Parsley for the fresh green of spring.

The clay plaque is by my little one and it hangs in the
kitchen. I completely fell for the measuring cups I saw
in the MOMA store, especially the colours. I like green.

My body is screaming for spring but unfortunately it is a long way off.  The true season to start to be in the garden isn't really till late May up here in the north.  But I have started to plan my vegetable allotment garden and this weekend I will sow the first plant.  I have been making pots from newspaper.  I did that last year as well and it worked pretty well.  I have to admit that I also just like the way it looks all green, sustainable and kinda cool.

I finally made my green soap.  I have been meaning to use Parsley for ages.  The reason is that Parsley has a lot of Chlorophyll and therefore it should give a good green colour.  Chlorophyll, of course, is what makes Parsley such a good breath freshener after eating garlic.  It's also a great antiseptic, by the way, as well as chock full of vitamins and minerals.  Apparently chlorophyl is available as a colouring substance, but I haven't seen it anywhere myself.  I just dried some parsley that I've had growing in a pot.  I use it in cooking too, not just as garnish, I like it and actually eat it.  Dried Parsley is not oil soluble.  I tried to put some fresh Parsley into oil and even used a stick blender to try to disperse it into the oil.  That did not work at all.  So this I time I crumbled dried Parsley and used 2 tsp which I blended with the EO's into a recipe of 500 g. (about a pound) of oil.  I could have made tea and probably should have, but I wanted to have a part of the soap without colour to play with it.  I'm getting a bit bored with one colour soaps.  But the white part got pretty stiff so I ended up with white lumps in the soap rather than swirls of any kind.  Oh, well!

The recipe I used is a little bit different than last time, but that is only because I ran out of some ingredients.

36% Olive oil
30% Coconut oil
25% Rape seed oil
5% Castor oil
4% Cocoa butter

Water 33%
5% superfat.

I  used a combination of Rosemary, Peppermint and Ginger essential oils for fragrance and the result is a fresh and green scent that almost clears the sinuses.

The soap is very, very soft.  I cut it after a week, but that was difficult.  I don't know if that is the rapeseed oil or not.  I probably should only use 15% of that.  It produces soft soap.  But the colour is still a pretty green although it doesn't really look very green in the photo.  But I have a feeling that it may turn to olive with time.  I'll add that info to this post at a later stage.