  Cook a few minutes until you think it isn't going to do anything different.

 While that is simmering, get a big huge bowl (Pyrex for vintage feels) and dump in: 4 cups organic oats, 1/4 cup ground flaxseed, 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds.  Mix it all up.

Dump the warm liquid into the dry crunchy.  Mix all over until everything looks so happy.

Pour onto two stainless steel (seriously, do not give yourself Alzheimer's with the aluminum baking pans) baking sheets and spread out.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotate pans, bake for 20 more minutes.  You may need a little longer than that, but check it at the 40 minute mark.

Let it cool.  Add a bunch of non-soy dark chocolate chips.  I like Enjoy Life brand because they don't have any allergens.  This is how I made it the first time, but I would add shredded coconut to the final mix because dark chocolate and coconut are bae together.  It would benefit the overall flavor to double the peanut butter and make it 1/2 cup instead of a wimpy 1/4.

I did not eat this for breakfast, and I won't because I am an egg and toast kind of girl, but it is an amazing dessert.  I poured it over my organic, grass-fed, whole milk plain yogurt and ate it until I thought I might make myself throw up.  Moderation?  I doubt it.

If you try it, let me know how you like it.

Peace, love, and actual granola,
Ms. Daisy

 

 

Amused at Kombucha Class

What up, peeps?  I was teaching a kombucha class tonight along side of my dear friend, sidekick, promoter, and I'm just gonna say it - agent (you so are, you know it).  

We were talking about the benefits of probiotics and kombucha when one of the ladies asked about the differences between home brewed kombucha and what you can buy in the store.  My personal kombucha is less fizzy than store-bought stuff, I don't know why or how, or if it's better or worse, it just is.  She mentioned how many of the kombucha sold in stores has chia seeds in it (which are a great source of omega 3's).  I said that you could surely put chia seeds in your kombucha (although some people don't like to chew their drinks).

At this, a sweet lady (who is cool - she has chickens.  Enough said.) said, "Chia seeds!  For lunch I had a donut with ice cream, but I put chia seeds on it!"  

I laughed so hard.  

I love this.  

I love this for the humor.

I love this for the irony.

I love this for the thought behind it.

This is a picture of knowing enough about eating well, but eating what you crave, and then maybe feeling a smidge guilty, so toss on some chia seeds.  

That meal is a picture of the United States.

Enjoy the little bits of life.  Be amused where you may.

Peace, love, and chia seeds on everything,
Ms. Daisy

Homemade toothpaste

This post is dedicated to my beloved dentist friends and family: Uncle Jim, Michaela, Susie, Daniel and Jen.  What you read here may horrify you, but I'm quite sure you won't be surprised.

I nearly ran out of toothpaste yesterday.  There's some in there, but it's at that stage where you are flattening it on counters and pounding the life out of it in hopes for a sudden blobbage.  I was thinking about the many uses of bentonite clay and I wondered if there were people out there who used it to brush their teeth and if there was any benefit from doing so (or if they are just plain crazy).  

The impending lack of toothpaste sped forth my immediate need for researching the topic. What I found was both illuminating and helpful.  (As you can well imagine.)  Apparently, people really do this thing of brushing their teeth with bentonite clay (among other things) and I was not imagining it (now, how many people exactly do this thing remains to be seen - I may indeed be in a club of an illustrious four people, but I am not alone).  

Bentonite clay is a detoxification agent.  It also contains a good source of minerals.  Adventurous people EAT it.  Yeah, seriously.  They eat dirt-like substances.  I haven't tried that yet, but according to Redmond Clay, native people would carry around a little pouch of bentonite clay for digestive upsets.  I personally don't eat the clay, but I do use it in my deodorant recipe, for face masks, and now in toothpaste.  

This information leads some people to suggest that there may be remineralization properties available to your teeth via the use of bentonite clay, and because of the detoxification qualities, it may also help with gum health.  I mean, it sounds good too, right?  Scrubbing your teeth with dirt?  Well, it sure beats Colgate Total's triclosan endocrine disruptor junk of death paste. 

I looked up a recipe and found one that seemed fairly straightforward (and I had all of the ingredients, minus the GoToob, which I got from REI - plus some awesome aerobars for my bike, but that is a different story and is my Mother's Day present - thank you, honey!  But I digress.).  I found the recipe at Overthrow Martha.  

Don't you want to try it?  I know.  I can hear Michaela even now wholeheartedly agreeing with this idea.   

