I was more then a little shocked, not to mention excited, when I discovered you could use olive oil on your skin. I told everyone I knew about it, most people just looked at me funny, and my friend Zeke said if we got lost in the woods, he was going to eat me first.

Several years along, and I’ve experimented with as many natural or even just non mainstream lotions I could find. I have chronically dry skin, and I have always reacted badly to lotion. So for myself, this discovery had been a little patch of velvety skin on a very very large, coarse, scaly, elephantine dragon creature. I covet my oils and creams, they hold more value to me then nearly anything in my home.

Some things I gotta put out here.

1. Anything you can eat, you can apply to your skin.
2. Anything you apply to your skin, you are eating.
3. Not everything you can apply to your skin ends up with pleasant results.
4. My favorite healing lotion is lightly fermented cream…leave a covered dish at room temperature for a day
5. The cream will be soaked up really fast, follow it with some light oil for an all day affair.

Coconut oil and Avocado oil are two particularly effective ones, but there are probably untold hundreds of others. Nor is it just plant oils, raw cream is straight up essence of miracle. Raw cream is absorbed in through your skin very rapidly, it leaves almost zero residue, and most importantly it heals. Oils offer very serene relief from dry skin, and over time they do imbibe a little extra vitality as well. But if Oils are choral angels singing away your aches and ills, raw cream is the lifeblood of the divine that flows through all things in the kingdom of clouds. There is more healing power in a dab of raw cream then anything I know.
Coconut, Olive, and Avocado oils can be obtained on the grid, plain olive oil will work. In the realm of Knowledge and Gifts, everything works. The question is how well and to what extent. And the only way to find out is to try it and observe. Be present, be patient. This is important. You can listen to me, or you could listen to the FDA, but neither of us give you knowledge. Don’t be afraid, the world is a very forgiving place for the brave.

Raw is the difference between frozen night and blinding light when it comes to oils and cream. The oils and creams we grew up with do not constitute The Whole Story.

And you absolutely cannot trust any label on ANY packaged product no matter WHAT it says about the production method when it comes to raw foods. Companies have zero compunctions selling you a word. To most of them, it’s a just money, raw is worth more money, and it is not a regulated term. They can and will say whatever it takes, be wary and look thrice. You want to look for gifts, not products, gifts come from the land and it’s inhabitants, products come from PR designers.

Have you come by any gifts that make you really excited lately?  Please post and share them with us!

Wild Strawberry Honey Spritzer - very luscious and sweet, has a mild strawberry flavor, just starting to culture a tang. this particular one doesn’t have any carbonation.

Egyptian Bouza Beer - very rough and sour, made from mostly sprouted rye grains, it is a quick 2-3 day ferment and has little alcohol, but is very filling.

Sauerkraut - The plain cabbage always seems to evaporate off all the brine, then it becomes dry and rots. I haven’t had a good plain Sauerkraut turn out yet, the sesame kraut worked well, and the kimchees work too, but so far I have yet to get a tasty plain old kraut.

Spicy Live Kimchee - This is the most exciting venture!!! Mariah helped me a lot and it went much faster with two people. We put chilli powder in it this time, and green cabbage, onions, lots of grated carrots, and grated ginger, and just a teensy tad bit of salt. I’m so excited !!! yes haha!

Sourdough Bread - I took the spent grains from the bouza and mashed into a dough, it’s been resting out on the kitchen counter all day. I’m going to bake it tonight. SandorKraut says to cook it enough to make a hard shell on the outside, but not enough to cook the inside. That way you have a self-contained unit and you can just let it sit out and continue fermenting in the middle for a few weeks. It sounds interesting, I’ll let you know!

Do you remember trying fermented foods? What did you think?

A few weeks back, Owen and I got a nice Antelope buck hide from our pal Steve on the hunting trip. We scraped most of the membrane right away, and about 70% of the grain. Soaked in water for probably about a week, then bucked it in a lye solution for a day, scraped the rest of the membrane off and still couldn’t get several large patches of grain along the edges. We decided to go ahead anyway. The hide came out of the lye with a VERY rubbery texture, Owen had read on PaleoPlanet forums that it needed to be neutralized before braining. We’d never had lye before, and never had to neutralize anything. But it was decided that we’d just soak it in vinegar/water for 20 minutes or so.

