I won a giveaway! Tiny Choices was having a soap nut giveaway, so I signed up and was one of ten winners!
That’s right – soap nuts. Consider me eco-overboard. Apparently soap nuts are berries from some tree (Brad will understand) that have a natural soap coating. (Don’t knock the idea – God made these.) You can toss a few of them in a little baggie and wash with your clothes (warm water), or boil them in some water and let them sit overnight to make a liquid soap.
I went with making the soak, and it was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. It was soapy! The smell of the actual stuff is a bit strange, and I’ll probably stick with my never-ending-box of cheap detergent, but it’s been a cool experiment. I’ve washed three loads with the recommended 1/4 cup amount of the liquid per load, and they smell just fine.
Someday I’ll have to make my own soap from purified lard I’ve taken from my own pig mixed with lye made by pouring water through hardwood ashes. I was born in the wrong time, I tell you. No, scratch that – pioneers didn’t have air conditioning, right?
You boil them to make soap? That’s strange. Now if they had some kind of nut or berry that could be ground and boiled to make a dark drink with a significant amount of caffeine, that would be something I’d do.
Lard from your own pig, I believe would require butchering, right? And I’m pretty sure you could never kill your own animal. So, making your own soap? That’s right out. 😉
Oh, no. Mine would be a magic pig that would sneeze and a bucket of pure lard would come out its nose. I’m big into magic. A cough would also produce bacon.
I would have a problem wiping up after a bucket of anything coming from a pig’s nose. I just can’t get rid of the mental picture of a runny nosed pig – pure lard or not. But then again, after wiping preschoolers’ noses, maybe a pig wouldn’t be so bad. One question though, can a pig lick that up on his own – like a preschooler can? 🙂
Soap nuts…hehe…but yes cool indeed!!
But,
Can I eat them with a bee,
Can I eat them by the sea,
Can I eat them with some greens,
Can I eat them wearing jeans,
Can I eat them in the dark,
Can I eat them with a shark?
(in other words, are they edible)
Yeah, but they taste like Zest!
In non-nut news, the mouse-overs in the top pictures are back. I got tired of Karla’s nearly non-stop complaining, and had to find something to do over the weekend that was like work, but didn’t involve actually working.
It’s not retroactive though, so the last few weeks of posts will either (a) do without or (b) sait until someone is really, really bored.
That’s me – nag, nag, nag!
*bonus points for identifying what movie that’s from.
Lauren, your hands look so smooth. Are you sure you didn’t put your new “hand” soap models in the picture instead?
Thanks! I had to coat my old, wrinkly hands in suds to make them look normal. 🙂
Why did I read this post think it was about “Soup nuts” not “Soap nuts”?
I have a question. Do you have to put the picture at the top of the post? I do like it, I’m just wondering about the extra work & thought of putting an extra interestingly-shaped picture in.
Maybe you can plant a soap nut plant and have them all the time.
There’s a special field at the bottom of the post, and, if you put a link to an image there, it will use (and resize/crop) that image for a couple of things. Right now it appears (a) at the top of the post cropped into a narrow slice (b) at the bottom of the main page as the image for posts cropped into a square (c) On the search and category pages also in the square and (d) in the gallery page i nsome other format. You get a fair amount of bang for your buck.
I reread the post. Ok Soap Nuts. What? These aren’t like that real expensive coffee where the beans are predigested by a jungle cat and some unfortunate fool has to dig it out of its crap, is it?