Salt: On Your Food, In The Tub

According to wikipedia Salt is: a dietary mineral essential for animal life, composed primarily of sodium chloride. Salt flavor is one of the basic tastes, and salt is the most popular food seasoning. Salt is also a key preservative. (And on a personal note, it just plain tastes good.)

 

I’ve always been partial to salt.

Pretzels, potato chips, sprinkled on freshly sliced heirloom tomatoes, hard boiled eggs or rice balls wrapped in nori. I think I loved them all as a thinly veiled excuse to taste salt. I can be seen at the Pasta Shop standing at the sampler table featuring salts from around the world, nibbling away. Himalayan Pink, Sea Salt, Grey Salt, Kosher Salt. Sal sapit omnia!

I know, I know. Too much salt is bad for you. I’ve gotten better about not salting my food. And yet, apparently since I am eating less of it, I am finding every other way to bring more salty goodness in to my world. My newest craft, soap is a type of salt! (The complete salinization of my life is coming to full circle.)

I am not alone in my love for salt. I found this blog, devoted to and extolling the virtues of the precious stuff: Salt News. Mark Kurlansky wrote a whole book about it. (Fascinating read by the way, I highly recommend it.)

Heck, people are making lamps out of salt!

I, on the other hand, am making bath salts. In my previous post, I mentioned how much I enjoy taking baths, salt is a big part of my bathing ritual. After spending a considerable sum on different bath salts that caught my eye (and nose) through the years, it finally occurrred to me that I could make my own! 

The process of making bath salts is really very easy. You pick the type of salt you want to use, your favorite essential oil, shake them up together and you are good to go. I don’t really get terribly fancy using colorants or oils in my bath salts. I might get a little crazy and add some lavender buds or rose petals. Other than that, it’s just the salt and the essential oils for me. 

Here is my Lavender bath salts with Dead Sea Salt & Lavender buds:

  

For those interested in creating their own bath salts, here’s a few links to check out for some more detailed instructions and recipes:

• Eden Organic
• Aromaweb

Also if you are in the SF Bay Area, this is a great place to pick up a sack or two of your favorite NaCl:

• San Francisco Bath Salts Company

 

And to finish up, one of my favorite ways to enjoy salt:

Radishes with Butter and Salt.

Until next time, see you at the salt lick.

Bitten by the Soap Making Bug

 

It’s true, I’ve got it bad.

I love taking baths, using lavishly scented bars of soap thick with bubbly, creamy lather. I’d scour the city looking for little boutiques, sniffing and drooling over French imported, triple-milled ovals or rustic blocks of handmade ablution heaven.

Then, I became obsessed. Obsessed with making my own soap. For a long time, I read books, looked at websites, mulled it over and over in my head. I was entranced with soap making… in theory. Yet I could not make the leap, overcome the mental hurdle of using the one element that strikes fear in the hearts of most anyone, let alone a would be soapmaker: sodium hydroxide. Lye… 

It stopped me dead in my tracks for many a year. So I spent my time making my own lotions, perfumes and things like aftershave for my husband. And the thought of making soap on my own sort of faded in to the background.

But it’s on now.

After taking a well-guided class, I am in the throes of the soaping whirlwind.  Along with my faithful accomplice (aka my husband), we’re going to the grocery store, lurking in the aisles where the cooking oils live. We drive to every Coscto, Smart & Final and restaurant supply store in the area looking for equipment, pricing oils, standing in front of the spices wondering what we can put in to our soap.

It was a soap making frenzy this past weekend. Twenty-two pounds of soap! I guess we got in the mode because we kept putting it off for so many weeks we went a little nuts. This batch is scented with a Honey Almond EO blend and I added some vanilla bean seeds for visual interest.

I owe a debt of eternal gratitude to the first soaper who came up with the idea to use the Fira storage unit from Ikea for soap molds. I’d read about someone using it at a soaping forum. What genius! In our small place, space is at a premium. The large flat drawers can hold a four pound batch of soap. The smaller drawers can hold two pounds, the perfect shape for logs! My husband, who also loves origami has come up with a quick and easy system for lining them with freezer paper.

I’ll post more in the coming days about the other batches we did this weekend and all sorts of things going on around here in the crafting vortex.

In the mean time, if you happen to see us in the grocery store, staring at a bottle of olive oil with longing, you’ll know why. 

We’ve both got it bad and that’s pretty good.