#141 – Kitchen Beauty: Our Ancestral Skin and Hair Care

The more time we spend around ancestral food, the more other ancestral practices begin to filter into our lives as well – our clothing may change, our lighting and screen time may evolve, and our skin, hair and general body care may change as well. Many ancestral methods of caring for the body involved simple food products that could be applied to skin or hair or even injuries. Of course, apothecaries existed for more expensive and sometimes even toxic compounds, just like we suffer from today, but many beauty routines, even for the upper classes, just involved simple food products.

Today we will share some of the edible and accessible routines we use to care for our skin, as well as our historical hair routines, and we will discuss the benefits of our food as well as our topical care. We are always curious to hear from our listeners about their routines as well, and we have learned much from our supporter community on Discord as well! If you have methods you enjoy we would love to hear about them, and if you try and like any of ours, do let us know!

What We Talked About:

• What we last ate
• A review from JillyBean
• Teemill Bags and Swag!
• What is beauty and what is it for?
• Alison’s Face Routine
• Rob’s Face Wash
• Andrea’s Sugar Scrub
• Whipped Tallow (is it really so easy? Yes it is)
• Alison’s Historical Hair Routine
• What do Rob and Gabriel do?
• Andrea’s Historical Hair Routine
• What’s it like to start washing with clay?
• Preventing sunburn
• Kombucha and scoby uses
• Honey for wounds
• Oatmeal: Why it’s good for skin
• More episodes you might like!

Resources:

Episode 76: Essential Oils in an Ancestral Kitchen

Katherine Hair Care

Episode 64: Better Broths and Healing Tonics

Hunter & Gather Mayonnaise

Elly’s Every Day Soapmaking (Two AMAZING YouTube channels!)

Episode 127: How to Render Fat at Home (With Q&A!)

Rhassoul Clay that Andrea uses

Wooden Scalp Brush

Purchase Holly’s Summit

 

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Transcript:

Alison:
Good morning, Andrea.

Andrea:
Good afternoon, Alison. How are you?

Alison:
Thank you. Yeah, I’m good. It’s lovely and sunny here. Autumn sun coming in through the window. How about you?

Andrea:
It’s raining.

Alison:
Ah, okay.

Andrea:
That’s par for the course for us here this time.

Alison:
I tried.

Andrea:
I tried. It’ll rain some, it’ll sun some, you know, until October and then it’ll rain a lot.

Alison:
Yeah. Okay. I was going to ask you the usual question. Have you had breakfast or did you eat last night.

Andrea:
What’s the situation with your last food i had well i had a wonderful dinner last night so i thought i should tell you that it’s actually a recipe that a listener allison also by the name allison but spelled differently sent in for our pork cookbook, and it is the sausage and parmesan soup and it is so, good and i just do kind of variations and spinoffs of it of whatever we have on hand and we’re almost to the end of our delicious pork sausage that we made, and stuffed and froze so it’s kind of a celebration of the, tail end literally of our pork and um.

Andrea:
I put in, oh my goodness, let’s see, there was onions and carrots and garlic. I cooked those in some of the lard kind of rendered out of cooking the sausages. And then, oh, let’s see, that was the main, let’s see, what else did I throw in there? Turnips and little yellow potatoes and everything I cubed very fine. It’s all cubed extremely small. I just like my sausage soups that way for some reason and then the sausage is in links I cooked the links in the pot that the soup would be in and then I set them to the side while I did all the aromatics and whatnot, and then I cut the sausage into little, rounds if you know what I mean yeah yeah it’s so good and I use chicken broth from some of our chickens that I had cooked last week, and I had cooked that broth with all kinds of ginger and turmeric and onions and peppers and skin.

Alison:
Flavor pot.

Andrea:
Oh my goodness it was so flavorful.

Alison:
Did you thicken it with anything or did the potatoes break down or you don’t mind it not thickened?

Andrea:
No no so the way that Alison has the recipe you put in cream cheese which I actually had some cream cheese which is not normal for us. So I put in cream cheese. I had Parmesan. I put in that. And then I added some cream as well. Just to kind of.

Alison:
Okay so it.

Andrea:
Had a kind of a yeah but there’s so much i mean i filled that pot with the diced vegetables yeah but it’s so dense anyway and then i guess i cooked some pasta that i have, and and it’s not one that i made but it’s a um, like an organic kind of a pasta we had purchased that I still have some. And so I didn’t have the pasta, but I served to the other bowls with some pasta in the bowl and then soup on top.

Alison:
Yum.

Andrea:
Yeah, it was just overall, you know, by the time I served it, I thought, oh, I forgot to throw some herbs in it. But there was so much flavor and the broth had been cooked with, you know, piles of herbs out of the garden. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to add anything at this point. But yeah, it was quite delicious. So anyways, thank you, Alison, for that recipe. It has definitely become one of my favorites and just like an inspirational go-to. So I’m really appreciative that Alison said that recipe. And so, yeah. What did you eat? And was it as good as that?

Alison:
No, it wasn’t. It was nice, though. I remember sitting down eating it and I said, this is really nice, like it’s a surprise, you know.

Andrea:
Wow. It was mostly leftovers.

Alison:
Mostly leftovers. So we have a packet of quinoa, British quinoa, from Hobmodod’s supplier, who we’ve talked about quite a lot, who kind of championed British pulses and grains. And I’d cooked that yesterday in some chicken stock and I cooked too much on purpose so I’d have some left in the fridge and then we had some leftover chicken so I mixed some quinoa, with some chicken that I just kind of broke up into little pieces and then mixed salad into it and the salad was lots of grated carrot some home sprouted sprouts which I think were radish and broccoli, some leaves from the market and some tomatoes from the market mix that all in and then, I put a bit of mayo on mine which is a mayo that I bought from a company called, Forest and Gather I think or Gather and Hunter or something it’s got avocado oil in it which is kind of my treat, mix that all in and then I had on the side I made some gluten-free crackers the day before yesterday which were, millet, oats and buckwheat with sourdough starter and salt and left to ferment and then rolled out and put in the oven. So I have one of those with some goat’s cream cheese from the market on top of it.

Andrea:
Wow.

Alison:
Very nice.

Andrea:
Sounds scrumptious.

Alison:
Very, very nice.

Andrea:
I realize I should have asked you, what is the last thing you put on your face?

Alison:
I could tell you that. At the end of this episode, you will know what the last thing I put on my face is.

Andrea:
Which is something you could eat, I happen to know.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly. Would you like me to read this review, which we found and put into our notes for today?

Andrea:
If it’s a good one, then read it, yes.

Alison:
Yeah it’s um by someone called jilly bean and she left it on um apple podcasts do go and leave us a five-star review if you like our show and tell us why you like it, she says i found your podcast a few months ago how had i not found it sooner and i’ve been listening to it constantly i’ve been on an ancestral food journey for a while after reading nourishing traditions but you both have made it all start coming to life. I love all the things when it comes to gardening, canning, dehydrating, fermenting, herbals, etc. And I’ve been at this with no friends or group who is at all interested in what I am. When I listen to you both, I feel like I finally found my tribe and I’ve learned so much from you both. Thank you, Andrea and Alison, for doing everything you do. And Alison, I could listen to you all day long. Sending hugs from Ohio, USA. Thank you, Jilly. And yeah, obviously, I can’t help being born in Britain.

Andrea:
I could listen to you all day too. Hey, you have good things to say, Alison. It’s not just your accent we love. We love what you say.

Alison:
It’s not just my accent.

Andrea:
Well, I know because I love what you write too.

Alison:
Thank you. You’re not saying in your head in my accent, are you?

Andrea:
Maybe I am. I don’t know.

Alison:
What I liked about this review is that, Poor Jilly there with no friends or group at all interested in what she is. You know, I felt that.

Andrea:
The fortitude it takes. Yeah.

Alison:
You know, it really, this can be a lonely path, but it doesn’t need to be a lonely path because we are out there and our community is out there. So thank you ever so much for leaving that review, Jilly.

Andrea:
Absolutely remarkable. Yeah, to keep at it, it’s something that, as you and I talk about all the time, is so, you know, consuming of time, energy, money, resources, effort, and nobody around you cares or supports it.

Alison:
Exactly.

Andrea:
That takes a lot of grit. So, I am glad that we can join you in the kitchen, and cook with you, ferment with you. Yeah, exactly.

Alison:
The bread has arrived, Andrea, so I’m just going to stop for a moment. Is the oven on yeah i just turned it on okay yeah as soon as the as soon as the oven’s at temperature can you put it in at the temperatures that i put on the board okay thank you very much, thank you bye okay so we’re going to go back into your um do you want to just start talking about the t-mill andrew or shall i ask you no i’ll.

Andrea:
Just jump in.

