Since reading the Skintervention Guide, I’ve been on a natural face-care tear.
I’ve recommitted to oil cleansing, and using the “No ‘Poo Method” to wash my hair.
I even got some really fancy skin care products from Primal Life Organics to take my skin healing to the next level. (More on this later…)
Remember that time I rendered tallow in my slow cooker? Well, I did it with a couple of projects in mind.
One was french fries fried in tallow.
The other was homemade tallow balm.
Rather than using some store-bought moisturizer, filled with ingredients I can’t pronounce, I decided to make some of my own lavender tallow balm.
Tallow is an exceptionally good moisturizer. As Heather, the Mommypotamus calls it:
This long-lost fat is full of fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K– which are incredibly important for skin health (and the same fat soluble vitamins you get from ingesting FLCO)–and its fat composition is very similar to that of human cell membranes, which means it’s easily absorbed. (source)
The recipe I used is from Mommypotamus’s DIY Organic Beauty Recipes. I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in making your own beauty products– there are easy, natural recipes for everything imaginable.
You can also find a great recipe at The Holistic Squid.
The recipe is a combination of tallow, olive oil and lavender essential oil. I used lavender essential oil because of its scar healing-properties– I’ve got some acne scars I’m trying to fade.
I’ve been using my balm twice daily– once in the morning after rinsing my face with water and spritzing with calendula hydrosol, and before bed after oil cleansing my face.
Tallow is very stable and thus solid at room temperature. Adding the olive oil helps to soften the balm and make it spreadable. Mine is very solid because it’s winter in New England (more like a “tallow bar in a jar” than balm). I’m guessing that once the weather warms up, the balm will soften and become more spreadable–just like the coconut oil that liquefies in the summer months.
I’ve always wondered, what is the difference between fat, tallow and lard?
Have you considered making your own candles out of this stuff? Bet that would be a fun project ^.^
Hi Happy Girlfriend! Lard is rendered pig fat while tallow is rendered cow (or sheep fat). Tallow is a little more solid at room temperature than lard– lard is usually spreadable, but tallow is like a ROCK.
Candles would definitely be a fun project! I’m thinking it would be easier than soap…
After reading Mommypotomus and the use of tallow for skin care I made my own, but I also had some lard that I mixed with it slightly which really made it nice to use on my face twice aday. I was precooking my bones before making stock and added a couple of pig feet and used that rendered mixture of tallow and lard. I love it. It makes since to me that it would be good for my skin.