Here is the recipe:  

1.5 Tbsp. bentonite clay (I get Redmond.)  
2 Tbsp. filtered water (I use R/O remineralized with Vitev REMIN)
Step 1: mix them together.  
Step 2: add the other ingredients, which are: 2 teaspoons of baking soda, a tablespoon of coconut oil and 10+ drops of essential oil.  She adds fine sea salt, but I don't want to scratch up my awesome chompers.  And as far as the essential oil goes, I did not listen.  My peppermint essential oil has a totally open bottle top lid and I think I dumped a teaspoon of essential oil in the mix.  EXTRA MINTY, people.  She also points out that you should not use metal anywhere with this recipe, as bentonite clay sucks toxins out like nobody's beeswax, and maybe you like to brush your teeth with aluminum, I don't know, but probs we should just stick with non-reactive things like glass or the GoToob.

It looks SO DISGUSTING, which I think adds to the whole positive experience of it all.  It's non-foamy grey toothpaste for crying out loud.  It is like drinking kombucha.  You just inhale like a boss and nod smirkily while you do it and I'm pretty sure it makes you tougher on some level.  I mean, hello?  "I brush my teeth with clay.  You probably don't want to mess with me."  It goes without saying!  Are you worried about not having fluoride in there?  (As a side note, I have not had any cavities since I switched over to using non-fluoride toothpaste and before that I was a 4 cavity a time kind of dental patient.)

Here, read up a little bit on poisoning your brain with fluoride:  
Wreck your brain - and fast!
It's way funner to be dumber!
Let's do it anyway, even though we know it's totally horrid for you!

So, are you wondering what the response is to using it?  I told my hubby I made toothpaste yesterday and so when he got ready for bed, he opted to try it (very brave soul - just think of all the things I subject him to on a daily basis).  I was already laying in bed, cringing quietly and waiting to hear what he would say.  

It went like this:  
Him: I'm going to try that toothpaste you made, I guess.
Me:  (Oh boy, here we go.)  Kay.  Let me know what you think.  
Him:  (squirting grey toothpaste onto his toothbrush...putting it in his mouth...brushing for one second) Weird! (muffled)  It's...salty!  
Me:  Well, yeah.  Of course it is!  (?  I think it sounds better if you respond that way.)  Him:  Oh, it's very minty.  
Me:  Yeah, I know.  
Him:  It's getting...minty-er.  
Me:  (ahem) Yeah, uh, that's um, how...I...made...it.  So, do you like it?  
Him:  Yeah, it's okay I guess.  
Me:  WIN!  

And that is the story of an obviously very positive personal account.  I think I brushed my teeth like five times yesterday to keep testing it (along with randomly asking family members, "Do I have stink mouth or am I good?").  It still works.

The kids have not tried it yet because they watched me make it and they keep saying that their mother is brushing her teeth with dirt.  Well, suck it up buttercups!  (Can't you make it white, Mom?  No.  Stop being a baby.)  

So, if you ever run out...hey...join the club!  

Peace, love, and minty fresh, 
Ms. Daisy
 

Zit Removal Guide, the Daisy way

My face thinks it is 15.  

I predictably break out once a month (thank you, hormones).  This is payback for my teenage years when I think I got 3 zits total from the time I was 12 until I was 21.  Now, you can set the clock to my zits.  Awesome.  But even though I'm in my 30's, it still stinks to get blemishes.  I mean, it's not life crushing like when you're 16, but it is still stupidly annoying.  

I tried Crunchy Betty's face scrub with milk and nutmeg, and it does make you have a baby butt face (that is - your face is so soft it feels like a baby's butt, not that you are a small butt face), but honestly, I think for the zits, it really might only help a teense.  

I was wondering what was out there that would be helpful to crush the life out of the red little hormone dots in my life, and I may have stumbled upon something.  Now, obvs, different things work for different people because of our different chemistry, but this works for me.  What's the secret mix?  

Well, if you followed Crunchy Betty a couple years ago, you may remember the month or so when everyone was washing their face with honey.  Were you on that bus?  I tried it.  It was pretty cool.  Honey is anti-microbial, and filled with wonderful enzymes and lots of other goodies that make it a wonder.  

One day a few months ago, I had a few zits and the thought dawned upon me to combine the wonderful properties of honey with the scrubby exfoliating powers of nutmeg (yeah, seriously, but don't use nutmeg on your face more than twice a week - the overdose of nutmeg on the face looks like your face got into a fight with sandpaper and a cat). 

I poured a small blob of honey into my hand, sprinkled nutmeg into the mix, squished it around and slimed it on my face (in an upwardly circular motion, of course - I really should be less technical, but I just can't...).  I stared at my weird looking face in the mirror for a few minutes, thinking this was likely a necessary step in my experiment.  I pretended I was at a spa as I layed a hot washcloth over my face (even though I was standing in my vintage 1950's bathroom - but hey, when you have a washcloth over your face, you can pretty much pretend you are anywhere) and then followed with wiping the magical mess off.  