Alison:
Okay go on then.

Andrea:
Allison did you see, I can’t remember if I actually sent you a picture of my T-Mill bag because right after I took the pictures, well, this is so annoying. Right after I took pictures of things, then, you know, my phone kind of exploded and then we went through two months of it not working. And then I got a new phone and there’s nothing on the new phone. But I know that I have those pictures. Gary put them into some sort of a drive somewhere, but I need to take another picture and show you. But I got, I got t-shirts for me and the kids. And I think I mentioned this before. I got a bag and a notebook and stuff like that for myself off our Timo website. But I love the bag. And I know that the bag is becoming popular since we’re selling the bags. But no, I love the bag. I take it everywhere with me. And I don’t actually have a purse. I don’t like, you know, you and I do not like dragging heavy things around on our shoulders. So I don’t have a purse at all. I just have, you know, one key with nothing on it that I use to turn on my car. And then I have a wallet.

Andrea:
And I only take the wallet if I need to, you know, purchase something. So I don’t have lots of things to carry around. But I do find when I leave the house, I’m running back inside to get my book and my pen, then I run back inside for a notebook. And so I thought, oh, this can kind to be that bag when i’m going i don’t store anything in it but then when i’m going i just drop everything in the bag out to the things in yeah and then i come back in i take it all out you know so the bag doesn’t get all, you know you know cluttery how bags do so.

Alison:
The bag if you haven’t seen it is a beautifully sort of um unbleached cotton, really strong bag with nice handles and.

Andrea:
It’s got a logo shocked at how it’s on it yeah you could stuff this thing with, with books a lot I was surprised you never know you never know when you’re ordering you know what’s the quality going to be what you know what’s it going to be like um but no the quality is quite good it’s really sturdy you can stuff it full if you have the shoulders that can tolerate carrying that much weight so we’ve washed us.

Alison:
As well and it came out really.

Andrea:
Nicely I haven’t tried that I would.

Alison:
They wash well.

Andrea:
I would say whenever you wash things with um, screened on or whatever it’s called you know with like pictures on it i don’t know how to describe it um it’s always a good idea to wash it inside out and of course it’s cotton so wash it on cold and then i prefer to hang dry those things because heat does damage ink i haven’t, like i said i haven’t washed this yet but um i know yeah we can do damage so yeah and we usually hang everything anyways just to save on power but um, exactly yeah so i don’t know how the ink holds up in like hot dryers and stuff.

Alison:
So I’m waiting to see the pictures of yours. We have that, we have lots of other things, you know, we have a bag, we have the t-shirt she talked about, we have a mug.

Andrea:
Yeah, the kids get lots of comments on their shirts.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Because they’re so cute and they have such quirky sayings on them.

Alison:
They’re fun. With the bag, we’ve also got a donation level bag, which we sold a couple of recently, where the price includes an extra donation, which comes to Andrea and I, helps us carry on with the podcast. People are buying in the States, but we’ve also had sales in the UK. So, there are people walking around in England somewhere with Ancestral Kitchen podcast merch on. I want to see one in the wild.

Andrea:
Just see one in the wild. Wow, this is a doo-doo.

Alison:
Exactly. Where did that come from? So if you’re in continental Europe, we had a discussion on Discord with Hannah, who’s in Belgium. Just in the last week, I heard from T-Mill, who are producing our ethical, sustainable, organic merch, that Europeans now have local shipping. So there are no import duties into the EU. It’s not like coming from the UK and they have to pay. They’ve got local distribution in Europe. So there’s no extra customs. So well then it’s also traveling less distance exactly it’s moving less um if you would like to see our range and potentially buy something then you can go to ancestral kitchen podcast.com forward slash merch m-e-r-c-h and that will redirect you to the site where we have everything up and when you get the show notes too so please thank you if you’re driving you do not.

Andrea:
Have to stop Try to write that down.

Alison:
Send us in your photos of you in the wild.

Andrea:
Oh, yeah.

Alison:
That’s what we want to see. Yeah, in the wild. With the tote bag. Excellent.

Andrea:
So, Alison.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Today’s episode is going to run right on this theme of, you know, the organic cotton and all these things that we’re being careful about putting on our body. So, it’s a good… It’s a good segue to go from T-Mill into this topic. And one thing that you and I, and I know many people in our listenership have commented on is that, sometimes your journey with food starts you off. Sometimes it’s the products in your home that start you off. But either way, you kind of learn one alongside the other that many products besides just food are harmful and designed with only money in mind and not the health of the consumer. And a lot of these companies, just like with food, they use cheap chemicals rather than nourishing and healthful or ancestrally recognized ingredients. And if you wanted to hear more detail on kind of some of the nitty gritty behind that, we did talk more about some of the disappointing and disappointing.

Andrea:
Scandalous legislation behind all of this in episode 76. That episode primarily focused on using essential oils in the kitchen, but we started out the episode kind of talking about some general chemicals and things like that, so you can hear some of that on there. But the short version and what you need to know is that highly toxic and honestly unproven and untested products are used on humans every day and they’re in human products, as well as ingredients that are known to cause cancer or inflammation, actually chemicals that are used to induce that for testing purposes and lab animals are used in, beauty and body care products for humans so and thousands it’s i don’t know if it’s worse in the u.s than anywhere else but it’s pretty bad in the u.s there’s thousands of products that are used in our, or thousands of chemicals that are used in our products and they’re illegal everywhere else, other than maybe in like one or two countries like.

Andrea:
North korea or something random so we’re not really going to hammer down on the great evils of things in this episode so if you’re looking for a nice juicy depressing episode this is not the one we’re just going to talk about things that we use to take care of our body that are also happen to be edible and that you can make in your kitchen and are very simple,

Andrea:
and are oftentimes rooted in ancestral traditions. So let’s take a quick ad break and then come back and get started with the body and skin care.

Andrea:
We use food to take care of our liver, our kidney, our heart, and our other organs. So why not our skin too? Your skin is an organ. It is more visible than your liver, typically. And so much of our skin health comes from our diet. So eating saturated fats from animals, which is producing, you know, better skin health, Collagen-rich joints of meat and broths, which we all have heard advertisements for collagen products, topical collagen products and collagen supplements. Then, of course, there’s nutrient-dense vegetables and produce, you know, vitamin A and retinols and, all of the other things that our body uses that we have heard as buzzwords when those things are extracted from food and put into products. There’s antioxidant-rich foods, which, of course, help with skin elasticity, just like the collagen does. And, of course, that glowing harbinger of skin health, raw milk. All of these foods contribute to our healthy body and our healthy appearance. And our beauty routine really does begin on the plate. Do you feel that too, Alison, as I do?

Alison:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. my my the appearance of my skin, and how my body and hair felt completely changed when I changed my diet and you know that that wasn’t why I did it but now you know when I when I look back at how I looked before, and compare it to the I forget you know like now I just don’t worry about my skin but when I compare it to how I looked before I think oh my gosh, that’s just completely turned around and it and it wasn’t due to changing necessarily anything that was going on my face although that did happen, it really has been due to what i put in my mouth yeah which is it’s incredible, the difference i agree with that.

Andrea:
And and oftentimes when i it’s not to say that there isn’t a place and a time and a use for topical supplements and um ingested supplements and i I judiciously use certain ones at certain times myself. But all that to say, they do not eliminate the need for the foods that also include those things that your body uses. And the way your body is used to getting them oftentimes is through your plate, rather than on your skin. Although, as we’re going to talk about in this episode, there are some that are very good to put on your skin.

Andrea:
Exactly what you were saying, Allison, a thought that I have considered quite a bit is that beauty is just our very primally tuned recognition of good health and vitality. So when we see our child with dark shadows under their eyes, a sallow looking skin and a droopy countenance, we aren’t alarmed because, oh no, they don’t look beautiful. We’re alarmed because through their change in appearance, just like you were saying with the foods you were eating, their body is signaling a drop in their vitality. And the body through these external signals is asking us to tend to them. And usually that is through rest and food. And then conversely, when we see them come bursting in through the door with bright alert eyes and ruddy skin and pink cheeks, throtty, Alison, as you have taught me. And when they’re lively and, you know, full of that vitality. We’re pleased not because, oh, look, now they’re beautiful, but we’re pleased because we know they are healthy and filled with vital energy. And I believe, of course, that a beautiful liver is as important and as strong of a signal of health as beautiful skin. And improving your skin health isn’t really an exercise in vanity, although it could be, and sometimes I think it is sold that way in conventional marketing, but really it’s just a sign of, is your health improving?

Andrea:
Do you have any other thoughts on yourself?

