My friend Elizabeth OSullivan has a farm that raises meat chickens, laying hens, and pork. They recently branched out into soap-making because they were ending up with a whole lot of excess lard. I visited her this past week and bought some of the soap, just to try it. Lard is not currently very popular in hand-crafted soap because theres a stigma to using animal products in soap. And if youre a vegetarian or keep a kosher/hallal household, I can understand hesitating to use lard-based soap. But. If you are a cheerful bacon-eater then OMG, IF YOU ARE NOT USING LARD-BASED SOAP YOU ARE MISSING OUT. This is, hands down, the nicest soap Ive ever used. I mean in terms of the way it feels when I soap up and rinse off: it feels incredibly creamy and nice but also rinses off without leaving a residue, and I am predicting that it will dry my skin out a whole lot less in winter. I am seriously considering setting up all our bathrooms with soap dishes so I can use it for hand washing from now on. People apparently make the weirdest assumptions about lard as a soap ingredient, like they worry that it will clog their pores (NO. IT IS AWESOME.) Or just the word lard, apparently, summons up this weird lingering sense that it will somehow magically by transference make you fat (it does not work that way) or possibly it will spoil like raw meat (it wont, and also lard makes a nice hard soap so if your frustration with hand-made soaps is that they melt away to nothing in a week and a half, that is also a problem solved by the magic of lard). She also sells it for a serious bargain price for homemade soap. If you spot Auntie Annies Fields at your local farmers market (they go to Fulton and Midtown, and tomorrow theyre going to be at Linden Hills for the first time), you should buy a bar and try it. (And if you dont live near here but go to a farmers market where you live, find a farmer selling meat products and ask about lard-based soap, I am telling you, this stuff is AMAZING.)
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 17:40:12 +0000