I don't have any hard empirical evidence, but from my point of view, I honestly think it was helpful in zit reduction.  It makes sense that it could be, anyway, right?  You have the anti-microbial properties of the honey gutting out your zit dirt (I think that's the scientific name for it), and the nutmeg is smoothing to the areas on your face that are having skin distortion/flaking/etc.  Anyway, it  worked for me, and if you want to try it, I hope it works for you.  

Happy zit reduction!  

Peace, love, and grow up, face, 
Ms. Daisy

Ginger Beer: Explosively Good

Hello and welcome to the kitchen of Ms. Daisy.  Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to get drenched in a liter of your own homemade exploding ginger beer?  Have you ever had a desperate longing to dodge glass shrapnel in your own house?  Did you miss out on the era of Drano bombs and you have deep regrets?  Have you ever wanted to scrub every surface, every crack, corner, nook and cranny of your basement?  Well, have a seat, and you can vicariously live through my fun afternoon. Follow these simple steps and you, too, can have the fantastically sticky and memorable experience you've always dreamed of.

It all started about ten days ago when I got the itch to brew up some homemade ginger beer.  I have done this before (but not with such explosive results) and the taste of ginger beer on a hot, summer day is the stuff dreams are made of.  So I got out my trusty Nourishing Traditions cookbook and flipped to the back of the book where lies many fabulous beverage concoctions.  (Kombucha included.)  

Some people do it differently, but with NT, you make a ginger bug by adding 2 teaspoons of ginger (dried) and 2 teaspoons of sugar (organic) daily to 1.5 cups of filtered water for 7 days.  On the 7th day, you pour off the liquid of the bubbly bug and add water, sugar and lemon juice and then bottle that baby up for 14 days.

I bottled on June 9 (today is the 12th).  I filled up each one so carefully not to spill a single drop (as this whole process takes at least 3 weeks - and it is so good, you don't want to miss any - and you know you're going to want to drink every single bottle on day 1 and have to start right over again and wait another 3 weeks for another sip).  I placed them in a row in the dungeon basement.  Weren't they so cute?  Yes, they were.

Until today.

We went out to Costco for some organic spring mix and bananas (but epic fail, this Costco is ghetto and doesn't carry organic ones) and then over to the favorite health food store to stock up on vitamins.

Upon returning home, I instructed one of the littles to whip up a batch of dog food (this entails soaking her $50 dog food in pancreatic enzymes that are crushed with a mortar and pestle in tepid water for an hour).  This little is a dramatic little.  Upon approaching the area where the dog food is prepared, screaming ensued.  "Emergency!  Emergency!  Help, Mom, help!!!"  

Now if any of you have dramatic littles, you know that this could mean any number of things.  It could mean that there is a spider on the ground; it could mean that laundry is on the floor in the wrong spot (this little is very particular, I might add); it could mean that the computer is smoking and shooting out laser rays into onlooker's eyeballs, blinding them for life; or it could mean there is broken glass.  I skipped through the others and flat out asked, "What?  Is it broken glass?"

Which bottle would you like to drink out of?

If you have a house filled with females, perhaps this is not the first thing that you think of.  If you have a house filled with boys, you know that you will bag up one broken item of glass at an average of twice a month and it is somewhat of a standard issue.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner - broken glass it is.

With a twist.

"And, Mom!  There's ginger beer all over everything!  Everything is all wet!"

Oh goodie.

One of my ginger beers has exploded.  This means two things - I need to clean that up and second, what is the likelihood that several more are waiting to explode this very minute?  Let's go find out.

I want you to imagine that you love ginger beer.  And it is a good thing you do, because your basement will never NOT smell like it again.  

"Little, bring me the paper towels!" Little comes back with ONE paper towel.  Yeap, that's gonna do it.

After three towels and flamboyant use of paper towels, the place was cleaned up.  There is a sink there and I thought it would be a good idea to test out the other bottles inside of the sink and let off some pressure if they were also about to blast the basement to smithereens.

Let me ask you.  Have you ever wished you could be one of those baseball players who wins something or the NASCAR guys when they shake up a bottle of champagne and spray it all over your face?  If you always wondered what that was like, I can tell you.  It is sticky.

I EVER so slowly opened the cap to one of those bottles and Mt. Vesuvius erupted straight upward, all over the ceiling, all over the walls, all over the everything.  Do you know what happens when you try to use your hand to contain it?  That would be called your own Personal Ginger Beer Shower.  Great.  There are three inches of liquid left.  Good thing I was so freakin careful not to spill a drop three days ago, eh?

Where were those towels again?

The next bottles were opened out of doors.  I think the ants are happy.

