{Product Review} Bob's Redmill Trio

Note:  The items in this review were provided to me by Bob's Red Mill for the purpose of this review. However, the opinions expressed here were in no way influenced by Bob's Red Mill. This review represents my honest opinion about the products.

Man! I l-o-v-e trying new fun ingredients! So, you can imagine my excitement when Bob's Red Mill offered two of their new ancient grains and coconut flour for testing. My last post was a recipe with Bob's Red Mill Farro (Greek Farro Salad), and I've actually made it a couple more times. It's a great to-go lunch option! The texture is perfectly chewy and soft and wonderful! It's a new-ingredient must-try.

I played around with the other grain, sorghum, for a few weeks. There are so many uses! You can grind it up as a gluten free flour option (or buy it already ground), put it in a hot pan with some oil for the CUTEST little popcorn snack, or use it as a rice-like ingredient. I added a cup to my taco soup last night, and it was so yummy! It does take a quite a bit longer to cook than rice, so I might soak it overnight next time.





I haven't done much (read: anything) with coconut flour before, so there was a considerable amount of googling that transpired before I settled on a first-time recipe. I ended up making gluten/grain-free blueberry-orange muffins for dessert tonight. I was so surprised at the yummy texture of the muffins. They weren't mealy or gritty or squishy like other grain-free pastries I've had before. I didn't get the recipe perfect, so I'll try it again tomorrow and get it posted for y'all super soon!

And, are you ready for the best part? Bob's Red Mill is giving one awesomely lucky reader a trio of the farro, sorghum, and coconut flour - YUM! Enter to win here: 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Mayo-free Tuna Salad (with avocado)

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Everyone in my house loves tuna. Tuna is cheap and easy. But, mayo is gross. Actually, I love the taste of "real" mayonnaise, but there is nothing real about the (yummy) gloopy white stuff that comes in the convenient little jars at the grocery store. I think doing away with store-bought mayo may have been one of the hardest real food conversions for me. Homemade mayo is delicious, but the eggs make me worry about sending it in Little Bear's lunch. My solution has been to make tuna salad with olive oil and a bit of vinegar (plus the typical tuna salad accoutrements). It's ok. But, not great. 

How to make it great... Let's try avocado! {spoiler alert, it was amazing!}

Scoop one avocado into a bowl.

Add a few tablespoons of unrefined olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon or lime, and whatever spices and mix-ins you like in your tuna (today I just did salt, pepper, garlic powder and dill).

Smoosh it all together, making the mixture as smooth as possible.

Add tuna and mix with the avocado mixture while flaking the tuna.

Eat.

Yum!

I measured, but tuna is so dependent on the brand, draining, and type that you'll probably have to play with the proportions to make it just perfect. As a starting point, 1 avocado + 2 tablespoons oil should be good for 2-ish cans of tuna or 4 of the single-serve packets.

Homemade Deodorant in Under 20 Minutes!

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Husband is a stinky man. Seriously. Stink-y.

He, therefore, is a deodorant addict. An aluminum-preservative-and-fragrance-laden deodorant addict.

Correction: he was a stinky, deodorant addict. Cue the homemade deodorant!

I can make a batch (about 1 cup) in way under 20 minutes, including cleaning time. The beeswax and shea make cleaning a bit of a pain, so I've culled one of my old pans to use just for recipes with the messy ingredients in them. The greatest part is that it actually works! Day one of testing went something like this (ok, it went exactly like this)...

It looks like a lot of expensive ingredients, but you can make enough deodorant for the rest of your life from these. Also, I use everything here in other concoctions. Arrowroot powder is a great corn starch sub for thickening sauces (and is non-GMO!), beeswax & shea go in my balm, I put orange oil in with my vinegar/water cleaner, and tea tree oil is great for minor scrapes and cuts.

The "bare bones" recipe is just coconut oil, baking soda, and arrowroot powder. Here's what the rest of the ingredients do (so you can decide if you want to use them, too):

Orange oil - smells yummy
Tea tree oil - natural antimicrobial (so it helps to kill the stinky bacteria)
Beeswax - thicker texture and helps emulsify
Shea - moisturizes & promotes smoother pits

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/4 cup GMO-free baking soda
• 1/4 cup arrowroot powder
• 2 tablespoons beeswax
• 2 tablespoons shea butter
• 1/4 teaspoon orange oil
• 1 teaspoon tea tree oil

Directions

1.  Combine all of the ingredients except the orange and tea tree oil in a small pan.

2.  Cook while stirring over medium heat until everything is dissolved.

3.  Stir in the orange and tea tree oil.

4.  Remove from heat and let cool for about 10 minutes.

5.  When the mixture just starts to thicken, stir and pour into a glass container (Hobby Lobby!)

Usage

A little goes a loooong way! Scoop a tiny bit on to your finger and rub in under your pits. If you get too much, you could leave greasiness on your clothes (ick). I have a big jar of it in the bathroom and a little travel container in my desk drawer. This stuff is powerful, so I can often skip days and not have any smelliness!

Homemade Beeswax Balm {multipurpose}

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I was at a fancy spa last week and fell in love with a line of natural smelly-good body products that they carried: Zents. The smells were fantastic, and their balm, Concreta, was fantastically formulated. Then I flipped the cute little sample boxes over. Holy Cow! $34 for 1.25 ounces of balm! I'm pretty sure I audibly gasped...

Then I read the ingredients: beeswax, shea butter, coconut oil, scented oils. Seriously. That was it.

And, just like that, a new DIY project was born.

I added cypress essential oil for its muscle relaxation properties, rose hip seed oil for its skin regeneration properties, carrot seed oil for its anti-aging and detox properties, and orange oil for an energizing scent. You really can go wild, though, and add in any essential oils for their medicinal properties or their scents!

