Did your mother ever spit on her hankie and rub your face?
Did you hate it?
Well mine just straight up licked my face
...and my ears
.... and my tummy
.... and held me down if I squirmed....
Humans seem to think you need this stuff called soap to clean yourselves. Wipe your tongue over some of that before you lick yourself and you'll go cross-eyed and be blowing bubbles for days.
I'm informed (but question the reliability of the information, F has tried pulling my leg from time to time), that soap is made out of fat. No kidding?
OK, some of it looks like blocks of lard, but most of it looks like waste product from a paint factory.
Is it colour-coded for cleaning different bits, or his'n'hers, or adults and kids, or for some other reason I might have missed? Humans keep it in the showering room, but because that involves water it is a place I do my best to avoid, so I don't really know whether they lick it before they clean themselves.
When we visited the soap factory on Corfu, the man there said that all their soap was made out of olive oil. Mr B bought some. I've studied it, but not too closely. It has no nose-searing perfume like the soap he buys from the supermarket, but I still wouldn't wipe my tongue over it. I have it (again on less than reliable information that I am not prepared to check personally) that olive oil soap doesn't make froth; you need to have soap made out of rain-forest destroying palm oil to get froth off your soap.
However you cut it, soap just forms scum, turns your bathroom tiles dull and blocks up drains eventually (and then it smells really bad - we have experience of that, but it is another and vastly different story).
F says her grandmother really did make her laundry soap by rendering and saponifying lard (and mutton fat and beef fat - her grandmother's Dad was a butcher so maybe they had a good supply of the stuff). Does it froth? We have no idea. Have any of you made soap out of animal fat?
You have? Shame on you, waste of a perfectly edible and high energy food source I say.
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| As seen and studied from the safety of my Donkey. |
Hmm... but it is good for getting blood stains out of my clothing when I have yet another kitchen accident.
ReplyDeleteSeems you should be tidier about the blood letting, or wear a plastic apron if you can't avoid the accidental splatter.
DeleteOh, Tigger, what a wonderful post! I must go and ask Mittens what she thinks of us cleaning ourselves with soap :)
ReplyDeleteI reckon if dhe vould spell it she would probably say 'nose-searing'. We are more sensitive to the perfumes than humans are.
Deletewell now, this is something even the Mad part of MadSnapper has never pondered before. I use Ivory soap and have my whole life, no scent and i like the way it foams. I just checked the ingredients and rendered animal fat it is. I am shocked. I did not know soap was made from fat. Maybe we could invent a way to remove fat from us fat people and make soap thus making us thin and not harming animals. now I am wondering if human fat would make soap. I vaguely remember in all the cowboys and indians western novels I have consumed that the Native Americans, AKA indians when i was young. used every thing of the food they killed, every little bit was made including soap. I may think of more, this has pretty much gobsmacked me just thinking about it. I stole that word from Simon Cowell of Americas Got Talent and a few other zillion shows.
ReplyDeleteSlightly ugly thought - soap from human fat. Strangrly we were just thinking about Sweeny Todd earlier - it's in the same vein!
DeleteVery British word that 'gobsmacked' - colourful and evo ative of the right reaction tho.
Thats 'evocative' ...you can tell when F is one finger typing on the tablet...all letter on the bottom row get replacrd by space bar.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteI am all for the vege options, Tigger ol' boy. Did you know that ivy is a good saponifier and detergent, for example? The flowers and leaves of Clematis? Similarly, Horse Chestnut...Take the saponin rich seeds and rub it between palms to produce a rich lather. You can also keep the crushed seed in water overnight to obtain a milky solution, which can be used as a detergent. Or Bracken - use the decoction of the roots as a hair conditioner. Boil the rhizome to make soapy water.
All that with none of grime build up of commercial soaps. That said, in current situation, I am forced to purchase my soaps, so the olive oil option sounds good to me! (My current one is a glycerine concoction.) What pretty pictures F took of all those artisan blocks! Hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
Dear YAM-aunty F's nephews wife uses ivy leaves to make laundry dtergent. And then there's soapwort of course. We didn't know about the othrrs you mention. I, the Tigger, remain of tge view that spit suffices. Furrings and purrings Mr T
DeleteOh yes I remember my mother and grandmother using the hanky with spit back in the day but now you wouldn't get away with it. As for soaps I have extremely sensitive skin so I have to buy mine from a specialty online soap shop where they make it as natural as they can.
ReplyDeleteMy brother in law used to make bars of horrid green soap after every oil harvest. My m in law used it to wash dishes, clothes, her hair. Scummy stuff all right. Try washing piles of fatty Easter dishes with that soap and cold water!!
ReplyDeleteIt was the first thing we replaced once she got older and list a bit of her control. My husband still prefers it in the shower. But now we buy olive oil soap which has been refined a little, given some perfume and a bit of softener .
As for spitting on a hanky, yes my mother did it and I did it to mine. We laugh about it still. They call it childhood trauma
That soap sounds like the stuff F's Nana used to use for dishes - a block in a tin that got rattled under the running tap as the sink filled. We guess that was normal before some clever but short-sighted scientist invented detergents and poisoned all the dowstream water. Foortunately detergents have grown up a bit since thne. Few of us want to return to washing greasy mutton roast dishes in soap water
DeleteI do know how to make soap and what’s needed. I Have recipes
ReplyDeleteBut right now. I’m happy to pay for the ready made stuff
It’s my contribution to the economy
Sensible. Same here. There is a lot of lquid soap used in our house these days, bought by the bucket load and put in refillable dispensers. Possibly not environmentally friendly - we need to research that.
DeleteWe're with you Tigger, we wouldn't like to lick soap but Mummy Polly loves to lick Mum's hand cream off of her hands. We think its because she was a stray and will eat anything.
ReplyDeleteRupert, Rowan, Princess and Willow.
xxxx
Handcream - that's weird. F's handcream might have animal content (wool grease - lanolin) but i wouldn't dream of licking it, and she's not allowed to get the horrible claggy stuff on my fur either.
DeleteYep, my Mom used to use a bit of spit polish every now and then. I prefer to use soap, but I refrain from licking it, I know what it tastes like from having a bar placed in the mouth a time or two, and it’s pretty nasty. I knew about the animal fat because I love history and knowing how women cleaned things back then….most soap was made from animal fat and wood ash.
ReplyDeleteGuardsmen use spit polish on their shoes to make them shine. (Actually they use water, but it's a good story.) Like lots of human stuff soap might have been accidental in its origins, and now it's everywhere.
Delete