Now Wash Your Hands
This month sees the fabulous Food Festival here in Dartmouth. I hope to be sampling some wonderful foods and gaining a few extra pounds of ‘winter weight’ so I can keep my body temperature up during the cold months ahead…that’s my story and I am sticking to it.
One of the main regulations of food manufacturing, whether by a big company or a small artisanal venture, in your professional workspace or in a ‘pop up’ tent on the street, is washing your hands before handling food. This is something taken very seriously in our country and sometimes not so much in others.
I have just had the rather unsettling experience of buying meat in another country, in a shop, only for the person serving me to put down his cigarette and prod the pieces of chicken with his finger to indicate which ones I wanted. Needless to say I cooked them all to a point where they were more carbon than chicken and lived to tell the tale - even though it makes me feel sick to my stomach at least I wasn’t actually sick!
While there are times when the words ‘health and safety’ make you want to throw a tantrum and scream and shout, food safety is not one of them for obvious reasons. Food safety describes the handling, preparation and storage of the products to prevent food borne illness. Food really can transmit disease from person to person.
There are 4 C’s in the food industry: Cross contamination, cleaning, chilling and cooking all of which have their own individual rules and regulations that must be followed rigourously. The most important rule for all areas is washing your hands. Yes, something as simple as that can prevent people feeling ill after eating food prepared by others or even by themselves in their own home. Just because you are not an employee does not mean you should not take this step just as seriously.
The guide lines for washing hands suggest using a liquid soap and scrubbing the surfaces of your hands and lower forearms for 10 -15 seconds including between the fingers and around the nails. Friction can remove many microorganisms. Aha, now that’s interesting if you apply that knowledge to your exfoliation routine. You will literally be as clean as a whistle after a scrub with a nice oil and salt combination exfoliator whipped up in your kitchen.
It’s not just liquid soap we like - we have a love affair going on with this innocent product in all its forms. From the centuries when soap was the darling of the rich and the scourge of the poor to the present day when it’s become something of a market leader in all that is holy.
Bars, liquid, flakes, on a rope, or any one of a myriad different ways to present this product, we all have it in our homes. It is accessible in public restrooms and restaurants. Hotels gift their customers with bespoke soaps in the bathroom. There are more brands of this cleanser than ever before and more flooding the market each year as if it’s a new experience for the public at large.
It can be mass produced or hand made by companies such as Lush or L’Occitane.
It will come as no surprise that soap was mentioned in 2800BC in Ancient Babylon and not to be outdone the Ancient Egyptians bathed regularly with a combination of animal and vegetable oils combined with alkaline salts. We have the recipe for soap made in 556BC which consisted of ashes, cypress oil and sesame seed oil pressed together. This sounds like a recipe from an artisan manufacturer today, because as with all health and beauty, there is a resurgence of doing it as it was originally done and then charging us eye watering amounts for it.
The Ancient Romans (of course) brought us the word for soap – ‘Sapo’. Their versions were based on a mixture of tallow and ashes. It is talked about by Pliny in terms that seemed to suggest real men did not use soap but stuck to the old way of cleansing the skin by massaging oil over the body and scraping it off to remove dirt and sweat. This sounds suspiciously like a spa treatment I had in Morocco!
Whatever the time period, making soap was women’s work. By the time the 19th Century rolled around the main area of production was in France with Provence and Marseille already market leaders. They grew plenty of olives for oil and lavender for scent.
Pears soap was first made in 1807 by Andrew Pears (don’t you just love these little details of history!) who was originally a barber who began experimenting with purifying soap for his rich clientele who wanted something special that others did not have. It was the first mass marketed translucent soap with an innovative advertising campaign.
Liquid soap was produced in 1865 by B. J. Johnson. His palm and olive oil liquid was introduced as Palmolive and quickly became the name of the company which we all know today.
Recently ‘soap free soap’ has been all the rage. Honestly we are never satisfied, always on the look out for a worry. Children have been washed with soap for centuries and survived. Now we panic that sodium laurel sulphate is ruining their lives! What exactly is soap free soap and why should we want to use it instead of, well, soap?
Soapless soap is made without the traditional combination of oils or fats with an alkali but most will still lather up. Emulsifying ingredients work to break down fats and oils to clean the skin; detergent chemicals are used to create suds which are less drying and harsh to the skin.
If you care to buy a bottle of Dr Bronners Liquid Castile Soap which costs about £10.00 for a kg then you can have a go at making your own hand and body washes. This is the most pure and organic soap with a long history and can be used for a myriad of other cleaning jobs so is a great investment. I very rarely, if at all, recommend a product and there are other liquid castile soaps out there but not all are the same quality. Read the label before making your choice.
A basic body wash is as follows:
2 oz of coconut oil
2 oz of honey
4 oz of liquid castile soap
Your choice of essential oil/s with 10 drops of each.
I suggest lavender, tea tree or bergamot as they
are my personal top three
Melt the coconut oil to a liquid and then add in the honey and your essential oil selection. Whisk together lightly then slowly stir in the castile soap. If you do this too quickly you will get a massive bowl of lather! Transfer to a container. It may separate and need a shake before use.
With all the wonderful selections on offer at the Food Festival, this is a good time to pick up a few stocking fillers or hostess gifts. A bottle of oil lasts longer than a bunch of flowers.
Happy Trails, Readers, Happy Trails.
First published in By The Dart October 2015