Alison:
Yeah, no, there was two things I was going to say. The first one was about Throddy, because that came up in my research in my own book and gave its name to a bread called Throdkin that was eaten, in the North and Midlands of England. And it was used to describe that kind of that ruddy, lively complexion, you know, that you were talking about. And so much when I’ve been researching this book, looking at newspaper articles from the last 100, 150 years, I’ve seen again and again interviews with people saying, you know, these days there’s lots of these beauty kind of recipes, but in the old days, we just ate good food. And, you know, there are examples of, there was one article, which was quite amusing, saying that suins, the fermented oat drink, was the secret of beauty. Because those who ate that, those girls who ate that and prepared that just had the most amazing skin. And people should be eating it every day. and I found this sort of thing over and over again.

Andrea:
Why is that not in the advertisement for your class.

Alison:
Alison? Well, yeah, I haven’t put that. I didn’t find, when I wrote that advert, I didn’t know that information at that point.

Andrea:
You don’t need to update that.

Alison:
What I feel like now is, you know, like you said just a moment ago, when you see these adverts, the skincare, it’s just, oh, this product will miraculously change you. It will make you more beautiful. And no one in the mainstream media seems to, have any understanding or any idea or want to share any information that actually what you put in your mouth might make a difference to what’s happening on your skin. Let’s forget about that. Let’s put these antibiotics on your skin if you’ve got acne, which is what was given to me when I was 20 years old. Let’s put this and that and whatever salve on your skin if you’ve got this. Because obviously it’s got nothing to do with food. And, you know, everyone listening to this knows at whatever stage of their journey there are that there is a link and they may have experienced a change themselves. They may be experiencing a change now. They may be years from experiencing that change and completely convinced. But it feels… Again, it just feels like what Jilly said at the beginning. It’s nice to have this community and to know that I’m not the only crazy person who puts stuff I could eat on my skin.

Andrea:
Yeah, I mean, we are preaching to the choir right now, aren’t we? Everybody’s sitting there with their glass of suins, nodding their head and saying, I know, I know, right? Yes, I agree. But it is true. There is a saying, Allison, I hear this if you dip your toe in the, let’s say, the world of health food. There’s this saying, you know, learn to read labels, learn to read labels. And I always found that phrase a little bit funny because there’s another way to do it, which is don’t buy stuff with labels. There is that You know, if you have to translate it I sometimes have thought Wow, I am very terrible at reading labels I never read labels, but then I’m like I don’t know, what do I have that has a label?

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So you do I’m being a little bit facetious, but you do still need to know the sourcing on things. And that sometimes can be encoded in the label. Oftentimes you have to research companies and all of that. And we all do our best. But it is especially nice when you can get some of these products literally from the farmer, the same foods you would eat that you’re also going to use on your body. So in this section, I will share a few things that you and I use on our body, topicals. And in the next section, I will share a bit about you and I will both share some of our hair routine, which is strikingly similar. And in the final section, I will just share a few topical things that we use for injuries or maybe when things go awry.

Andrea:
So first, I wanted you, Allison, to share. If you would, you have a very yummy and edible facial routine. And you and I’ve talked about this on our private podcast before, and I will reference the episode number for that at the end for any supporters who are or someone who’s looking to become a supporter that wants to go and hear that. But we’ve never shared about it on the main feed. So could you talk a little bit about how you wash your face, what you do?

Alison:
Yeah, yeah. So, it’s kind of, I’ve been experimenting this week. We’ll get to that because I’ve done something different, which has been quite fun and eye-opening.

Andrea:
We always change things up right before we record.

Alison:
Don’t we? Just when we’re about to record, I know. So, generally, I wash my face with a soap that’s made from olive oil. I don’t make that soap myself. I buy it from someone who makes it. If you do want to make your own soap, then we both really would point you towards Ellie at Ellie’s Everyday who has lots of videos on her YouTube channel, including how to make olive oil soap. Her soaps, you know, have some with oatmeal in, some with all the different herbs in, made with all different fats.

Alison:
So I use an olive oil soap. Then after that, I use rose water, which I apply to my skin using washable fabric circles. I’ve got like 20 of them. And then when they’re all done, I put them in the wash. I use that as a kind of a toner. Now, I’ve only just started doing this for years i i cleansed and then i put something on my face for moisturizing um, but more recently i i kind of missed smelling um rose water i when i first went to italy when i was in my, late 20s um in Rome I in one of the pharmacies there I found a bottle of natural rose water and it was um, it was say it said on the um label that it could be used on the face so, I bought some and I used it and then I used that probably for about a year I don’t know why I stopped using it um and then just more recently I thought I really miss that rose water the feel of it on my skin the smell of it because I love the smell of rose, I’m going to look for some more so I found some more so I’ve been using that as a toner, and then usually if I feel my skin needs it after that I apply a natural moisturizer that I bought at a shop, having said all that.

Alison:
Since I listened to the fermentation summit which was a couple of weeks ago, I’ve changed things up a little bit and so this may my routine may change there was a lady on the fermentation summit from scotland who was whose session was about um fermented skincare, and rather than coming up with loads of recipes and complicated things that you know you had to make to put on your skin she literally in front of her had a big thing of kombucha and some scobies and some milk kefir and She talked about the way she uses them in her beauty routine. So just the last week, I’ve literally been putting milk kefir on my face. We buy goat’s milk from the local farmer’s market here in Stroud and ferment it using the kefir grains at home. And so in the morning, I’ve been getting up and just using my fingers to put a very small amount of milk keep on my face. I know Katie in our community has been doing this too. And then just letting it dry naturally. And then the next time I go upstairs, just getting a flannel and wetting it with some water and wiping it off. And when I’ve done that this week, I’ve not needed anything else on my skin at all. I haven’t used any moisturizer. I haven’t used any toner. So literally, I’m just putting like, I don’t know, five milliliters probably of milk kefir on my face. And my skin felt smooth and soft. And it looked really bright for the rest of the day.

Andrea:
Do you put it on and leave it like this grab?

Alison:
So literally, I just put my finger, I put a tiny bit into a little espresso cup. And then I put my fingers, two fingers in there to dab my fingers. And then I’m just putting it over my skin. Not too much, so it’s dripping. But, you know, not just a little bit either. And then I think I did it this morning. I went and sat down and had something to eat while it was on. It doesn’t crack up, so it’s not like falling off or flaking or anything.

Andrea:
Yeah, like a mask.

Alison:
And then literally I just go up and use warm water to wash it off. And I think I squeezed the flannel out three times and did three lots of warm flannel to take it off my face. And that’s it.

Andrea:
I’m obsessed with this. And this is why I love Holly’s Summit, because you just never know what’s going to come through it. I have read about milk kefir on skin and I’ve used kombucha and kombucha scobies for a long time for skin yeah but, I have never done the milk kefir and you know that I was going to you you saw in my notes that I had put that I wanted to ask you if you’ve put milk kefir in a piece I did not know you’re gonna say yes, and I’m excited too that was one of the um I’m doing the slow version of Holly’s summit where I’m slowly watching through the videos instead of all at once because you can actually pay and like have them forever and maybe not watch them all in two days like i did last time yeah but um, Anyway, so I haven’t watched that one yet. But Rachel has been messaging me, you’re going to love this. I mean, you need to watch this. I need to watch that. I know. I know it got more in depth this year. But anyways, that is really awesome. And if you’ve heard of like the alpha hydroxy acids that we know is so good for your skin and comes in those exquisitely expensive skincare.

Andrea:
Supplements. Well, here it is. It’s in your milk of here, actually. so there’s of course probiotics are so beneficial beneficial for your skin just like they are for your other organs so yeah this is and, everything but milk seems to be amazing for skin so this is i agree wonderful to hear i’m super excited about this alice and i’m sold i’ll be doing it tomorrow uh, what does rob wash his face what does he do.

Alison:
Yeah so rob uses the thing that i used to use um Rob uses unpasteurized honey to wash his face.

Andrea:
Because I’m picturing him leaning over a bucket of honey like Winnie the Pooh.

Alison:
No, it’s not quite that bad with all the bees around him. So I used to do this. I think we started washing our faces with honey possibly when we were raw vegan. So it must have been like, I don’t know, 15 years ago, something like that. And I did it for several years, but we were in Italy at the time. And the problem with honey and italy and being liberal with honey, is that if you spill any honey anywhere in italy you get a ton of ants yeah just come in and find the honey no matter where you think you picked it all up you think you’ve cleared no there’s a bit there and then suddenly you’ve got 3 000 ants marching towards your honey so, i stopped it in italy because i just it’s impossible not to make a bit of a mess with it, Rob doesn’t make a mess, but it just, there’s ants have this sort of honey device.

Andrea:
We don’t understand Rob. We just let Rob do what Rob does.