After 2 hours of V

After 20 minutes, we took it out, wrung it, and decided it was starting to look better, so we just threw it back in the vinegar :P Was about 50/50 5% apple vinegar and hose water. An hour, maybe one and a half later…and when we tried to wring the hide out… it was even MORE rubbery then before. We tried and tried and tried until our hands were frozen stiff and our resolve was shattered…

The hide went in the brain solution anyways. About a day of soaking and we returned to red-brown to start working our prize. After pulling it out, we noticed there were significant patches of grain still along the edges, we tried to scrape a few of them off with the post and draw-knives, but it was very slow and unproductive. We began to stretch the hide. Gripping hard and pulling between us, putting our full weight into it, the hide grew in size. We start using a few tree snubs to work it, then as the center (no grain there) began to get dry we took it inside to work it against the table. Within an hour, the center was pretty soft and beautiful…only some really minor rough spots…three ours later everything was dry but the parts where the grain was left was still more or less sopping wet.

We worked it till around midnight then headed home for bed. Sure enough, the next morning the grain had shriveled, dried into a hard crust around the edges, and the two big patches, but the rest of the hide was more or less really soft with only a hint of cardboard feel. Obviously removing ALL of the grain must be the crucial point…but I’m confused how people do it.

We worked it really hard, only giving up on the grain after the draw-knives prettymuch returned zero progress. We did soak this hide in LYE for at least a day beforehand…may have even been a couple. Probably about 1.5 cups of pure lye in 10-12 gallons of water. There must be more to the story (there always is), and I’m trying to find someone who has seen that part of the story before so they can tell me how it goes from here =)

Now

We have an elk hide still soaking in the same brains, it looks much better..hopefully we’ll get to see it soon. Back to PaleoPlanet I guess, thankgod for PaleoPlanet.

Don at work gave Owen and I an Elk hide / head that his buddy in Dillon shot about three weeks ago. We were almost done tanning our whitetail hide with hair left on…we scraped the meat and membrane and fat off and threw the thing into our buckling black bucket to soak for a bit. A bit turned into three weeks, and last night we pulled it out ready to scrape the hair and grain off…HOLY HELL! It smelled rotten…it was rotten. We poured the rancid water out in the far corner of the yard and went to work. The grain layer came off fairly easily, but it still took us several hours into the dark to get it all off. The cold was encroaching, and i went inside to hold my hands under the facet to thaw them out several times. Kane kept mild company with us and not even he tried to go for these hide scraps. We got used to the smell after a bit, and talked about our hide and about going antelope hunting with my father this weekend. We switched off a few times, but Owen did most of the scraping, and I re-positioned and stretched it tight for him. I went inside and sat with Bill and his colville girlfriend for a moment after rinsing my hands again…they told me I stank, and we watched a short music video on you-tube with cheerleaders in gasmasks. The music was okay…but I really liked the cheerleaders in gasmasks dancing around.

Back to the hide. Another hour or so of scraping and we were satisfied, discussed what should be done with it at this point since we’d be gone over the weekend. Decided to just throw it back in the water, and let it soak…Owen told me that when he tans at home, he goes and crawls in bed with Ashley right afterwards and she growls at him or gives him the stinky eye. I told him how I ambush Mariah and stick my tongue up her nose…not enjoy…eewww ewww, she usually runs away and doesn’t let me close to her for a while.

It is tomorrow now, and I am at work. I didn’t take a shower beforehand, I just smudged myself with lavender and put some eucalyptus oil on my wrists. Haven’t caught any complaints yet…We’re leaving tonight when I get off, I still have to pack. My dad says it is a four or five hour drive.

I’m trying to fix a botched install of symantec’s backupexec 10d…I’ll go find Alex…he will know how to deal with it. Pitter Patter…