This morning upon waking at a very monastic hour (pre-five) I laid in bed and mused about how I might make my own hair wax to help tame my new do. (A friend gave me a free haircut at a fabulous Aveda salon in downtown Princeton and my sweet stylist, Jennifer Grey, cut about eight inches off the bottom of my hair and took out at least half of its "interior weight." Basically I have a very layered but not too short hair style. Its fun but a bit unruly.) So, I grabbed the last bar of organic beeswax (the family that sells them are very sweet and put out a fun handwritten newsletter) I had in my closet left over from Ben and I's Valentine's Day candle making party. I made a make shift double boiler in the kitchen pulled together some essential oils, my organic coconut oil, olive oil, and jojoba oil and melted them all together. Result? I love it. It makes my hair piecey and a bit shapeable without being gunky. Success.
That inspired me to continue on to mix up the shampoo suggested on Old Recipe for A New World to alternate with my baking soda and ACV routine. That blog further inspired me to make my own deodorant. I didn't have all on hand they required so I subbed coconut oil for cocoa butter and shea butter, and jojoba for vitamin E.
Last night I mixed up this recipe for Coconut Chocolate Pudding I found at Progressive Pioneer. I subbed raw honey for sugar in decreased quantities and upped the cocoa content then topped it all with sliced bananas. very dark very YUM.
Last week I made this recipe for vegan chocolate cake, double yum. As we are more and more avoiding white sugar in our house I subbed agave nectar for the sugar in the cake, and maple syrup for the sugar in the frosting. I topped it all with sweet blue flowers and raspberries. I am not a pro when it comes to dessert but this was easy, beautiful, and delicious. I highly recommend it.
All this concocting is leaving me hungry to make more and buy less. Perhaps soap will be next. We'll see! Anyways its satisfying me as I am in my winter homebody season and can't play quite as much outside. (Isn't this gorgeous? This is one of the places where Ben and I stayed three and a half years ago when we backpacked Western Europe!)
What have you been enjoying making recently?
2 comments:
Lovely post, and the hair wax sounds wonderful. If you want to dip your toe in on the soapmaking, I'd suggest doing it in a crockpot. Fast results. Not entirely as wonderful as cold processed, but close enough. We have such a small house that I didn't have room for curing soap, so the crockpot method worked realy well. I could wait until the kids were in bed and then pull out the lye that I didn't like working with when they were up, and when they got up in the morning the counter was piled with soap. I bet when they are 50 they will laugh about how they could hear me banging the bubbles out of soap molds late into the night and I hope remembering the good smells they woke up to.
Um, yum. Could you send me some of those delicious vegan desserts over here?
:)Lisa
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