"Cleansing"

[Pyewacket]

There is no need to use "leaf" lard for soap. Unlike pie crusts, soap does not care if the fat came from under the skin or from around the kidneys. So, commercial lard (Armour, Snow Cap, etc) is fine for soap. It does have BHT and BHA added as a preservative, which you would need to research the safety of for your allergies.

As to the tests you had 15 years ago, there have been lots of improvements and changes in allergy testing since then. They also have tremendously better methods to de-sensitize than they did long ago. So, it might be worth your while to find a new doctor that has the new information. A coconut allergy is life changing, as you well know.

Yeah, I understand that, that was just me being didactic. It's terminology. Sort of like peope objecting to a soap that isn't 100% olive oil being called "castile", and other people objecting even to a 100% olive oil soap being called "castile" if it doesn't conform to a specific process. I'm a baker. I've got terminology too, LOL!

 

[Pyewacket]

Like everyone else before me said, a soap recipe with “0” for cleansing works well, but it won’t strip your skin.

Sorry to hear about your allergies! I actually formulated a bastille soap specifically for people with your exact sensitivities, so there are no nuts, coconut, wheat/gluten, milk, or glycerin other than the natural byproduct from the soap making process itself. I can send you some if you like, just so you can be clean. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to have that specific allergy.

If you don’t have a sensitivity to the following oils, they may help: sunflower oil, avocado oil, grapeseed oil. I want to say you can also use corn oil, but I’m not sure as I’ve never used it, so I don’t know how it will turn out. I just know it’s inexpensive and readily available just about every where. You can add a little bit of sodium lactate to help firm up the bars. Hope this helps!

To my knowledge my only allergies are coconut, babassu, and probably palm if the goat milk soap I bought that gave me hives in a tender place was honestly labeled (it was supposed to be made only of goat's milk and two palm derivatives). I've got various bug allergies and the fairy normal allergies to poison ivy/oak/sumac (and raw mango no matter HOW much I love it) but those are the only soap-making things to which I have known allergies.

So all those oils are fine. I would pass on the corn oil because apparently it has a really short shelf life in soap. I can get grapeseed oil pretty affordably. I can get avacado and sunflower oil but they're more expensive, and I can get olive oil fairly affordably as well.

I just don't know that any of those bring anything to the table more than I would get from a 100% olive oil soap, except maybe a faster cure? But there is also Zany's non-slimy castile soap to look at that apparently cures a lot faster, and someone else seems to have been able to turn his castile soap bars into liquid soap without having to wait for a full cure. And I have a castile soap recipe that states a 6 week cure - but it really looks like a pretty bog standard recipe. I could be wrong about that given my total novice status. I need to post it on recipes and see if there's actually something special about it.

Basically I'm willing to go for anything I can make myself from locally available ingredients to which I am not allergic, LOL! But I am not knowledgeable enough to make up my own recipe for something that isn't the norm, and the norm these days is lots of coconut and palm products. I get castile soap, its just the long cure time that concerns me. And I'm looking up "sodium lactate".

I've got to the point where I'm confusing myself, I've actually read TOO MUCH the past few days. LOL!

 

[Susie]

Yeah, I understand that, that was just me being didactic. It's terminology. Sort of like peope objecting to a soap that isn't 100% olive oil being called "castile", and other people objecting even to a 100% olive oil soap being called "castile" if it doesn't conform to a specific process. I'm a baker. I've got terminology too, LOL!

Thank you for the warning.

 

[Pyewacket]

NOTE ABOUT CURRY LEAF TEA

Unlike everything I else I "cook up" for my hair, this is the one thing I can't stick in the coffee pot and let cook for hours.

Last night I was cooking a batch up late at night, it was ready after about 30 minutes (starting from cold water, count on only about 15 mins if you're doing it stovetop and don't bring it above a bare simmer). I meant to get up and take it off the heat. Instead I fell asleep. Flipped the coffee pot on to warm it up this morning without really thinking about it and shortly was met by the most awful dead boiled spinach smell ever.

It had continued to cook after I fell asleep and overcooked. The autoshutoff is at 2 hours and it was done at 30 mins, LOL! The same volatile elements that don't stick if you dry it will get cooked out if you overcook the tea.

Just FYI for anyone interested in trying it.

 

[Pyewacket]

Thank you for the warning.

It certainly wasn't intended as a warning. More of a joke.