Hi Everyone!! I am writing to let you know that Annette Vernon of Placencia Pop-Up Art will be selling our Casa Mascia Apothecary products at the Placencia Sidewalk Festival next weekend. She will have all the following goodies: Copal Medicinal Oil Vials, Copal Medicinal Ointment, Copal Medicinal Soap, Itch Done Gone, Lemongrass Insect Repellent Balm, Jackass Bitters and Neem Soap and White Pitahaya soap. Look out for all these products…
Sorry we won’t be there this year!! If there is anybody that wants something that is not on the list please email me. Cheers and have fun at the festival this year!!
Hello Everyone!! Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) will be holding their annual organic fair at PG park today (31st October 2015). We will be there armed with our Casa Mascia Goodies.
This one is always a favourite at fairs: Cheap Sale (or Runaway Sale or Explosive-One-Time-Only Sale or Everything-Must-Go-Sale!!
Casa Mascia Cheap Sale.
Come and rummage through our bargain box: there will be all sorts of exciting things (exclusive once off) like Cacao and Lemongrass Insect Repellent, Lavender balm, Grapefruit Balm, Tooth-powder or Tooth-whitener with lovely essential oils and lots more. You can’t beat a bargain!
We will also be selling fresh Balam (Mayan White Cacao) fruit for all you organic gardeners out there.
Balam Fruit.
We will have our usual favourite stuff including Copal Soap, Medicinal Oils and Ointments. Oh, and two buckets of Chocolate Artisan Soap going at a Run-away Price of $5.00 (Best Price, as they say here in Belize)!!
Copal Medicinal Oil Vial.Chocolate Soap Galore!!
Hope to see y’all there. Otherwise, if you are not in Belize, we’ll have lots of fun photos for laterz.
Hello Everyone!! The tourist season is just round the corner and we are gearing up for the new season. I have added a few more additions to our product list. There are still more new products to come..how exciting!! We are now offering Copal Medicinal Oil in Vial form:
Copal Medicinal Oil Vial.
This smaller sized bottle (30ml) is an ideal size for traveling. Copal Medicinal Oil has natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties which can be used for cuts, scrapes, burns, scalds, skin infections, insect bites and fungal infections. For all our Copal fans out there, the medicinal oil is still available in the larger bottle (120ml) and ointment form.
We made this because of popular demand for a local liquid soap made from coconut oil. It is completely detergent free and contains no artificial ingredients. It is available in original (unscented), peppermint and orange citrus essential oils. It is mild enough to be used for face, body and hair. In fact, it is so mild that it can be used for sensitive skin and babies.
We also have this brand new Herbal Air Freshener; it has lovely essential oils including clove and lemongrass which act in synergy to remove odours and naturally disinfect the environment.
This nifty little sprayer is great for home use and can double up as a car freshener too. Also, it can remove pet odours without harming animals.
Check out The Apothecary for more detailed information on our products.
The Chocolate (Cacao) Festival is taking place this weekend in Toledo, Belize. It is a welcome distraction from farm headaches and issues. For those of you who have been following our water problem, the saga continues as it is literally pouring bucket-loads so we can not pull up our well-pump to fix or replace it. I can’t complain because both our water tanks and numerous 5 gallon buckets have been filled right up to the top. And, the frogs haven’t had the time yet to deposit their spawn everywhere! Better get my washing done before the tadpoles start appearing.
Anyway, Casa Mascia Apothecary will have a booth at the Cacao Festival tomorrow. We will be located at the Chocolate Factory (near Uno Service Station). It will be fun for all the family with plenty of food and chocolate…what more can you ask for!
We will be bringing our Chocolate Artisan Soaps which will be on special for the festival:
Chocolate Artisan Soaps.
And, of course, we will bring our Copal Medicinal Products:
Copal Medicinal Oil.Copal Medicinal Soap.
We would like to launch our new product at the festival tomorrow. It is called “I can’t believe it’s not D.B’s”; this is our coconut castile soap similar to a famous brand named after a doctor. Castile is oil-based liquid soap which is free of chemical detergents. This product is still made by doctors (ie. us) but the only differences are that we are not well-known and we live in the middle of the bush in Belize! This item is available in litre bottles in original and peppermint.
I Can’t Believe it’s Not DB’s!
We hope to see you there. If you can’t make it we will be sure to take lots of pictures. I will make sure that Gnome does not take the pictures because they would be fuzzy and out of focus!
Just in case you can’t find us we have many of our non-chocolate products in Vance Vernon Pharmacy on Front Street, Toledo (next to BTIA). They have all our Copal Products, Massage Oils, Lemongrass Insect Repellents, Bitters Oil and much, much more.
We are having a busy run right now with making our stuff. I made a batch of Copal Medicinal Ointment today. Here is copal (Protium copal) in its raw form with the cleaned-up material to the front of it:
Raw Copal and Cleaned Copal.
A pound block of copal is sold in the Punta Gorda market wrapped up in a leaf as shown. If you actually look closely, you will see all sorts of detritus in the resin. Through a cleaning and filtering process we remove all the muck out of it to get what is shown in the picture. It is a really messy procedure because the resin is a very sticky.
So, here is the pot with my magical formula for copal ointment:
Making Copal Ointment.
The bright yellow stuff is beeswax melting in sticky goo (sorry for the lack of technical jargon).
And then we package it into containers:
Copal Medicinal Ointment.
Copal is used for skin ailments including bacterial and fungal skin infections. It also has natural cicatrising properties which aids the healing of skin and helps the formation of scar tissue. You can read more about Copal if you press on this link.
And, Gnome has been working too…
He has been working his magic on the soaps and has been hand-stamping a custom order batch. This is definitely not his favourite chore but alas, somebody’s got to do it! Stamping soaps actually requires co-ordination and correct alignment…it isn’t as easy as it looks!
Stamping Soap.
and this is the result:
Stamped Soap.
Gnome will be cutting a batch of Copal Medicinal Soap later on so I will adding a few more pictures later. Okay, hope everyone is having a good Sunday!
More Pictures:
Soap Cutter.
In the above picture, the piece of wood at the back is a frame with horizontal wires running along the whole length of it. The front piece of wood is pushed down to ease the column of soap through the cutting wires.
And, this is the result:
Freshly Cut Copal Soap.
Gnome only uses the cutter for the Medicinal soap because the result can be rough-cut. For aesthetic reasons, the Artisan Soaps are cut one by one with a single wire.
Since we are doctors down here in Toledo, most locals are actually more interested in our medical products. Our copal products were the first things we made and still remain the most commonly sought after preparation in Belize.
Copal Resin (Protium copal) has been used by the Mayans for centuries in skin ailments including infections and inflammatory conditions. It is a medicine which is still used in the villages of Toledo but with westernisation and modernisation, many younger Mayans are losing these traditions.
If you are interested in reading about how we came about making this medicine, please read my article Copal in the Library.