Alison:
I know. He doesn’t make a mess anywhere. So he puts, he does what I did, which was basically you have some honey and ideally in a squeezy bottle. So find a squeezy bottle and decant your own pasteurized honey into the squeezy bottle because it just makes it easier. Then you wet your face first and then you put a little bit of the squeezy honey on your fingertips and then you rub that honey into your wet skin. And I would always wet my face with warm water to kind of open up the pores. So rubbing it in, rubbing it in, rubbing it in. And then you can either use a flannel like I wash off the kefir with or you can just have a sink full of warm water and scoop that water up to get that honey off your face. And he’s been doing that at least a decade and loves doing it. He doesn’t use anything else on his face apart from the honey. What I wanted to say earlier was that I used to use oil on my face and I’ve used sort of, I guess for maybe five years on and off, I’ve tried to use oil on my face instead of moisturiser. So not as a cleanser, because I know that you can use it as a cleanser. And I did try that for a while, but it didn’t suit me. So instead of, after I’d done the cleansing, I’d put some oil on my face and maybe some almond oil with a bit of my favourite essentials mixed into it. My favourite’s bae.

Alison:
But what I found, what I still find, is if I do it regularly, I get spots. Spots now i’m not prone to spots at the moment i mean i literally i don’t get them at all even though i spent my entire childhood with a face just completely covered in acne now, i i mean it’s a once a year maybe once every two years i get a spot but if i do the oil on my face i get spots, and i and i kind of lined up the two and then i stopped using oil on my face and i don’t get them. So I do still like to use the oil on my face. And I’d say I replace that shop-bought moisturizer with oil maybe once a week, but I can’t do it more regularly because it, for me personally, it doesn’t work. I know for a lot of people, it literally does work, you know, just using oil, like an almond oil or a jojoba oil and putting some essential oils in it to make it smell really nice.

Andrea:
You do have to be really sensitive to, just like with the food, you know, you don’t want to hear somebody say, oh, I do this every day. And then you just go ahead and do it because they did it. You know, you want to be sensitive to your body. And I have found every different state I’ve been in when I’m visiting different countries for long stretches of time. The climate completely changes the way my body responds. And I’ve had to sort of change my routine based on where we live. You know, if it’s a more humid place, if it’s a more hot place, Actually, my skin and hair tends to do really well in those places, but I live in a very.

Andrea:
Rainy but dry i don’t know how to describe it our air is dry often so it’s different here so to add to, your face wash and moisturizing there’s also, scrubs my mom and i learned some years ago how to make a sugar scrub for exfoliating your skin and you don’t want to be hyper aggressive with this obviously and you don’t tear your pores and things like that but, um it’s an interesting way at home to make kind of like a sandy scrub that also helps somehow balance the pH of your skin. I’m not sure. But the basic way is, and we make it at the same time together and just divide it into containers between us. So you put a cup of granulated and organic sugar into a bowl. I have not tried this with sucanut. We always just buy like a special, like it’s like basically white sugar but it’s organic um but i don’t see why you wouldn’t, do it with sucanet just you have to bear in mind the coarser the grain of sugar the coarser.

Alison:
Yeah might be too harsh.

Andrea:
Yeah and some people grind their sugar more of like a powdered sugar sort of consistency just depends on what you want and then you kind of just mix in a half to three quarters cup of coconut oil or i mean you could use probably, olive oil if you had it. And you just go slow and mix it to the consistency you want. Some people like it more thin, some people like it more thick. And then she and I also like to add in a few drops of whatever essential oil is on our mind at the moment. Just thinking if you were doing your milk kefir, say you wanted a very soothing effect, you could add lavender to that or something. You can also grind in some dry oats to your sugar scrub, or you could grind in dry lavender. But like with your honey situation, when you’re washing with sugar, and especially if there’s dried bits of herb and things in it, you do have to beware of making a mess when you wash. And you do have to beware of ants. So Allison, I think I told you this, in our episode a long time ago, that once I made some of this scrub and I sent it to a friend as a gift, and she called me and said how delicious it was on our cottage cheese and what in the world did I send it to her and I said oh that was a face scrub but we had a good laugh over it and we agreed this is why it’s, just another reason why it’s handy when your, face scrub is also edible so.

Alison:
Indeed I am.

Andrea:
Listening to.

Alison:
You talking about a face scrub I it reminds me that I have made face scrubs with oatmeal and with.

Andrea:
Oat bran.

Alison:
Before I think later on we’re going to talk a little bit more about oats because… They are very, very good for the skin. So keep listening and I’ll tell you what all the benefits are. But that pH one is one of them. I don’t do it very often because I use a flannel on my face. And so I feel like the kind of the rough flannel. So, you know, a piece of cotton towel. And so I feel like because I’m using that to wash my face, that is doing exfoliation for me whilst I’m putting on whatever I’m putting on. You know, when I’m wiping off that kefir, I’m doing that with a flannel, which is not smooth not totally smooth so i feel like i’m doing a form of exfoliation with the you know the.

Andrea:
Organic cotton.

Alison:
I’m using on my skin.

Andrea:
I mean for the most part too that’s what i tell my kids you know when they get in the shower and i tell them use you know use a washcloth to, kind of scrub your body because it does i mean my kids get so dirty every single day that they actually have to scrub the dirt off every day so it’s not just like sweat or something when they’re actually, you know, literally rolling down our

Andrea:
grass hills and things like that. So, yeah. Another easy home care product is whipped tallow. And this is a good moisturizer. This is very nourishing for your skin. I could see, especially in a dry place like here where your skin can get, you know, sort of peely and dry where we are. I made this by accident once, And that’s when I realized how easy it is to make. I had poured melted tallow into a mason jar. And then I was going to drop in my immersion blender and make salad dressing the way I do with lard. But I just ran out of lard. So I was using tallow. But I accidentally got this instant, amazing, light, fluffy, incredible foam. I was like, what just happened? It was insane. So this would be a handy task, making yourself a jar of whipped tallow. Maybe at the end of a day of rendering when you already have a pot of liquid tallow.

Andrea:
The tallow should not be scalding hot, but it should be warm enough to stay liquid. I mean, mine wasn’t really warm at all. It just was, you know, ambient temperature in the house. Yeah. And you can add in other oils. I did not do this, but you can add in other oils like olive or jojoba, or you could put in essential oils if you wanted. I just had straight tallow. But tallow is very moisturizing and it’s high in nutrients that we need, of course, as we know from eating it. A, D, vitamin E, which obviously is so good for your skin, vitamin K.

Andrea:
Tallow’s really great in terms of supporting your cell regeneration, which of course is, you know, very important for healthy, you know, elastic skin. And it only takes a little bit to whip up a decent amount. And then it does go a pretty long way. So if you just, you know, set aside like a quarter or a half a cup, you don’t need to take a ton of your tallow. So very inexpensive. And I kept it on the counter, but I don’t know how long it would be stable on the counter. Probably.

Alison:
So I want to ask the question, I bet lots of people are asking to their um whatever device they’re listening on at the moment which is did it not smell of tallow.

Andrea:
No but did you double.

Alison:
Render like did you do the water wet.

Andrea:
Rendering so this was a wet render which is my preferred with tallow um, because also my tallow tends to come in with more impurities you know it’s it’s not as clean as lard, and i have to trim quite a bit with tallow and i have to trim out glands and i have to trim off hair and things like that so by the time i render it i wet render it just to okay really clean it, and then i discard all of the kind of gelatin at the bottom, and that makes sense i have less.

Alison:
Likely to smell.

Andrea:
Yes and and the other thing that i’ve learned from rendering lots of different animals is that different animals do have different kind of aromas yeah that you could have a tallow that is really beefy and you can have a tallow that is not beefy yeah so you know maybe just sort of, if you’re like you know what i did it once and i smell like a cow all day okay maybe not that tallow we’ll wet render it.

Alison:
We do have an episode on rendering which is not too far back in our catalog i can’t remember the number but do.

Andrea:
Go back and.

Alison:
Have a look if you’re wondering you know what’s the difference between wet rendering and dry.

Andrea:
Rendering and.

Alison:
Help me with this rendering thing girls um you can go back and find that episode and listen to it and we talk all about the different ways of rendering and our tips for it.

Andrea:
Absolutely. Let’s take a quick break, Allison, have a sip of water, and then come back and talk about our hair care. Every day, I have found that the closer I get to my ideal self, I’m actually just getting to be more like Allison. You are leading the way for me, Allison. Even if it’s something we’ve never talked about, I get there and I’m like, oh, well, look who’s already here, Allison. So let’s talk about how we take care of our hair my routine has been changing in the past few months and okay, uh when i read your notes i was like i should have just read allison’s notes first because that’s what i’m doing now so if you could share with me about your hair routine then i’ll share what i am learning as well.