Well, gotta go scrub off.  I'm sure ginger is good for your skin somehow.  After that, maybe I'll have a sip of ginger beer.  Or I could skip washing a cup and just start licking my arms.  Whatever.

Peace, love and bottoms up,
Ms. Daisy

Silver Polish, version 2.0 - the easy way

 I wrote a post a long time ago wherein I found a recipe for silver polish from the Compendium for Cookery (circa 1890) - it's here.

I am glad for that recipe, but it is a paste.  And you know, with pastes, you must slather and slop and blaggle (I just made that up, but you get the idea) it all over the silver items in all of their nooks and crannies while scrubbing.  And your hands have to touch the stuff, which gets you all silvery smelling (do you know what I mean?  Its that sort of sulfur smell, sort of unpleasant, but not completely overpowering?) and all dirty.  

If it is between that recipe and the general run of the mill toxic chemical stuff made in factories and sold to you at your favorite retailer, I will choose the sloppy blaggle every single time - both for the reason of cost (to make a paste it costs about five cents - well, okay, I don't know, but I'm just guessing.) and for the toxic exposure.

BUT!

Oh, my lovely friends.  You have to try this.  I have something that is homemade, cheap, and you DON'T HAVE TO TOUCH OR SCRUB!  Wooo!

So, I'm having a tea party tonight and I looked at my china cabinet and was like, um yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, people are going to be choosing their tea cups today and alas, there, beneath the tea cups, is the silver tea set which looks like it was in a soot fight with Mary Poppin's friend, Bert, who cleans fireplaces.  So.  I tried to dig out my old paste recipe and didn't have it on a 3x5 card in my handy-dandy 3 ring binder, so I went online.

What did I find there, m'dears?  A very simple recipe for a silver dip.  No, not like you're going to eat the dip with chips, a dip to dip your stuff in.

(Just in case you were wondering.)

It looked so easy I had to do the science experiment.

You need to try this.  For real.  It's cheap, quick and did I mention there is NO SCRUBBING?

Yes.  Ahem.  

I am partial to those kinds of things, especially when I am in a hurry like today.

Here's what you do:
1.   Get your disgusting looking tarnished silver and marvel at how utterly horrid it looks.
2.  Fill up your sink with the hottest water you can.  Make it deep enough to put your silver items in so that they will be submerged.
3.  Put a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of your sink.  I just made it about the size of the sink.
4.  Sprinkle salt and baking soda into the cauldron sink.  I don't know how much, maybe 2 teaspoons?  Maybe 2 tablespoons?  Whatever.  You don't need to measure.
5.  Stir it up with a wooden spoon.
6.  Place disgusting looking tarnished silver items in the water.
7.  Wait.  It may lay in there for up to 5 minutes.
8.  Watch as before your very eyes it turns from black to shiny silver.
9.  Cheer.
10.  Figure how to get it out of there without touching it (this is a Ms. Daisy thing.  I suppose you could touch it, but I don't know how toxic it is.  I used tongs to lift it out and the wooden spoon to balance it.).
11.  Dry it with some paper towel.
12.  Marvel at how shiny it is and you didn't even have to do anything difficult.  Wow.  Yeay!

I believe the last time I actually polished my silver was that last post, so you can imagine that it was quite oxidized.  If this is all it takes to clean silver in the future, I may actually be inspired to keep it clean.

I had to tell you.

Now, go on, try it!

Peace, love and party, party, tea party,
Ms. Daisy

Zits: the joy of all joys

Lovely title, isn't it?  Oh, yes.  Well, let's get real.  Zits are a fact of life.

Pop that thing, girl!

Some people get loads of them while they go through their teenage years and then are relieved when they hit their twenties and the zits seemingly stop.  I, however, think I had four zits from the time I was 13 until I was 21 and then get them now more frequently in my thirties.  It's a wonderful life.


But now - as of these last three or so months, I have almost eradicated the nasties from my face completely!  I don't know exactly all of the causes, but I did only one thing dramatically different.  This caused me to wonder if this change was indeed quite helpful.

At any rate, I thought I'd share it with you so that if you'd like to try it out, you may.  Perhaps it will bring you a measure of success (and I hope it does!).

Now, most of you know that I already make my own eye makeup remover and facial cleanser.  They're both simple recipes - the eye makeup remover is nearly 50% witch hazel and 50% organic extra-virgin olive oil.  Pour those into a little container, shake 'em up, squirt on a cotton round.  The facial cleanser is witch hazel steeped with thyme leaves.  (Thyme is a natural anti-inflammatory agent, thus a zit-shrinker.)