I think I'll be making another batch with calendula oil, peppermint oil, lavender oil, and tea tree oil and use it as a healing balm (just like All Good Goop!).

Ingredients

• 3 ounces unrefined beeswax (3/4 cup if you get the same size product as me)

Unrefined beeswax is yellow, so your balm will be
yellow. The Zents balm must have used refined
beeswax, since their product is so white.

• 3 1/2 ounces unrefined shea butter (1/2 cup)

• 5 ounces unrefined coconut oil (3/4 cup)

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon cypress essential oil
• 2 teaspoons rose hip seed oil
• 1/2 teaspoon carrot seed oil 
• 1 tablespoon orange oil

Directions

1.  Combine the wax, shea, coconut, and olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. The texture will be weird and soupy, since the coconut oil melts at 76 degrees and the beeswax doesn't melt until 140 degrees.

2.  Stir the mixture until the beeswax starts to break apart. This may take a little white, because you are waiting for the mixture to come up to 140-ish. {Note: do not stick your candy thermometer in the mix, because you will NEVER be able to wash the waxy balm off of it... Still trying...}

3.  When the wax starts to melt, whisk until it all makes one happy pool of clear, yellow liquid. Remove from heat. Dip a spoon into the liquid and then let it cool. Check the texture. If you want it more solid, add more beeswax and put it back on the heat until it melts. If you want it more creamy, add more coconut oil or olive oil.

4.  Add it your essential oils and stir well. If the oils make the mixture re-solidify, just put it back on the heat until its all melted again.

5.  Spoon or pour into jars. I found these adorable 4-ounce jars at Hobby Lobby to use as gifts {teacher appreciation week and Mother's Day!} I filled 6, so you should get about 24 ounces out of this recipe. If you need less, you can half the recipe. 

I ended up spending about what I would have spent on 1.25 ounces of the fancy Zents Concretas on what will make about a lifetime supply of the exact same recipe!

A few hints to make your process a little smoother than my first go at it was:

• Don't use anything that can't go in the dishwasher.
• Be careful not to get the ingredients or the final product on your countertops - they are really hard to get completely cleaned off.
• When you're done, stick the pan and utensils in the dishwasher and wash on hot with vinegar. Then, run it again with dishwasher soap.

Aloe Vera Gel Hair Mask - One-Ingredient, One-Hour to Healthy, Shiny Hair!!!

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I'm absolutely NOT retracting my love for my coconut oil hair mask, but I have found another new love! One of the commenters on the coconut oil mask post suggested an aloe treatment. Since aloe gel is relatively inexpensive, and since I have an obsession with trying new natural remedies, I couldn't wait to give it a go...

Step 1: Wash, condition, and towel dry your hair as usual.

Step 2:  Apply a generous amount of REAL aloe gel to your hair, root to end. Don't buy the blue crap (or the clear crap next to it) in the sun-care aisle of your supermarket. Go to the natural care section and look for real aloe gel, or get it online (I found it at about half the price online!).

The good stuff!

Even this "100% Gel" version has crummy ingredients!
(Aloe Vera Gel, Triethanolamine, Tocopheryl Acetate,
Carbomer 940, Tetrasodium EDTA, DMDM Hydantoin,
Diazolidinyl Urea) - Talk about misleading marketing tactics!!

Step 3:  Put a shower cap on and wait about an hour.

Step 4:  Rinse hair and dry/style as usual! So shiny and clean!

For me, at least, I like the aloe better for dull or icky-feeling hair, while the coconut oil is better for dry, damaged hair. In my world, that translates to coconut oil in the winter and aloe in the summer (with a little overlap here and there).

Have you tried both? Which is your favorite?

PERFECT Hair Mask (Yet Another Reason Why Coconut Oil Is the Best)

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It's no secret that I'm in love with about five single-ingredient products: coconut oil, chia seeds, bee pollen, witch hazel, and beer. Wait. Beer... what? I mean... coffee. Yeah, coffee.

Anyway, back to coconut oil. I literally use coconut oil for everything.   EVERYTHING.   Frying, baking, spreading, facial moisturizer, body lotion, after-sun care, nutritional supplement, hand cream, boo-boo cream (I have a 2-year-old, so give me some slack. It's boo-boo and potty and wee-wee for now, ok?).   One of my favorite coconut oil uses, though, is as a hair mask.  I have really fine hair.  When it's healthy, it shines like crazy.   But, when it's dried out, it's crunchy and frizzy.   Not pretty wavy and textured, but crunchy (I know you know what I mean...).  

I figured one day several months ago that if I use coconut oil for everything else, why not in my hair?! Here's how it works:

Start with an unrefined coconut oil (I'm a big Nutiva fan, and it can usually be found for pretty cheap on Amazon).

It'll be a solid in the tub, but will quickly melt in your hand. 

After your shower at night, take between a teaspoon and a tablespoon-sized glob (it's a word) in your fingers, depending on the length of your hair.

Work quickly to massage it through your hair.  You'll want to make sure you've covered all the way from your roots to your ends.  Use extra oil, if needed. 

Find a way to pull your hair up and back so it's not flopping around.  I braid the bottom of my hair and then secure it to the back and top of my head with bobby pins.  For some reason I always feel like Katniss Everdeen when I do this (laugh if you want, but it's the little things that get us through, right?).

Sleep with your hair this way (use a shower cap, if you are worried about greasing up your pillowcase). 

In the morning, wash and condition your hair as usual.  When your hair dries, it'll be super silky, shiny, and soft!  For me, it lasts about a week in turbo hair mode and then starts to wear off. 

Depending on your particular hair type, repeat every week to two weeks, as needed.

Let me know if you've tried this before or if you give it a go for the first time - I love to hear feedback on my favorite things (good and bad!)!