Alison:
Okay great so i changed my hair routine about two years ago because I was just so at my wit’s end with my hair. I’ve been using natural shampoos at that point for a long time. Very expensive natural shampoos. It’s expensive for me anyway.

Andrea:
They’re all expensive.

Alison:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they are. With the word natural in front of them. I’m 51 and I started going grey when I was about 20. Same as my mum. My mum’s like, oh, I started going grey at 22. I was like, oh, thanks, mum.

Andrea:
Early adapter.

Alison:
And, um Really, my hair, since I gave birth to Gabriel 12 years ago, my hair has been over 60% gray. It’s more like 80% gray now. And since it’s turned gray, people who are listening who have graying or gray hair will know generally it gets drier and drier. And I kind of felt like it looked like this huge, big bird’s nest. It changes the quality, the makeup of your hair, and your hair will change when it goes gray. And I was just going to cut it off. And Gabe was like, no, no, mum, you’re not cutting it off. And so I knew that I had to find something else. I had to find something else. And so I did some research and I swapped to this method.

Alison:
And since then, I just, I love my hair and I’m not going to cut it off now. So what I do is I wash my hair with a natural clay, which is spelt R-H-A-S-S-O-U-L.

Andrea:
Put it in the notes.

Alison:
I think it’s pronounced hassle. But yeah, we’ll put it in the show notes.

Andrea:
Thank you.

Alison:
And I mix that into a thick paste with water and I add a few drops of essential oil, sometimes clove, sometimes peppermint, sometimes bay, in with that. And it takes some time to work it into a paste because the clay itself goes kind of lumpy. So you have to sort of slowly work it in. Then once I’ve got that paste, I work the clay into my scalp and down the shaft of my hair. Before washing it off with water I only do that once I don’t do two lots and so I just do it when I’m in the shower literally I’m in the shower and my hair’s I wet my hair first I put the clay in I work it through I leave it for, maybe a minute while I’m figuring putting the rest of the clay to the side and then I rinse it off um, When it is all off, I do a rinse with usually a small tub of water with about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and a few drops of an essential oil in it. So I pour that over my head, I work it in with my hands, and then I rinse that off. This week, thanks to that fermentation, something we were talking about, I’ve been using the whey from kefir instead of that vinegar.

Andrea:
I’m salt. I’m salt. I have an order of the pitch and I’m salt.

Alison:
So, I’m good.

Andrea:
There is nothing that whey cannot do. I’m serious.

Alison:
So, whey is amazing. What I did was, it was kind of a double win because Gabriel liked the cream cheese for this lady at the market sales. And I thought, I could just make this myself. Let’s just get some more milk and make the kefir. So, I made some more kefir. And then I separated it, you know, with a bit of cheesecloth into a jar beneath. I had the whey beneath. I had the cheese on top. I left it in the fridge overnight and I put in some salt and some rosemary and I fed the cheese to Gable. I was like, wow, mum, this is absolutely delicious. And then I had the whey left.

Andrea:
This is done my whole life.

Alison:
I’ve left the whey in the fridge and then I’m using, whereas before I’m using with the vinegar, like a teaspoon of vinegar, I’m using quite a lot of whey in my little container, which is probably about a cup measuring. I’m using two-thirds whey to a third water and then put some essential oil in there as well. And then I put that, this morning I washed my hair, I put the keypid way through it after I’d used the clay. I’d sort of kind of rubbed it in a bit with my fingers and then I rinsed it off. And I’ve been doing this maybe two weeks now. And I have noticed that afterwards my hair seems very much more shiny and sort of smooth, which is really nice. That’s kind of what I want. Wow.

Alison:
That’s winning that’s winning because we get cheese as well um and i did the test to gable the day after like does my hair smell of cheese he was like nope it doesn’t have cheese so that’s positive too um, so the night before i do this thing with the clay i generally wash my hair once a week sometimes once every six days sometimes i go 10 days but generally once a week so the night before I’m going to do the thing with the clay, I work a mix of almond oil and rosemary oil into my scalp into the roots and along the hair shaft.

Alison:
Rosemary I chose because it’s supposed to stimulate hair growth and actually this feels like one of the highlights of my week because what happens is I get the oil out and generally I say well can you put my oil in my hair, and he puts it into my hair and he kind of massages my scalp and it just feels really like a a moment of just bliss, you know five minutes of bliss um and then i wrap my hair up um before i wash it and i cover it in like um.

Alison:
A wide cotton elasticated hair band which you sent to me which colleen um who’s a listener made and that just keeps all my hair, under that band um in the night and i do that every night So, whether I’ve put that oil on because I’m about to wash it the next day or just every night I do that. The whole method itself, I got from a, I watched an hour-long video on YouTube, which like never happens, but I was like, this hair thing has to be sorted.

Andrea:
Committed.

Alison:
I think the channel is called Historic Hair Care about two years ago and then I swapped to her method. When I first started doing this, after I’d washed my hair and I just towel dried it, I applied oil to the tips of it just after washing, kind of just the ends of it where it generally would get more dry. And then usually during the week, a couple of times, a couple of mornings a week i would add a bit more oil, um that helped my curls because i’m curly separate and look more defined um and i’ve been doing that for like maybe a year and a half i’ve stopped doing it recently because i have a bore bristle brush, which is a traditional way of using um a natural, brush to move the oils that are naturally present on your scalp, down your hair shaft to the ends and the idea is that you spend time each day, brushing your hair from the root to the tip with this boar brush, and it enables oil to come down to the ends of your hair so just like what I was doing applying the oil, you know excess oil to my hair at the tips the boar bristle brush is kind of doing the same thing kind of naturally um so, there’s it’s too much if I use the boar bristle brush and put the oil in the ends of my hair it’s just too much it all goes in the brush and it’s just it’s not good um.

Alison:
Plus with the ball bristle brush obviously i’m brushing my hair so my curl definition, is not really necessary it all the because the brush is getting rid of my curls really it’s just giving me a wave um so there’s no point me putting that oil in my hair to to make curl definition because i’m brushing it out right and at the moment i prefer it that way um, I like the kind of softer look and I’m enjoying engaging with my hair with the ball bristle brush and kind of spending time with it. It sounds like a silly thing, spending time with your hair. But as we know, we’ve talked about the way we run our lives before. And just having those five minutes to sit and do nothing other than brush my hair, it makes a difference to my day and it makes a difference to how I feel about myself. So I’m enjoying that. um so rob rob didn’t rob didn’t use the clay to start with um but now rob has, a long hair now he’s had short hair most of his life and he wasn’t really very comfortable with it and since we’ve come back to this country he’s just been like i want long hair and so his hair is longer he uses the clay, and about the time he started properly growing his hair he just came over to the clay and he’s completely sold on it um.

Alison:
Gabriel on the other hand who has the longest hair out of all of us um anyone who’s maybe on discord has seen pictures of gabriel recently his hair, is down to his waist almost he hasn’t washed his hair, at all for about three years and oh my gosh his hair is amazing so often i will say to him during the week you know he’d kind of move his head or something and i’m just like he’s like a hair commercial he’s like, one of these women who flick their hair around and say things slogans which i won’t repeat like from ridiculous hair companies and he hasn’t washed his hair for three years i mean that that’s not the ideal advert, but his hair is just absolutely amazing absolutely amazing he’s done no washing at all that’s perfect anyway that’s my hair care routine.

Andrea:
I love your routine okay so it’s very similar and i think the channel you referred to is the same one that I’m.

Alison:
Watching except that.

Andrea:
I think the name is changed because.

Alison:
If you look up well.

Andrea:
I think so so, I’ll just preface this by saying, this kind of goes along with what you said and what we said about skin before, is that I’ve noticed wherever I’ve moved.

Andrea:
My hair has behaved differently. And I was wondering if you were referring more to the difference in your hair going from what color you had before to brown to gray. So you talked about texture change. I noticed in Virginia, I did like Gabriel. I just I didn’t use anything in my hair. And it was soft and it was curly it was long i had natural blonde highlights from the sun but then we moved back to washington my hair became brittle my scalp became dry um, so i like you ever since ever since then i’ve used very expensive and good high quality natural shampoos and conditioners. And then I more recently, I thought, you know, bag it, I’ll try anything. I got these still expensive, still natural, but felt like they were pushing my envelope of what I was comfortable with having in my home and going into my groundwater and touching my skin type soaps. But I was like, I just need to try something. And then that honestly just made everything worse. My hair seemed more brittle. My scalp seemed drier. Um, my skin, even around my neck was like unhappy. So I was like, well, this clearly isn’t working. So, um, I went back to try, um, Leah had referred to this channel on YouTube called Catherine Hair Care.

Alison:
I think her name was Catherine, so I think it’s the same person.