Until a few months ago, I was using a store-bought moisturizer.  I need a moisturizer because I slather my face in chlorine every other day and without it, I have that feeling of your skin being ripped to shreds if you attempt smiling or speaking.  It's lovely.  I hope you've experienced such loveliness to know what I mean.  Now, the moisturizer was labeled 100% natural (which, you know, means totally nothing), but I was using it anyway - mostly because it was somewhat inexpensive ($17, not $70) and I could pronounce the ingredients.

Store-bought 100% natural moisturizer.

But I think there was something in there that just bugged my face.  I would get a zit like clockwork (girls, you know what I mean) and I chalked it up to hormones.  (Indeed, I think it was.  But the other half of the story is that I don't think I was helping myself any with what I was putting on my face.)

So I ran out of my moisturizer and as I went to the store to get more, they didn't carry the item anymore!  What the heck!  I went to a couple other stores and they didn't have it either.  Usually this means it's time to go find it on ebay or amazon, but I went a different direction.  I thought, "Well, what the heck.  I already make the eye makeup remover and the facial cleanser, what if I try making a moisturizer?  It's worth a shot."  

I didn't really know what to make it out of, so I went to my favorite crunchy granola hippie health store and looked at their $70 facial moisturizers.  I read their ingredients.  Some of them contained questionable ingredients that I wouldn't really want to put on my face, especially since I would have been paying ridiculous amounts of money for it.  I noticed a thread of ingredients and decided I would just go with simple and try mixing up the basics.

I used three ingredients: coconut oil, jojoba oil and shea butter.  If you know anything about these ditties, you know that two of them are solids at room temperature.  That is all good and grand, but it makes it a bit more difficult to combine with an oil and rub on your face in any good way.  So, I did the Crunchy Betty thing and melted them up and mixed them together.

I wish that I could remember the exact proportions, but I never even use exact proportions for baking, so I lament to you that you may be out of luck for this if you're into the precise.  I can give you an idea, though.  I would say I went about equal measures of the coconut oil and the shea butter and then did a few squirts of the jojoba at the end.

I used a stainless steel pot to melt the coconut oil first and then added in the shea butter.  I remembered from a Crunchy Betty recipe once that she said if you let it go too long, you can get weird grainy results with your shea butter, so I just mixed it all together until it was a liquid and then took it off heat.  This was when I made a hopeful squinty face and squirted in the jojoba oil.

I put it into a glass facial moisturizer bottle I cleaned out for just that purpose and stuck it in the fridge to get it to solidify.  (Now it lives in my makeup bag like a good little moisturizer.)

If you're used to having white colored facial moisturizers, then you may be a bit weirded out that this puppy is yellow (due to the shea butter), but I can assure you that your face does not turn yellow.

And dudes.  I totally don't get zits anymore.  It was just what my face needed.  

(Is this so ironic?  Wasn't your first reaction to "put oil on your face" the exact opposite?  I'M GOING TO GET A THOUSAND ZITS!  I know.  But I haven't.  And it was in all of those expensive mixes, so maybe it's just cheeseburger oil you don't want to rub on your face.)

If you want it to come out liquidy, you have to heat up your bottle under hot tap water and then squirt it out (which I did initially because I was brainwashed into thinking this is the only way to get moisturizer on your face).  I switched over after about two weeks of doing that to just opening up the bottle, lifting the straw-like thing up and wiping a little blob onto my finger.  Works like a charm.  The warmth of your hands and face turn it into a liquid anyway (since coconut oil is a liquid above 76 F).


It's really lovely!  I say if you're out of yours and you're up for mixing it up in the kitchen that you give it a try.  It sure is a heck of a lot cheaper than $70, $17 or even $7.  I haven't figured the price, but I'd say it cost under $2 to make that batch, and even perhaps under $1.

Knowing your ingredients, knowing how to do it, saving money - what's cooler than that in the world of facial moisturizing!?

Peace, love and let us always bond together to fight the good fight against the attack of the zits,
Ms. Daisy

Making Grape Jam

Yesterday I stirred up something like a cooking project tornado.  I must have been energized by my glass of kombucha or something, but I decided I was going to experiment with fruit. 

I love experimenting with fruit!  

So - the first fruit batch I got my hands on was a bowl full of apples that I had foraged (I foraged!  Theoretically, I feel like that should be filed under Indiana Jones.  However, I was more like a dressed in pink girl wearing cowboy boots standing on a dirt road getting bitten by bugs while throwing apples from a wild apple tree into a bag.).  No, I did not steal them.  These were wild apples out in God's country and I finally got to see why on earth those orchard people love to spray their apples with pesticides - mine looked like they went through a war.  But they tasted fine.  And I'd rather have non-perfect looking apples than those that look perfect but contain poisons (apples top the pesticide list, now you know why!)...even ask Snow White how she feels on that one. 

