Monday, March 18, 2013

More Purloined Recipes


PURLOIN

: to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust
 pur·loin·er noun 

So, apparently that's what happened.  Our recipes were purloined.  And they were taken under the guise of friendship...  see previous post.

Well, here are two more that I will mostly claim.  I can tell you stories about both of them. That's the difference between someone who just simply lists recipes and someone who has actually worked with them.

(This is a very generic type of salve or ointment.  We made something like this in a class many years ago when we had our herb shop.  One of the attendees called us after the class and raved about the salve.  She told us it had cleared up what she thought was ringworm when nothing else she had tried helped at all.
I actually have a hard time believing that I ever added lanolin to anything because our mom had an allergy to lanolin and I always gave it a wide berth because of her warnings.  I suppose the addition of the fractionated coconut oil could have been a little twist I put in there just to make it different, but it looks more like a way of promoting some more exotic ingredients.
If I were making this now, I would use an 8:1 ratio, liquid oil:beeswax for a nice loose ointment (both measured by weight,) which is more comfortable to apply on damaged skin. The base, or vegetable oil would be really nice if it had been infused with calendula or comfrey - or both!  I would not put lanolin in the salve at all and the coconut oil is completely optional.  I would probably use about the same total amount of essential oils, but more like half and half - so 15 drops lavender and 15 drops tea tree.
So mostly, this recipe would be completely different!)  
Healing Ointment - From Lancaster County Soapworks 
This is a good basic recipe. Lavender & Tea Tree are a great healing combination.
1 T Vegetable oil"
.3 oz. Beeswax beads
2 T Coconut Oil, Fractionated
.3 oz. Lanolin, anhydrous
20 drops Lavender EO
5 drops Tea Tree EO
Melt all ingredients together. Allow to cool partially, then add essential oils. Stir well and pour into sterilized container. *Can use Avocado, Apricot Kernel, or your favorite carrier oil. Can add 1 oz. Of Emu oil as a part of the base oils.

(Bay Rum is a pretty common item. You can probably find various recipes for it all over the place and they are all pretty similar.
We did this recipe in a class one year, just before Christmas. As we did sometimes in our classes, we did it for the first time in the class, but this is a pretty straight forward item to make.  The hard part is to gather all the ingredients.
At any rate, during the class we made a couple of bottles of Bay Rum for our own use and put them aside.  I was not terribly impressed when we made this, but a couple of months later, out of curiosity I opened it and was quite taken with the mellow, spicy, citrusy aroma that had developed.
I have no idea where the orange extract came from in this recipe, I would use orange peel and possibly some lemon peel too.)
Bay Rum - From Lancaster County Soapworks
Combine:
3 oz. Witch Hazel
3 oz. Rum
3 to 4 Bay Leaves
1/4 tsp. Allspice
1 stick Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. Orange Extract
Steep for 1-2 months, strain and bottle. Put a cinnamon stick, a few allspice berries and a bay leaf in the 
bottle before sealing.

So, I suspect the original recipes were not only purloined, but also changed in some ways.  They are certainly not the recipes in my book nor would I use them in these forms if I were doing this now.

I wonder why she even bothered giving anyone credit for any of the recipes.  Was this to give her publication some kind of credibility since she had none as a formulator, manufacturer or even a crafter in this type of product?  And why change them if she was already planning to credit them?

Be sure to visit Tina & Becky who are also sharing their purloined recipes on their own blogs.

1 comment:

  1. Been following your blog and this story and I'm still amazed at the boldness of people! I shouldn't be...but I am....Good way to get even though if I do say so...I REALLY like your way of thinking and putting out there like this! Rock on and keep sharing stuff...I'll link to you for my own nerdy world of the web to see all these recipes ;)

    ReplyDelete