Andrea:
She has like long, dark, curly hair, right? I think her channel used to be called Historic Hair Care.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So I’ve been doing this for a couple months now, and I’m really happy with it. The routine is similar to what you described, but not exactly the same. So Leah recommended this, so shout out to Leah. And one thing i like about the channel like you said i watched probably the same episode it was really long um.

Andrea:
I had it was perfect because it was one day i had to wait in the car for jacob he was on an appointment and i had to wait for like an hour and a half and so i had like a notebook and everything and i was like this is my chance so i turned on the video and i made notes and i’ve been doing, you know her instructions ever since so her videos are very calm if you have to sit through a video, her videos are great. They’re not overstimulating. They’re not like loud and chaotic and things flashing all around and music and jump scares and all the things that people like to do in videos. She shows lots of photographs illustrating what she’s talking about or people from the time periods she’s referencing. And she, like us, believes that everything you put on your body should also be something you could eat. And then her kind of thing, I haven’t watched a bunch of her videos, but her kind of thing is to research and test out ancestral methods of hair care that she’s read about in old books or letters. She also makes and wears historical clothing, so that’s also really nice, and it feels like it’s a nice calming element in the episode,

Andrea:
you know, to see her long linen smocks and things like that when she’s doing her hair care. So I’m only a couple months in as of now, but, Here’s some of what I’ve learned and the routine I’m doing. One is that, like you said, Allison, with the food, with buying, you know, wooden dishes or.

Andrea:
You know, glass dishes or with good clothing, you know, wool and linen, you know, wool that isn’t super washed and things like that. But with actual tools and with the same with ancestral hair care, it isn’t just throw a quick product at it and move on with your life without thinking. It requires time and attention. It isn’t speedy. It isn’t expendable. You can’t skip it. It actually asks you to slow the pace of your life down and you can’t rush through it. If you’re doing 100 strokes of brushing your hair, you can’t, you know, the modern sell is that you can skip all that and use this product and get Gabriel’s luscious swinging box, you know? Yeah. But that actually isn’t reality. Those advertisements, as if anybody doesn’t know, but those advertisements are totally fake. So her recommendations, which I’m following, are as follows. And I’ll kind of give it to you in schedule format. It’s going to be very similar to yours, Alison. So hopefully this echoing will help support other people who are hoping to do this. And I will also link her channel in the show notes so that you can, you really need to go and enjoy her content to get more detail than what I’m going to give.

Andrea:
So the night before you wash, she dry finger detangles her hair, starting at the top and working her way down, which is the opposite of what we’ve always been told. But she also has referred multiple times to how using your fingers to detangle your hair makes you more sensitive to when you’re actually breaking your hair than even when you carefully brush it. And starting at the top, she also talked about how that helps her work through the tangles more carefully than starting at the bottom. It’s really interesting how much of this hair care requires you to slow down and pay attention.

Andrea:
And she, yes, recommends the boar bristle brushes, which we already used, so that was convenient for me. Then she applies, this is the night before the wash, she applies an oil treatment. So she now makes and sells a treatment. She didn’t have it, Allison, when you watched her episode back when. But she now has one, and she said everybody just kept begging her for the treatment. But she also shares recipes in her videos and on her blog and in free PDFs you can download. So you can buy it or because people love a product, i love a product i mean a good product is is a nice thing you know, but you can also just make it you can go into your kitchen you know everything i needed for it i already had in my kitchen so you can use coconut oil castor oil olive jojoba you can use a blend of these oils i added cedarwood essential oil rosemary and lavender and peppermint essential oils. Like you said, rosemary is associated with hair growth, as is cedarwood. And lavender is very soothing to the scalp, which I felt like my scalp had been through hell with all these different shampoos I tried. And then peppermint is also very stimulating to the scalp. And I wanted that cooling effect. So she puts her oils on her scalp with a squeeze bottle like you could buy for putting ketchup in.

Andrea:
And then she uses a scalp brush to kind of comb it through. I don’t have the scalp brush, but I just combed it through with my fingers. And then she braids, wraps, and covers her hair to sleep the night before.

Alison:
So I do have a scalp brush, and I was a bit unsure about buying it when I first started two years ago because I thought, oh, this is just a thing and we’re not going to use it. And I use it like multiple times a week. I use it to put the clay through my hair sometimes. I use it to put oil through my hair. Rob uses it after he’s finished putting all through his hair and so um it’s just got a wooden top a circle wooden top and then little um like silicone um, big um i don’t know what you called them tines a bit like fork tines you know but much bigger and it i would recommend if you’re thinking about it and you’re not sure they they are very useful so i would say the brush is okay anyway well.

Andrea:
This is going to be like the episode i have coming out in november with anita where we talked about kitchen tools and i ended up wanting to buy everything yeah episode i i already wanted a scalp brush but now that.

Alison:
Allison says she has one i’m super jealous and i really want.

Andrea:
One after all i am trying to do everything you do.

Alison:
Apparently so they are very nice it feels really nice when you use one.

Andrea:
One of my favorite tips I learned from her on wash day is she braids her hair before washing it. This is probably most useful if you have long hair. I always end up with tangled hair. I like to brush my hair before I wash it, but no matter what, it gets tangled when I’m washing it. So braiding it first actually helps you to prevent the tangling. And preventing tangling, of course, when your hair is wet, it stretches. And when you’re trying to detangle it or deal with it afterwards, you know, then it could break.

Andrea:
So I really love braiding my hair before washing it, now that she’s taught me that. What she does with the rasool clay, or whatever you call it, she takes two cups of water or a mixture of aloe vera juice and water, and then she mixes in a quarter to a third cup of rasool clay. So she suggests that if you’re early on in your journey, which I am, that you start on the lower side of clay. Yeah. And so it’s very it really just looks like a gray water.

Alison:
Yeah so yours is much that’s much thinner than mine the reason why i stopped doing that is because i don’t have long enough hair to dip braids in like she does and it just made a mess everywhere just went everywhere and so we want to we make it all up in advance literally we have a container in the bathroom with the paste already made and you know we probably use less of it than she’s using and that you will be using in your kind of more liquid form because of that. But I think both in the end, they kind of work out to the same thing. It just, I changed it a bit because it worked better for our situation.

Andrea:
And I think that’s, again, being in tune to not just blindly doing what somebody said, but kind of paying attention. Is this actually working? Is this doing what I want? And of course, sometimes, especially if you’re starting with oiling your hair and then washing with clay there is a little faith involved, that because it is a strange procedure but um, when i made this mixture of the clay and water i also mixed some peppermint oil into it yeah that was on her suggestion you could also do tea tree especially if you had an irritated scalp yeah and then she puts it into a squeeze bottle like i described using with the oil, and then in the shower she kind of, squeezes it through her scalp so like you said she has longer hair My hair is nowhere close to as long as hers is. I expect that by the end of next week, hopefully. But at this point, she squeezes it onto the scalp and then massages it in with fingers or with that special comb, like a shampoo brush or comb.

Alison:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
She massages her scalp pretty thoroughly for some time. And, of course, that’s also beneficial. But you do want to be careful that you’re not dragging and tearing your hair. And then she rinses very thoroughly. Like you said, she dips her braid into water, into some of the water, the rassel clay water. Now, I think she has said, and I’ve heard other people talk about chlorinated water can be a problem if you’re trying to wash with clay. I don’t know. Yeah. There’s all kinds of problems with chlorinated water. I don’t really know anything about that. We have well water and I’ve not gotten far enough into my process to investigate if I need to put a water filtration head on or anything like that. What I’ve done is I’ve begun by creating a routine and I will slowly perfect it. And I like how Joel Salatin says, begin with an imperfect system and then improve on your system. And then as I recently heard the author James Clear say, apparently from his book Atomic Habits, which I have not read, but, he also advocates, he says, get your habit a reliable habit before you begin improving and fine-tuning the habit, which I think is all very reasonable. So, you know, we’ll start where we are.

Andrea:
So she repeats this clay wash and rinse two or three times, and then rinses thoroughly with a shampoo brush, still with your hair braided. And then, as you described, she rinses with some apple cider vinegar and water at the end. So this is, I’m just copying her because I want my hair to be super long. No, I actually do. And then she pats her hair dry. She’s not wringing it or vigorously scrubbing it. She uses whatever those kind of soft towels are called.

Andrea:
I cannot remember what they’re called. But anyways, she uses a soft towel. And then like you described, she suggests adding oils to the ends of your hair.