I didn't know how much it would yield, so I just decided to go for applesauce instead of apple pie or something more complicated.  And plus, it is relatively difficult to mess up making applesauce.  

It was yum!  The offsprings were making passes through the kitchen to sneak bites.

It was easy, it was done.  So I thought, what's next?  What could I possibly get my apply hands on now?  I need a bit more of a challenge!

Violá!  Applesauce!

A spattering, staining, deep purple challenge I got!  The lightbulb went on...ah!  Yes!  The concord grapes!  I could make jelly or jam!

Why not?  After all, the offsprings decided it was too much effort to eat these grapes (that is seriously pathetic), what with all the bittery sour skin and then spitting out the seeds that were the size of half the grape in the first place.  That delicious goo was stacking up short compared to the challenge of eating them.

I looked online and found something I liked very much.  Here's why.  Almost all of your jelly/jam/preserves recipes are going to have two things that I HATE in them.  The first thing is 9,285 gallons of sugar and the second is artificial pectin.  It seems like a fruit massacre when you do stuff like that.  I can't be bothered to participate in such fruit murdering nonsense.

This recipe, however, had neither one of these disgraceful things!  Glory and hallelujah.

Here is the basic gist of it:

You need - concord grapes, sugar (but not 9,285 gallons), a stainless steel pot, a bowl, a strainer, a wooden spoon and a little bit of time.

What you do:

1.  Wash off your grapes.  Duh.
2.  Squeeze the grape inside out of its skin.  Put the skins in one bowl and put the grape insides into the stainless steel pot.  This can become rather fun if you get into a good fast pattern.
3.  Warm up the mushy gooey insides over medium heat.  Meanwhile, stare at the bowl of grape carcasses in amazement.
4.  Bring your mushy gooey grape insides to a boil and watch as they turn into a total pool of gush.  This takes about five minutes.
5.  This is the challenging part: when it becomes goo, now you get to figure out how to get the seeds out of the puddle.  This is done by mainly burning your hands on boiling goo when you realize your strainer is completely useless and the technique you are using with your wooden spoon is made for someone else who is a whiz-bang in this area.  This is when I poured the goo into a cheesecloth folded over doubly and then I began strangling it into the pot.  I hoped that I could make the seeds stay in the cheesecloth, and some of them did, but mostly they shot out like bullets.  Hot bullets.  And boiling hot goo.  I ended up fishing them out mostly with my fingers for the ones I could not manage with the cheesecloth.
6.  Stare at your new puddle of goo.  Think, "Oh crap, is this all it makes?!"
7.  Put it back on the heat anyway.  Add in the grape skin carcasses to the mix.  Squash everything up like one big happy family.  Boil it again for about two minutes and notice how everything looks a very stainingly dark color now.  Kinda like grape jelly.  Oh wait, it is  supposed to be something like that.  Good.

Would you get a load of that fabulousness?!

8.  Add sugar.  I used 1 cup.  I don't know how much fruit I started out with, though.  It filled up a large bowl.  The original recipe said 3 cups of sugar.  I never do that.  That would be over the top.  I like the taste of fruit more than I like the taste of sugar, anyway.
9.  Mix it up again and try to get it to 220 F.  This is pretty much impossible since it boils way before that and spatters all over everything in your kitchen within a twelve foot radius.  My kitchen isn't even twelve feet long, so you can imagine.  And remember the color of it?  Yeah, don't worry, you won't be forgetting it any time soon.
10.  Put that pot of preserves into your handy-dandy jar that you were just waiting to use for such an occasion.  I popped it right into the fridge to use asap, but I suppose if you're into complicated next steps like using the pressure cooker, go right ahead and can it properly for long-term storage.  Mine was for short-term eating. 

It made about a cup and a half of preserves.  And the color was very delightful.  You could paint your kitchen with it.  You may need to after you get done with the spattering.

It was all worth it in the morning, though, when I had it on homemade toast with scrambled free-range eggs and cracked black pepper and pink salt while I sipped my new favorite tea (no thanks to you, Typhoo, you pesticide-laden naughty pants!), Higher Living organic English Breakfast.

Peace, love and if I find a good way to get the purple out of the cracks of my fingernails, I'll let you know,
Ms. Daisy

Eat Dirt!

Hello, lovelies!  Just so you know, the title isn't an insult or an attack, it's my new crazy idea for you.

I have been reading Dr. Weston A. Price's book on his amazing work (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration).  This book is OFF THE HOOK, YA'LL!

If you aren't familiar with it, here's the basic deal.  Dr. Price was born in 1870 and published his book around 1937.  He was of Welsh origin and was born on a 200 acre farm in Southern Ontario.  He grew up to become a dentist and a researcher.  

