Raw honey or fake honey? A good question. Raw is good. Fake is not. Chances are, even if you buy a honey that says honey, pure honey, looks like honey, tastes like honey and the price is right, it may not be real honey. It may be the fake version that is crowding 22% of the Canadian market. The price is one good indicator.  Real honey costs more. How can you tell the difference? Fake honey is uniform, thin and completely clear. The raw honey, the legitimate one, can vary in texture and colour. This is typical of a natural substance.  It can be light, thick, sticky, crystalline and more…

In 1918, Proctor and Gamble introduced the first liquid Ivory soap to the market.  The above ad reads… Ivory Soap cleans the hair and scalp thoroughly. Its copious lasting lather absorbs the dirt, and then rinses out easily and completely. Containing no uncombined alkali, it does not burn the hair or make it brittle,and it does not destroy the scalp’s natural secretions.The hair dries soft, silky, fluffy, the Ivory Shampoo putting it in the conditionwhich makes for continued health and beauty. 99.44 % pure _________________________________________________________________________ Imagine the…

You like to be clean.  You need to be moisturized. The tone part is the icing on the cake. The cosmetic counter specialists offer mega information. The day cream, the night cream, this cream, the that cream. For day. For night. Aging skin? Acne prone or overly dry? Oily or combination?  Male?  Female??  Light, dark?  Perfect solutions for perfect skin are offered. Informative for sure. But what if skin care could be made simple?  Without so many rules.  Like back when. Swimming in clean waters. Oiling, buttering our bodies from nature. Nourishing cuts, scrapes etc. with magic from the garden…

When I was a little girl and busy playing chef in the kitchen, my mom used to let me stuff the clove buds into the scored back rind of the ham. The ham itself scared me a bit, but I felt the power poke of the clove and all was OK with my duty. The smell was intoxicating.  Today, if ham is on the menu, we always prepare it with cloves. I look at them a little differently now and appreciative the powerhouse that they are.  To consume, yes, but also on the skin. A main interest of Earth to Body’s skin care. Clove oil comes from the leaf, the bud and the stem. It is concentrated and should be…

He entered the shop, looked around and shrugged.  “My scalp needs help.”  he sighed.  ‘Got anything for psoriasis?” “Possibly.” I smiled. “People do love our clean and pure skin care. We do not sell anything claiming psoriasis however. May I ask what you have you tried and did you ever find anything that helped?” “I’m Mike by the way.” He grinned. “I heard from a friend who uses your shampoo bars, that you handmake all of your own products. Impressive. And no, not much that I have bought seems to help.”   He then explained his sufferings, what he had tried and the outcomes. He did visit a…

Falling off his skateboard was not a fun ride, nor was limping the block home. Jas didn’t cry on the way back, but when he saw his mom, the tears flowed. She hugged him, propped up his ankle and iced it well. He then watched her prepare a castor oil pack. She poured the oil into a Pyrex container for later storage and worked a flannel cloth into the oil until soaked. Jas relaxed against the couch arm to play Minecraft, as he knew he would be laid out for at least a half hour.  Jas carefully wrapped the warm castor oil pack around his swollen ankle. It was not the first time his mom had sought…

Remember the shampoo you found hiding in the back of the bathroom cupboard, a gift from a boyfriend you wanted to forget?  Well, times change and memories fade and it’s been over 3 years, so you decide to give it a try.  “Wow, smells great, feels good. Thank you, Bad Buddy, wherever you may be! “ But who is the winner here? A shampoo, unopened, can have a shelf life up to 4 years.  That’s a long time for a product to sit.  But with formaldehyde* releasing chemical this makes it possible. Chemicals like diazolidinyl urea, hydantoin, methenamine and quaternium-15, which are used in different…

When you find a scrub that just does it all, well, life just seems to be perfect. Whenever I visit a friend or we take a vacation together, I always bring my box of goodies. Soaps, creams, butters, mask, and of course the Manitouka Scrub. The one that makes the Spa Day!  it such a beautiful product that fills all the rough spots all over the body and can be used in a lake, or a spa, or even just a hose outside. That’s what we did.  We took a long hot sauna and then ran out to the hose where we put the scrub all over our bodies, then hosed ourselves down with cold water. Our skin was literally…