Andrea:
My hair is coming into this process extremely dry. And I also have, I’ve generally always had pretty dry hair. Like even prior to going without shampoo, I could go for three weeks without washing my hair and it never got like a greasy look to it.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
And that’s with brushing it and things like that. So I think my hair just tends to the dry side. And like you described, you could be getting oil in your bristle brush and transferring it up to the top of your head and down. So you might want to be aware of that. Some people have more than one bristle brush. And I think it was her, she also showed how to wash a bristle brush, which involves, you don’t want to submerge a bristle brush in water, but you tap the tips of the bristle brush in a shallow pan. of water, basically. You have to be very careful, apparently, not to get the whole thing wet. I have not yet got to that point, but I suppose I will have to wash it at some point.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
So the coconut oil I use in my hair is the same brand of coconut oil as I use in the kitchen. I have two different jars. No shock there. And this one just stays in the bathroom. Obviously, I don’t want it traveling back and forth to the kitchen. She also suggests using shea butter in winter as we’re coming into winter. I suppose I’ll be trying that. I do have some shea butter. And then she puts her hair in a turban to dry and she uses any extra jojoba or coconut or shea oil that she has out on her skin.

Alison:
So just while you were talking about that, about the two different jars, you know, you’ve got your jar of coconut oil for the kitchen and a jar of coconut oil for the bathroom. I wanted to add that we kind of have a similar arrangement. I don’t very often use oil on my skin. But when I do, I will use coconut oil. And we’ve got a separate jar upstairs in the bathroom to the one we have downstairs in the kitchen, just like you. We use coconut oil mainly for massaging. And we started that years ago because it doesn’t stain sheets in the same way I didn’t know that that another oil will yeah completely so why is that I don’t know why it is I remember reading it years ago and then just doing it and it’s right, okay so um, I use that I also use the same oil mix that I use on my hair the night before I wash it which is the almond oil with the rosemary i will use that same jar which is kept upstairs, to put perhaps on my elbows or my lower legs if i feel like yeah you know they need it or i want to treat myself particularly to have that smell on me you know for the next couple of days um so we have the same we have you know this jar upstairs, which we’re using for hair body whatever and same with the coconut on one jar up here and one jar in the kitchen so yeah.

Andrea:
Perfect. I guess I would say to conclude the hair section then, Allison, you can add anything that you want to say to this, is that one, I now keep, everything in the bathroom. I have a top shelf that I keep all of the essential oils and the clay and a fork and the measuring cup that I use. I keep all that up on that shelf. It just lives in there for easy mixing. You said you guys use the paste so you don’t have to.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
You’re not mixing it a la carte.

Alison:
No, we just have it all mixed in a container. And when it’s finished, Rob comes down and says, can you make some more? And I’m just in the kitchen. I mix it up and then we take it out. Perfect. As simple as that.

Andrea:
That works. that works um i have not yet, washed the kids’s hair with this although i want to try it they all know that i want to try it and the girls are super excited i think jacob could care less but the girls are super excited about it um, the effect of rasul clay in the septic is yet to be determined i don’t know okay i’ve never heard anything about it and i don’t know it’s going down and such dilute amounts with such hot water and so infrequently because you do not wash your hair often with the clay um, I don’t know how much she does it, but I would say, honestly, I’m not washing my hair more than every two weeks, even possibly longer. But again, also remember, my hair does not get super oily. And I’m even oiling my hair in between. And I think my hair is just sucking up all the moisture. So I will say the first time I washed my hair with the clay, my hair felt very thick and clumpy, even though I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. And it just seemed like, and I had also heavily oiled it the night before and this was the first time. So everything was taking time to work through, but I was not alarmed. I’ve done enough weird things that I was like, you know, you kind of see it through.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. Colleen and the headbands coming in again to save us. But that was just the first time. After that, then I started to get that like the hair that that was more like what I was expecting, you know, more hydrated. Like I’m putting my hands on my hair right now and it’s like curly and it’s not feeling like it was before. I do need to get a good trim because, haven’t been in a while but I imagine that once I get a good trim and maybe a couple more washes my hair will be four feet long by the time we get back.

Alison:
Together so I’ll just keep everybody posted so I was just you know thinking when I first came across this that my hair’s just going to get longer and longer because my hair has never ever got longer than my shoulders it just falls out um and, it’s long at the moment but not as long as I dreamed it might become unfortunately, um Well, I wanted to say at the beginning of when I started it, I was doing the, clay like twice, like, you know, saying she does it two or three times before she finishes and moves on to a final rinse. And I found that that was not necessary. Now, maybe because I was a sticker, but also I think my hair isn’t perhaps as greasy as it might be if you need like two or three of these. So I just use one rinse. I think maybe Rob uses two with the clay, but I just do one. I found when I did two, it was getting too dry afterwards. So now I just do the one and it feels better like that for me.

Andrea:
Yeah, that sounds reasonable. I mean, when you look at her hair in the videos, it’s extremely thick. There’s a ton of it. It’s very curly. It’s very long. I cannot imagine one wash would even cover it off.

Alison:
Whereas mine’s not like that.

Andrea:
No, neither is mine.

Alison:
Having said that, I mean, you say you need to get a good trim. I mean, I think I went, it’s not as bad as the dentist. I haven’t been to the dentist for a very long time. We have talked about that on various community forums. But I think I went to have my hair cut about a year ago. Maybe I’ll get a cut again. Maybe I won’t.

Andrea:
I would say it’s been a little of…

Alison:
Don’t get split ends it.

Andrea:
Doesn’t really happen.

Alison:
I just sometimes it feels like it might be perhaps a better shape for my face when I have.

Andrea:
It cut.

Alison:
Maybe but I’m not that bothered um yeah so how do you find your ends are you know if your hair’s dry do you find that your.

Andrea:
Ends are very dry generally my ends are very split and that was something that you know that’s partly why I do want to get the trim anyways just to clean it up and it has it’s been well over a year i think kenton was really small the last time i went in and the time before that i think had been you know years it had been years so um, the problem is actually my friend karen who cuts all our hair moved to florida, so we don’t get a haircut anymore, i have to now go to a place with smells and you know how it is.

Alison:
Oh and talk about things that you do you don’t have anything to saying about i i.

Andrea:
That’s part of the.

Alison:
Reason why i struggle with hairdressers because i don’t know they start talking about things i have no idea about and i’m like oh what do i say.

Andrea:
Well i have to say i can’t use that as my out because the person who has cut my hair now once and who i need to go back and see she’s a friend of a friend she’s very dear and she’s she’s a good a good person to chat with that’s good i can’t complain from that gold yes gold, But anyways, I think that’s hair. That’s our hair. We’ll come back with reports and, you know, maybe next year we’ll do an update and see how it’s going. So let’s take another quick break, Allison. Give ourselves a breather for a second. Listen to a lovely ad and then we’ll come back and talk about taking care of your skin maybe when things are going wrong and things that we do.

Andrea:
All right. I kind of categorized this as injuries slash wound care. Didn’t entirely know what to call it. It’s just, you know, when maybe there’s an abrasion or your skin is breaking out or something, are there things we do further to support? Obviously, we already talked about the importance of the food and it goes without saying, but here I am saying it, that getting rid of the food that is causing issues is also part of the problem. But dare we say that wound care begins at the table? A body that is very well stocked with nutrients can, no shocker, recover and rebuild faster because it has resources to draw on. And skin can heal better when you have consistent collagen and protein and saturated fats in your diet and on yourself, as we know.

Andrea:
And that is something, you know, a question I get all the time is how to, what do I put on to prevent stretch marks during pregnancy? And, you know, of course, scientists say it’s a combination of genetics and a whole bunch of things. But also, it’s really based on what you’ve been eating for the last couple of years. So if you’re getting lots of collagen and, glycine and you know glutathione building products in your bone broth basically and if you’re getting lots of different types of protein across a range of animals and parts of animals and if you’re getting a lot of saturated fats then, you’re probably going to have a better shot at reducing, any sort of tension or irritation in your skin. But we’ll also add that avoiding rancid seed oils is a key to helping you prevent things like sunburn.

Andrea:
And interestingly, it takes, I think they say, what is it, Allison, three years, you know, from when you stop eating rancid oils for the last of them to start to leave your body. So, you know, if you say, well, I haven’t eaten seed oils in a year and I haven’t noticed any different. Well, we still have those highly oxidative, unstable PUFAs in our body, polyunsaturated fatty acids in our body. And oxidative, as you know, is the opposite of anti-oxidative. And oxidative is another code word for wrinkles and degeneration and cell death and other unpleasant side effects. So anti-oxidation of course is when you have, nutrients in your body that can go about and scavenge and look for cells that are or you know what are they missing an ion or something and they can stop the.