The book is written in layperson terms (albeit using very dated language  - you have to just get over it and realize that his common language of the time did not hold the same volume of offensivity as it does today, ex: savages/primitives/calling everyone on earth "Indian", which, by the way, drives me up an insane wall).  An-y-way, he travelled the world in search of native people groups who were sheltered and untouched by current  "modern" diet (white flour, white sugar, refined messes of pretend foods laden with preservatives, etc.).  

His travels led him to the Loetschental Valley in Switzerland (which is my idea of heaven), people of the First Nations in Northern Canada ("Eskimos"), Native Americans, Melanesians, Polynesians, isolated African tribes, Australian Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders, New Zealand Maori, and the native people of Peru.  Seriously, thank GOODNESS he went when he did.  I don't know if there is anywhere that survives on true traditional diets anymore.  His purpose was to reach people who had not been exposed to the modern diet in order to see what was going on with their teeth (remember, he was a dentist).

What he found was absolutely amazing.  In each case, even though the foods were all different (people living by the sea ate tons of seafood, the Swiss ate the rye they grew and lots of high quality butter and cheese, some African groups ate almost exclusively meat, milk and blood), they had no cases of dental ill-health.  Their teeth were straight, their palates were wide (so that the teeth were able to come in straight), there were no dental caries (cavities) or disease.  

This corresponded to their overall health.  We do hear of this today, but I believe we hear of it in a backward way.   You hear that people who floss and have good oral hygiene are more likely to have good overall health.  I believe that instead of thinking brushing your teeth and flossing are the key to good health, that rather it is proper nutrition that promotes not only good dental health, but also the production of overall health to your entire body.  I do believe you ought to be brushing and flossing, but I think your whole body will respond to proper nutrition, including your teeth.

Now, to the dirt.  In the "Practical Application of Primitive Wisdom" section, Dr. Price talks about how "primitive" treatment suggested that allergies be cured (and prevented!) by the use of kaolin clay.


I decided to be a bit of an adventurer here.  I have some bentonite clay (Redmond brand - a brand that is for internal and external use).  I usually use the bentonite clay in my homemade deodorant recipe and for facial masks (when I think of it, which is about once a year).  I have been having allergy sniffles for about 3 or 4 weeks and I thought, HEY, what the heck, what if I tried this?  So I did.  I totally ate dirt, ya'll.  (I mixed it with water, shook it like I was shakin' what my mama gave me and threw it down the hatch.  1/2 teaspoon of clay with about 6 oz. of water, in case you wanted to know the exact amount of craziness I participated in.)

I only have done it once so far, so I don't know if I'm quite cured yet, but I'll let you know.  So this spurred me on to check out other uses of bentonite clay.

It is crazysauce the amount of things bentonite clay can do for you!

You probably know that you can help your bee stings and bug bites by making a paste of baking soda and water.  Let me tell you, lovie, that ain't got nothing on bentonite clay.  

I was excited (and disturbed) to find that my dear hubby had some poison ivy so I could try out my new concoction.  (Same day as my eating dirt experiment - the joy!)  I made a paste and told him to slather it on in a thick and crazy way (I'm pretty sure if I were a physician, that's how I'd put it on the prescription label for instructive purposes).  We put it on around dinner time and I told him to just keep it on for as long as he could stand it.  I am not sure, but I think he either washed it off right before bed or slept with it on his wrist all night, so it was on for a while.

Dudes, I am telling you what.  He woke up this morning and there was NOTHING THERE.  I don't know if this is normal or if we are just special, but the itch stopped and there isn't any red on his wrist.  He was freaking out more than I was.  I smiled, gave him a pat on the head and said something like, "Stick with me, kid.  You'll be all right." Secretly I was cheering and clapping in my head.

Bentonite clay works by being an adsorbent.  Yes, I'm not dyslexic, I said aDsorbent, not absorbent.  It has a crazy property of grabbing toxins and delivering them to your excretory system (like my beloved kombucha!).  I am supposing that the allergic stuff got sucked out through his pores.  Or magic.  Either one.

But the myriads of uses for such clays are prolific and multitudinous!  Just listen to this.

Externally:
- stops itching from insect bites, poison ivy, chicken pox
- gets rid of ZITS!
- soothes eczema, burns, psoriasis and MRSA (some people say it cured their MRSA when nothing else worked)
- fabulous face mask-ization
- cures diaper rash
- calms and cures mastitis
- use in a bath for detoxification and softening skin
- use as an ingredient in your homemade deodorant!  ;)

Internally:
- oral health: you can use it to brush your teeth (I don't know if you should consider this as internal or external, it's sort of in between)
- oral health: you can use it with water as a mouth rinse - some people swear it helps remineralize your teeth (I prefer Standard Process' Bio-Dent, personally.)
- some people take 1/2 teaspoon in the morning with water to help with morning sickness during pregnancy.  Ask your midwife or OB/GYN, first, though just to make sure it is okay for you.
- 1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon in a cup of water for digestive aid and detoxification
- some people use it for alternative cancer treatment
- reduction of the effects of radiation

There are piles more of anecdotal cures that you could resesarch if you have the passion to do so.  I thought it was rather exciting enough stuff to share with all of you, anyway.

