MAKING RECIPES # SERIES
Are you keen on making plant remedies? Do you want to capture the best healing actions of the plants you can forage or grow? Are you itching to create, infuse, mix, distil, bottle, and gift or sell these botanical wonders? This series of posts, Making Recipes #, gives my inside story on growing, harvesting, making, marketing, preserving, selling healing remedies and bodycare products, many from the medicinal forest garden. Over the years I have gained a fair amount of experience and insight in ways to grow and harvest plants including trees and shrubs. I will be reviewing my old recipe books and notes for details that may help you too. There will be useful tips such as equipment, packaging, preserving, safety, suppliers and other stuff that I have discovered, along the way.
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Rose gentle oil: a precious skin remedy
My early forays into making potions were carried out before I had a site for growing medicinal plants. I started by making gifts and experimenting with purchased essential oils and carrier oils like sunflower and sweet almond oils. Over the years I think one of the most successful potions of all time was a rose oil preparation for dry skin. Certainly this formulation of rose oil provided precious moisturising and anti-inflammatory effects for ouchy irritated skin. I called it 'rose gentle oil' and our customers kept coming back for more! This oil-based mixture seemed to have a gentling or soothing effect not only on skin but also on the mind. And it made a great bath oil addition! Indeed since stopping making bodycare products for Holt Wood Herbs this rose gentle oil preparation is one I continue to make just for our household and it is still in demand from family members.
Making a safe bodycare product
There are quite a few alternative rose preparations available in body cosmetic shops, ranging from serums to body creams to lotions and butters. A long time (several decades) ago I looked at these pricey items and thought about making my own version of a rose oil. Nowadays the serums are even more costly and very concentrated, whereas other preparations can be highly variable or somewhat synthetic. I prefer raw and simple, and the least ingredients possible. I also tend to go for water-free concoctions as these are likely to keep better. If you are selling bodycare products to the public and looking at getting a safety assessment for a skin formula then water-free preparations are a whole lot safer due to the reduced potential for growth of micro-organisms. In order to gain safety approval (more about safety approval in a future Making Recipes post) this recipe includes a preservative of rosemary leaf extract. The rosemary leaf extract, used by many product makers, is an anti-oxidant produced by carbon dioxide extraction and then supplied in a base of sunflower seed oil.
Rose gentle oil - about the essential oils in the recipe
Rose absolute is the most expensive part of this formula, some 60,000 flowers are said to be used to produce just 1 ounce (28 g). It is a concentrated extract which is made using an organic solvent to draw out the aromatic constituents and then the solvent is evaporated off along with waxes and other parts. To reduce costs you may find that rose is offered as a dilution, perhaps just 5% in a carrier oil, though this is not ideal for this recipe. Beware of inadvertently buying the different preparation of rose otto which is produced by steam distillation. As rose otto is almost solid it is difficult to measure out (and is even more expensive). To enhance the 'rose' fragrance, my recipe contains an extra aromatic ingredient which is the gorgeous rose bourbon (Pelargonium graveolens) essential oil. This essential oil is rich in (-)-citronellol, one of two stereoisomers produced by plants, known for its ‘fresh and floral rose odour’. Stereoisomers have the same chemical formula but the atoms are arranged in a different spatial structure. This can lead to considerable differences in aroma! The other more common form of (+)-citronellol has the citrusy fragrance that is often used in insect repellents. Finally, to enhance the overall scent, I include patchouli essential oil which provides an earthy depth to the overall fragrance. This is distilled from the leaves and twigs of a tropical Asian plant in the mint (Lamiaceae) family.
Rose gentle oil - about the carrier oils
In addition to the essential oils, I investigated fixed or carrier oils which could help the skin by supplying nutrients as well as helping to protect from water loss. Sweet almond oil is noted for use with dry skin. Grapeseed oil is quite light and thin and makes a preparation which can more easily be applied in trace amounts. Many of the commercial products use rosehip seed oil which is rich in essential fatty acids. I chose to use a close relative which is raspberry seed oil. This is high in vitamins A and E as well as anti-inflammatory constituents. And it does not clog the pores and it helps to absorb ultraviolet sunlight. Best of all this oil can be obtained as a byproduct, produced from the seeds thrown away in juicing raspberries, so it is a more sustainable component for this recipe.