Bones and Salve

Good bye turkey bones, hello turkey broth.  I gathered all the ingredients together to make turkey broth, and threw them in a soup pot, letting them cook for 6 hours.  Before filling my Ball quart jars, I e-mailed Patrice Lewis over at the Rural Revolution blog to get clarification on a few questions I had about canning broth.  After receiving advice from Patrice, I was satisfied and no longer worried about filling all of my jars with the turkey broth, even though I only had room for 7 quart jars in the pressure canner.  If you ever have questions about canning, or you’re nervous, please stop by Patrice’s blog for advice.  Patrice published a series of E-Books on canning (water bath and pressure canning), moving to the country, and creating a home craft business.   These E-Books are reasonably priced and make for great reference material. 

 

I’m a person that has extremely dry skin; this runs in the family.  I figured; let me try making a salve for dry skin.  This could even be something to potentially give out as a Christmas gift.  So, I figured let me mess around in the kitchen with a few ingredients and see what I come up with.    Here is what I’ve come up with; a salve that feels good, moistens my dry skin, and smells wonderful.

 

 Grab yourself a sauce pan, poor 1 cup of carrier oil in the pot (olive oil, almond oil, or sesame oil).  Heat, don’t let boil.  Remove from burner and place a cup of buds, blossoms, petals or leaves (such as dried rose petals, dried lavender buds, calendula blossoms, cilantro, and mint) in the heated oil.  Let the oil and buds, blossoms, or whatever you’ve chosen, sit in the sauce pan for approximately 1 hour.  After the hour, strain the oil with cheese cloth or a coffee filter (whatever you have on hand) into a bowl.  Add 1 ½ tablespoons of shredded beeswax, ¼ cup of Shea butter and 10 - 13 drops of essential oil (lavender, vanilla, rose, pine, or whatever oil you like).  Heat the oil mixture briefly until all products are mixed well and completely liquid.  Remove from burner and pour into a container with a wide mouth and a lid for closing later.  Allow the product to cool and turn somewhat solid (note, this salve doesn’t harden completely, like other salves, because you want to be able to rub it in to the dry skin).  If you would like the salve harder, heat and add more beeswax.