Teach Soap

Stoked, i think u r talking about the story that ancient people washing their cloths downstream from burnt human sacrifice noticed their cloths were getting cleaner than usual, as rain seeped thru the wood ashes creating a lye solution. If true at all then that was prehistoric & upon moving beyond hunting/gathering, having learnt the basic properties of soap, then Castille soap came in style from all or mostly olive trees. Not cheaper, but better. Olive oil is a much nicer reasonably priced quality oil to use as a base, plus some saturated.

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Anna Rose @-}--
blog

Rosie,

All very valid points. I was mostly just trying to say that I like to go at least 50% unsaturated fats, so that's why I like olive a lot. That is good to know that tallow is similar to palm in it's properties. Ya'll have given me food for thought. Thank you.

i was referring to when ancient peoples noticed their cloths getting cleaner downstream from burnt human sacrifice. If that is not prehistoric then it's so old to where the difference starts to not make a difference anymore. At least 2800 B.C. You have to have a proper written language to be considered a civilization that's properly emerged from the Stone AGe and I'm not sure cuneiform (pictograms) counts.

You do realize a lot of salmon is FARMED! Not really sure we should be getting on our soap box here, maybe we should stick to the topic of soaping....

Let's get back to soaping shall we?

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Here, here.

@ johnnyusa.

2,000 years ago, before the Romans. The Angles and the Saxons ruled Britain and they did not have grapes, they did have wine. Grapes were discovered in what is now the Turino area of Italy, and southern France. The northern tribes did not have access to it which is why they made wine from honey instead. No grapes in England.

Now explain to me please how ice in the antarctic that has been frozen for 6 ice ages is only now recently thawing?

-British history professor & soap enthusiast.

I have a history degree too.

There were no grapes in medieval England and they only drank mead? Really? The Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror records that at the end of the 11th century there were 28 producing vineyards in Norman England. These vineyards prospered over the next 300 years, and England developed into an important center of European wine-making. Yet English vineyards, like those in most of Europe, were mainly associated with the church. About this time the farmers of Bordeaux, an English holding in France, developed a thriving wine industry of their own to wet the palates of their English overlords. Imports into England of Bordeaux wine, which the English called "claret", increased as a worldwide cooling trend slowly reduced the yields of English vineyards. This cooling trend, which culminated in the "little ice age" of the mid-1500's, together with the seizing of English monasteries during the religious reform of King Henry VIII, made the English wine industry unprofitable and hastened the emergence of Burgundy...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... lish-wine/



Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years

Study of semi-fossilised trees gives accurate climate reading back to 138BC
World was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... l-age.html

11th century was not 2000 years ago.

I was responding to that statement where you said 2000 years ago.. London was settled 2000 years ago.

The medieval climate warmth and subsiquent mini ice age were European phenomina and not felt on Asia or other continents.

Let's move back to the important topic of lard in soap.

I use it in a mix with coconut and castor. Makes an excellent bar and you are using a product which otherwise get thrown out. Lard also makes a great oil replacement for bread or cooking. There was a scare in the past about saturated fats and so some stopped using butter, but we now know there are different kinds of saturated fats. Lard is ok in moderation and the replacements that came along were even more unhealthy.