Peace, love and go get some dirt (NOT FROM YOUR BACK YARD, which, by the way, is what my hubby thought I did at first when I said I ate clay),
Ms. Daisy

Never give up! Natural wood staining solutions

Happy Labor Day!  This is for all you do-it-yourself project bosses.  (And sorry I've been out - I had a vaycaycay without internet connection.)

Ello, daaahlings!  I was trying to decide what to call this post - something about almost dying or something about wood.  The story it is inspired by contains both, and no, I didn't almost saw my hand off (this time, anyway).

The world of wood stains is vast, crazy and...toxic.  Have you ever tried to find something at the store to stain wood?  Have you ever read their labels?  If you haven't, it looks like this: Warning - Toxic.  You're Gonna Die.  Contains Poison and Death.

But I was desperate!

The offsprings have had access to this little window ledge since they were wee tots toddling along, scratching every type of Matchbox, Hot Wheel and the like across it and varying speeds and velocities.  Now if it were just that, it would be one thing, but alas, no, the dog (and the previous dog) thought that it would be a perfect location for propping up front paws on to look out the window to bark and howl at every passing person, dog, squirrel, leaf and blow of wind.  This has left this once pristine piece of wood in a state of utter disrepair.  It looks as if I've had an angry cat/velociraptor who just couldn't resist scratching the spot to death.  It was covered in ugly scratches.

Yuck.

What to do?

I decided it would be simple to just sand it down and restain it.

Simple is not the word.  Let's go with horrid and impossible.

It began all right.  I got some sandpaper and worked on that puppy for two hours until even the sweat on my head was intermingled with sawdust.  Oh, what a lovely exfoliator.  What a myriad of benefits, indeed.

Then it was time to give the stains a try.  One was called "honey" and the other was called something else that depicted something light colored.  I can absolutely assure you that these were not even related to anything light colored whatsoever.  They ought to have been called something like "Deep Mud" or "Spilled Coffee".  I put a test spot on my newly-sanded wood and stepped back to see how it blended with the rest of everything.  It looked exactly like I was purposely trying to ruin it more.  It was great.

Now this would have been just fun as it was, but WAIT, THERE'S MORE!  Yes.  Included in this nightmare of totally ruining the wood was the added benefit of neurotoxins!  I began feeling a little woozy and then slightly confused...and then my jaw began to involuntarily tremble and shut on its own.  Yes, I did have the windows open.  I had a fan on to blast the stink air out of the window, but still, I was having quite a bad reaction.  I decided that this weird reaction was just going to get worse if I stuck around and played with the extra cool Dirtbag Coffee color so I packed it up and decided to return it.

I walked around the hardware store with my offsprings.  I didn't know what else to get.  Maybe a clear stain?  Maybe water-based would be better?  But they still have this long list of junk in it and what am I gonna do if I get lockjaw again?  I was slumping around, dismayed and distressed when all of a sudden, my offspring said something.

"Mom," said offspring, "You know what to do.  You KNOW it.  You gotta go home, get on the internet and you've gotta figure it out for yourself and make something at home.  THAT'S how you do it, Mom.  Do NOT give up!"

"Child," said I, "But this stuff is like paint!  I don't think you can make it at home."

"Come on, Mom.  You can.  Just try."

Offspring was right.  Dude.  You can totally do it at home.  I started looking it up and people make stains with plenty of household items.  You can use tea, cocoa, and myriads of things.  If you want to make it darker, you can make up something to deepen the color by putting some steel wool into a jar of vinegar.  It breaks down the steel wool and makes the color ten times darker.  All without lockjaw.

I wasn't looking for something so deeply colored, I wanted a lighter stain.  I happened upon a guy who built a hanging rack and who stained it himself.  It was exactly the color I wanted.  He made a paste of beeswax and some olive oil - and all of a sudden, I rejoiced.  I went from being near depressed (with lockjaw) to elated.  Crunchy Betty had a recipe for wood wax that was just that!  What if it worked?  I ran to the cuboard and pulled it out (you want this recipe, trust me: http://www.crunchybetty.com/wonderfully-simple-homemade-wood-polish-recipe ).  

It WORKED.  Perfectly and exactly.  Glory hallelujah!

Next time, listen to the kid.  You can do it!

Peace, love and skip the lockjaw,
Ms. Daisy