While I was down at Gaganis Wholesalers the other day picking up mustard powder I stumbled across a really lovely grainy Australian cooking salt and I thought, isn’t that a pretty bag, and then I thought, that would make a great salt for a body scrub, so I popped the pretty bag in with my shopping and this is what I have made with it.
I have very sensitive skin, as an asthmatic with hypertension everything tends to be a little bit reactive, and that includes my skin and, more particularly, my scalp, so I have to be very careful what I use on them. Our skin is the largest organ in our body, so we should be taking as much care of it as we do of our heart and our lungs.
I must raise my hand here, I am a neglectful skin owner. I tend to ignore it mostly and my poor hard working paws are showing my 48 years. See?
So while I was simmering my Asparagus Soup (see Back to Basics 24), I decided to make a mess all over the bench and treat myself to a salt scrub.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons coarse cooking salt
1 1/2 tablespoons avocado oil
Combine those three in a small pot and mix together with your fingers.
Smells great!
First a word about our ingredients. I chose Rosemary because it has anti-inflammatory properties and is good for burns, which I have one on the joint of my thumb at the moment, it is also good for soothing the skin, so that is good for me as my skin is super sensitive, as mentioned.
Avocado oil I chose because it is high in anti-oxidants and really good for dry skin, as well as very gentle.
A quick word on our salt before we begin, we are using our salt here as an exfoliating agent, and it is great at that, but do you remember what we used salt for when we made our vegan bolognese? We used it to draw the moisture out of our vegetables! We most absolutely do not want to draw the moisture out of our skin, so work it in quickly and thoroughly and then rinse it off, really, make sure all the salt is off your skin, the oil will remain, that is good, but we don’t want the salt once we have finished scarifying ourselves.
Scoop up a good teaspoon full and rub it all over your hands and forearms, spend a bit of time rubbing it into any dry bits, be thorough, give those poor little dry paws a good scrub, then rinse the salt and rosemary away in warm water and pat dry.
Hmm. Let’s have a look.
Well, I don’t know if it looks any younger, but it feels nice and soft, and later when I put moisturiser on it sucked it up like a straw, so I am presuming that that layer of dead skin on top is gone. Yes, I am pretty pleased with that.
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