We started making soap because we were both fed up with the quality of shop-bought soap. The bars that we bought were a funny pink colour with an artificial rose scent. We didn’t think much of the well-known brands either because they all smelled of unnatural fragrances and dried out the skin. And so we decided to embark on the making of our own soap…at that time we did not have Internet on the farm and had to conduct our research at the Internet Cafe in town.
Our purpose was to make a good soap for us to use instead of having the buy the poor quality supermarket stuff. The properties that we sought for in our home-made soap was a good lather and a moisturising bar with natural scent.
Generally speaking, soap is made from oil/fat and lye. The oil/fat lends the qualities and properties to a soap bar and so we started off by experimenting with anything that we could find off the supermarket shelf. We tried everything from shortening, to lard and a whole plethora of vegetable oils.
These attempts were a great learning experience: shortening was actually okay but the lard soap actually smelled quite piggy!! We came out of the shower smelling like we had smothered ourselves in bacon!! The vegetable oil made a soft moisturising bar but disintegrated very quickly into bits.
At the time, we were also making coconut oil and selling it to the lady at Punta Gorda market. It was a slow, laborious process of grating, boiling and stirring. We spent many full days setting up a fire (with coconut husks) and stirring our pot of coconut oil together under the shade of the coconut palms. It was a very significant time, when we tried to seek meaning in our lives, after extricating ourselves from the rushing urgency and pressures of our previous lives as medical doctors.
I remember making a test batch of coconut oil soaps and eagerly waiting for the results. When soap is made in this way ie. not commercially, the soap needs time to “cure” and this can take anything from 3 months or longer. The longer you wait, the better…it is like a fine wine. Anyway, after waiting 3 months, we tried this soap and discovered that it had all the properties that we were looking far. It lathered well, did not dry out the skin and the natural scent was lovely. The skin felt so clean and smooth.
This was the perfect recipe and we were using our own coconuts from the farm!
Our soaps are still made from this original coconut oil recipe. In addition to this, we have created Medicinal Soaps and Chocolate Soaps.
Our Medicinal Soaps include Copal, Jackass Bitters and Neem and White Pitahaya.
Our Chocolate Soaps include Chocolate Artisan, Cacao Butter Soap and Chocolate scented soaps in four delicious scents: Chocolate-Mint, Chocolate-Orange, Chocolate-Mango and Chocolate-Vanilla.
To see all our soaps and apothecary items please go to casamascia.com.
It’s getting hot again in Belize as the dry season continues. Vanilla Agar Cubes is a really nice cooling dessert for these hot days. I managed to find agar at the Taiwanese store though I am sure that you could find some in a health food store in Belize. It’s a really easy recipe…light and refreshing.
The vanilla vines are flowering and it’s time to pollinate. The flowers are really beautiful; we have grown the plants up our coconut trees. In our experience, the flowers open in early morning and start closing by about 10am so there is small window of opportunity to pollinate. In past years, we tried to leave it to the stingless bees (meliponia) to do this labour-intensive work for us but we have only managed to get about 2 to 4 pods a plant. If hand pollinated correctly, each plant can produce about 50 to 100 vanilla pods.
So what’s our latest tout…or clout? Not only do we have Zazen duckies but we have Zazen soap! I have noticed that at some point, when we have done enough hours of an activity (Yes that 10000 hours thing), it evolves into an art. The other day, we had a moment of clarity whilst mixing up soap; we realised that by clearing our head of the internal dialogue (you know…the usual blah blah blah voice in your head) the soap mixes perfectly with no hitches. In contrast to this, when we are feeling chaotic, we get early thickening of the mixture and lumpy bits so that the soap has to be poured in haste. There you go…The Zen of Soap making by Munchkin and Gnome!!
