Spinach and Pecan Experiment

[AngelMomma]

A little back round on the ingredients and process used to make this soap.

My sweet MIL bought us a CSA veggie box that we got from a local organic farm for a couple of months. We enjoyed all the fresh veggies and even got brown Jasmine rice in the box one week. This week was our last box and included in it was Fresh Spinach and a very small bottle of Pecan Oil. My kids were talking about how nice it would be to make some salad dressing for the fresh salad with the Pecan oil. UHM! NO!!!!! That is for soap, thank you very much!!!:razz::razz:

I put some aloe juice into the power blender along with clean spinach that I had removed the thicker rib portions from. I blended the dickens out of it! Then I strained it through my jelly bag (straining bag for making juices for jelly making). I ended up with a nice smooth green liquid that I used for the lye liquid.

I also added Rahssoul clay, the Pecan Oil and Lavender EO to this soap.

I cannot hardly wait for the cure to be done so I can try this on my face!

 

[Miz Jenny]

Cool!

 

[Derpina Bubbles]

That's awesome! I love that green. Would be interesting to see how it holds.

*I just love how soapers see everything differently to others.

 

[ca_soap]

By all means keep us posted on this one, it sounds great and looks even better!

 

[Ellacho]

Awesome! Love the green color!

 

[Twiggy]

Gre(en)at idea you had!!!! I hope the spinach will hold this beautiful green color! PLS keep us up dated

 

[Trinity]

I am so jealous of your wonderful organic food boxes what a great gift But your soap looks amazing.......love that you used raw spinach juice

 

[Lin]

Could you link me to the jelly bag you use? I tried googling jelly bag and it didn't work lol, guess I'll have to look more specifically at canning supplies! I'm thinking that would be something that would be very helpful with quite a few things I make, both food and personal care product.

I love the green! I really hope it stays so vivid.

 

[neeners]

gorgeous!

 

[Saponista]

I just got back from my allotment and picked a load of old cavolo Nero before throwing the plant stems away, I wonder if I could purée it in the same way and get some lovely green soap. Think I will give it a try later.

 

[AngelMomma]

Sure I will update as it cures. I wouldn't be surprised if it faded somewhat because the green is from chlorophyll in the spinach. But I really like it. I keep going back and looking at it, lol. I am going to be keeping this out of direct sunlight to try and keep the color as much as possible.

This is the set up that we have for straining. We use it for making all sorts of homemade jellies. I got mine locally at an ACE hardware store. They have these little things lots of places though. And even if someone didn't want to buy one like this you could use cheesecloth that is folded into 4 layers. I really love that the jelly bag can be washed and reused over and over and over. So far it has come clean from anything that we put in it. Even the crazy bright plum we did last year washed out.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0012C5ZPK/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[AngelMomma]

Thank you all for your kind comments. And I hope that if you try a similar green lye water you post pictures for all to see

 

[ca_soap]

Could you link me to the jelly bag you use?

Lin, I have Jelly bags that I have purchased from wine supply stores, they come in different sizes and in coarse or fine as well. Here is a link from the place I used to use when I was making a lot of wines, they are fabulous people to deal with an if you have any questions give them a call, they were always very helpful to me.

http://www.homebrewery.com/wine/wine-straining.shtml

 

[Lin]

I don't like working with cheese cloth for many things. Lately I'm having a big issue using it to strain my coffee infusions. I've got entire bottles of olive and coconut infusing, with a large amount of Sunflower, and medium amounts of shea and crisco. Normally I'd only have one oil infusing but I'm going to test out infusing EVERY oil in a soap recipe, plus adding fresh expresso grounds and using extra strong Coffee for Lye water and test out if it smells of coffee. I'm not looking for fragrance oil strong, but something mild and pleasant. If it fails I'll try again with hot process and superfat with extra strong infused oil. And with so much oil and coffee, I'm fed up with cheese cloth already. I'm wondering if this reusable Coffee filter cheap from Walmart would be better but my bf said he thought it was too fine meshed. I REALLY want to find a French press at goodwill for various infusions.

 

[Saponista]

I tried a similar thing and no matter what I did, I still couldn't get a coffee smell at all. I now just fragrance my coffee soap with rosemary instead. Let me know if you succeed as I would love to make something similar.

 

[Miz Jenny]

I tried a similar thing and no matter what I did, I still couldn't get a coffee smell at all. I now just fragrance my coffee soap with rosemary instead. Let me know if you succeed as I would love to make something similar.

Does the coffee change the scent of the rosemary?

 

[Saponista]

I don't think that it changes the scent at all, it makes lovely kitchen soap as my husband likes the smell too and the coffee grounds help scrub off dirt.

 

[Miz Jenny]

I don't think that it changes the scent at all, it makes lovely kitchen soap as my husband likes the smell too and the coffee grounds help scrub off dirt.

Thanks. I'm not fond of herby scents but they do sell. Sorta like lavender and patchouli. :-D

 

[Saponista]

Patchouli and rosemary go really well together I think, I love the herbal scents, not so fond of florals. It's interesting how people have such different ideas about what smells nice.

 

[Miz Jenny]

Patchouli and rosemary go really well together I think, I love the herbal scents, not so fond of florals. It's interesting how people have such different ideas about what smells nice.

I like to add a floral to smooth them out, but found lovers of either or both want them unadulterated. I use the eo of both lavender and patchouli but have found english lavender and sweet patchouli fo's that don't smell quite as herby. I find I'm using less florals and more woodsy scents. Go figger...