Andrea:
Kind of cataclysmic, downslide of oxidation that causes just the chain reaction of, you know, everything from achy joints to sagging skin that doesn’t bounce back and things like that. So eating the good food and avoiding the garbage, both things are a good support, which is not to say that people in history never got sunburned or something. But, you know, when you basically turn yourself into a crisping machine, and then you step out into the sun. It’s like, well, no shocker, you got burned. And all the talk is centered around what are natural sunburn preventatives. And of course, shout out to Hannah in Arizona, there’s a lot of sun there. You know, that’s definitely more of an issue than here, where I can look outside and see steely gray clouds as far as the eye can see. Well, not to say that UV rays don’t come through that either. But just to say that we do need to put a good attention on our plate. And it does take years for these things to clear out from our body and for the benefits to sometimes take effect. So don’t be discouraged. Just keep plugging away at the good thing. But let’s talk about topical care. So, Allison, you referenced the, I’m so excited. I want to call the episode the session in Holly’s course.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Can people still buy it even though it’s over?

Alison:
Yes, I think I can.

Andrea:
I want to put the link in the show notes because there is so much there is i don’t know how holly did it but there is so much in this episode or in this.

Andrea:
What would you call it summit there’s so much more and you’re in this one too so if people want to see you teaching uh bonus allison’s going to be in there, but anyways um you talked about the probiotic skincare session on there and i’m really excited about that one i haven’t seen it yet but i’m already as you know a big fan of using food on your skin and of course kombucha so a kombucha SCOBY, you can tear off pieces of it to use as a kind of a probiotic covering for a wound. SCOBY, we don’t actually entirely know why.

Andrea:
The bacteria create the SCOBY, but one of the, most predominant theories, and I think a very logical one, is that it’s to conceal and protect the material underneath, which is, in the case of kombucha, going to be the sweet tea. And if the scoby which is symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast can form a covering over the top it can sort of seal it in you know maybe animals will be less likely to drink it bugs will be less likely to be, you know swimming around in it and it’s less likely to evaporate giving the um the bacteria and yeast more of their valuable food to consume so i feel like that’s a really logical, theory, and we can use their theory on ourselves. You know, when you have an open wound, you could lay a piece of SCOBY over it.

Andrea:
You can also take, this does work the best with, if you can get the thinner layers of SCOBY, not, you know, like the, I don’t know if you’ve made kombucha, Allison, but sometimes you’re like, I haven’t got to this jar in a while. There’s a six-inch thick SCOBY on there. Okay, those are really tough. Those are difficult to work with, it, which is not to say they can’t be worked with, and I have worked with them. But if you can get the thin thinner layers, it works better, but you can actually throw them in a blender. And blend them up into this.

Andrea:
Kind of a paste. And you can, I’ve ground in like lavender essential oil or tea tree essential oil. You can grind in different oils if there’s different kind of goals you have in mind. You don’t have to. The kombucha scoby’s got plenty of goodness in it that’ll stand in. And then you can put that on as a facial and just leave it on for a while. It is kind of weird looking. And then you can, you know, like you said, you can wash it off, put it in the compost, put it in your, oh, what, the bokashi. Yeah, yeah. So you can make good use of it. And another usage, like you had described with the kombucha, is making kind of a tonic out of it, which I have done before, where you just kind of pour some, decant a little of your kombucha into a bottle and maybe I like to add essential oils to it. So something like lavender again or rosemary, something kind of on the theme. And then you can use it to wash your face or like you also described, you could use it to rinse your hair or you could add some kombucha to water like the apple cider vinegar. We didn’t have apple cider vinegar for a long time. We just didn’t have any on hand. So I was using kombucha in water as a rinse for a long time.

Alison:
Yeah, makes sense.

Andrea:
And you don’t smell like kombucha afterwards. It’s like you said when you ask Gabriel, do I smell like cheese? I don’t know why you don’t. You want to rinse thoroughly. Another nice topical care is honey. And this can be controversial in different circles because honey isn’t a sterilized item. But this is very traditional. And especially in Australia, there’s different types of honey that are highly prized for wounds in hospitals. I know melaleuca or tea tree honey is one of the top. Manuka oil is more widely recognized in the U.S. because it is very high in different beneficial properties. Hospitals use a sterilized version of honey. I don’t know how they come up with that. And then it can be used.

Andrea:
Well, I don’t know about pouring it in an open room, but you could put it over little abrasions and things like that.

Andrea:
And then, Allison, we promised we’d come back to oatmeal. So I’m going to say a method that my mom used. I first remember when we all had chicken pox when I was little, then we would take baths, an oatmeal bath. So you’re basically just in the bath floating around in oatmeal for any hives or itchy skin type thing. Looking back as an adult now, and now that I’ve done this with my kids, I’m like, wow, what a pain to clean out. But I never even thought about it when I was a kid. you know just like oh you have hives or something of course mom makes you an oatmeal bath you can add milk to the bath you could literally make um, you could put oats milk uh essential oils epsom salts all in a bowl and mix it up um when i give my kids a bath like this what i have found allison this is quite fun for kids i don’t know if um, gabriel would be into this or not but um, I put everything into a metal bowl and they get into the bath and then I give them the metal bowl.

Alison:
I see.

Andrea:
And they scoop it out. They mix it in. Oh, yeah. They make their potions. So it’s kind of more fun. And then we have some essential oils that are very dark blue. So I’ll put everything in the bowl and then put one drop of dark blue oil in the top and it’s just the greatest thing. But could you talk a little bit about some of the benefits of oatmeal and why we would use this?

Alison:
Yeah just because i’ve come across all this stuff in my research for the book really um i didn’t realize that oatmeal had such a long history of being used as a skin aid, and food for the skin and i tried to kind of dig around and find out what is it what are the things in oatmeal that, have made um people for centuries use it without actually knowing the science which of course we know now so, oatmeal has a vein of thrymides in it which is probably why you know for hives or itchy skin they’ve been used because those are anti-itching and anti-inflammatory the beta glucans in oatmeal which is the thing we’ve mostly heard about in oatmeal because they’re heart protective they make a protective film over your skin so they can help you know if your itching is ongoing there’s fat, oats are one of the fattiest grains you can get the fat in the oat rebuilds and protects the skin’s protective fat layer they have prebiotic fiber in them which, helps feed your skin microbiome because our skin obviously has its own microbiome and then they have a veinins in them which are like they’re like a saponin and, those gently cleanse your skin and they have vitamin e in which we know is an antioxidant so all of those things together is why you know for centuries people have been using oats, for bars and on skin care and you see oats being used in commercial, skin products these days as well for those reasons. Okay.

Andrea:
Well, it all makes sense. It’s all coming together. I love it.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So you could make your kefir-soaked oat bath, rather than a bowl to eat. I guess you could sit in the bath and eat a bowl of it too.

Alison:
Eat the oatmeal at the same time.

Andrea:
Yeah, of course. And for cleaning it out, I have found that if you just take like a mesh strainer and skim it across the top a couple of times, the chickens will eat it. or you could put it in the compost or your Bokashi bin or whatever.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
Well, Allison, this was all really, really lovely. I would say if somebody’s listening to this and you want some more details, one, that episode 76, which is, covering using essential oils in the kitchen, has a little bit more detail on kind of some of the, why we are in this position and why we even have to think about this.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
If you’re a supporter or you’re planning to become a supporter, then hop on to the Kitchen Table Chats podcast, which is Allison and my second podcast, which has even more episodes than this one. And episode 16 on there, Allison, you and I talked in early days about what we were doing for skincare. Another good adjacent episode to this one, Allison, I was thinking, the whole time we did this, I wanted to mention episode 64, which is Better Broths and Healing Tonics where I interviewed an author and… If you have an interest in healthful and youthful skin and vitality and, you know, what it takes to have healthy organs to support the healthy skin and things like that, all those things that are hallmarks of a good diet and longevity.

Andrea:
Those authors have a cookbook, which is gorgeous. It is definitely one of the most visually appealing books on my shelf, as well as they have a big tome called Younger You with tons of data and research and why you would use certain nutrients and what they’ll do for you, with lots of instructive advice and ideas on basically reducing your biological age, which, you know, of course, you could do that from a vanity standpoint. You know the what’s the modern convention allison like stuff botox in your skin and get like your skin yanked back for a face like facelift or something yeah, but that’s like a veneer of youthfulness that isn’t actual genuine deep nutrition deep health so, starting with your organs is the way to access deeper health and then i would also say episode 127 which is all about rendering fat is really helpful thank you because we do yeah we do talk about some different ways to clean up the fat if you wanted to use it for topical, aspects versus um you know just maybe to fry donuts in or something anything else you wanted to add allison.

Alison:
No that’s it thank you very much for everything today it’s been a really beautiful, yeah it’s been a really smiley episode It’s made me smile a.

Andrea:
Lot. Yeah. Makes me want to go wash my hair and braid it and put milk on my face. Yeah.

Alison:
Do the key thing.

Andrea:
It’s a good day. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Alison. Enjoy your afternoon. And I will talk to you soon.

Alison:
Yeah, will do. Bye.