Make Natural Moisturiser Like A Herbalist! 🍯

This is my totally natural, homemade moisturizer that I use on my skin and in my hair. It feels so good. So, I actually made a conscious effort to stop buying commercial, like, cosmetic products as much as I could. I know that it's hard in this world, but I tried to stop buying them as much as I could because I felt like a sense of unease when it came to the ingredients that were going in there, from sort of artificial fragrances to preservatives. And when you can make something at home, it gives you the pride and it gives you that sort of feel-good self-sufficiency badge of honour. That's how I feel when I make my homemade stuff from scratch. And I also don't want to buy too much packaging or plastics that a lot of these cosmetic stuff comes in, particularly things like moisturiser. Now, as I told you outside, calendula is incredible for the skin. It's so healing to a point where people with eczema and skin conditions use it. Now, I picked and dried my homegrown calendula in my kitchen, and it's time to now infuse it to get the best out of it for this homemade moisturiser. So I'm going to do a bit of a cheat version of this infusion. Most of the time, herbalists will steep the calendula in olive oil or a carrier oil for months in a dark place in a big jar, and that's the best way to get all the properties out of the calendula. But I know we don't all have the luxury of waiting months for our homemade moisturiser, so I'm going to simply infuse the calendula for about an hour in a double boiler. That just means in a saucepan filled with a little bit of water and a heatproof bowl put on top with some olive oil in it. I also am going to add some dried lavender from my garden as well, which will add that beautiful fragrance and all the calming properties that lavender has. So I dropped out of school at age just 16 to become a chef. I had no plan B whatsoever, just this desire to work with food, work in the kitchens, because that's where I felt I belonged. And here I am years later holding something that was just a thought that has become reality now. This is my new book, Plant a Plate. This book is a way of seeing food differently, a way of working with nature and not against it. Inside you'll learn not only how to cook, but my growing tips, fermentation, foraging, herbalism, preservations, stories from my homestead, and how to truly understand ingredients. So it will mean the absolute world to me if you can support me on this journey by ordering the book. You can pre-order it now and it's out end of May, early June. So please grab a copy. Hopefully it will transform your cooking and your connection to food. Thank you. All right, so you're probably wondering how I'm actually going to utilize that infused oil with my homegrown calendula and lavender. Well, the answer is majestic shea butter and cacao butter. Now, shea butter originated in West Africa from the seed of the shea tree. And cacao butter, it's from South America and Central America. And now these two ingredients in their own right are healing and really sacred to those indigenous people. For centuries, African communities have used shea butter not only as a powerful skin moisturizer, but to heal burns and scars and other skin ailments. And the same with cacao butter. Indigenous peoples of the Amazon use it for its nutritional properties, both in skincare and sacred rituals. So same method, the double boiler bain-marie style method to gently melt down these two and meld them together. Once they're melted together, we'll take it off the heat and then strain in the infused olive oil. Wow, that's strained nicely. But it's important to squeeze these herbs because of all their goodness in the bowl. If you can, get any extra juice. You can tell the calendula has infused. That olive oil is so orange. It smells good. And any little bits, you get a free little moisturize as you're making it. So this needs to cool down slightly, almost to room temperature, because the next step is to whip this up to get loads of aeration in it. That's going to create a really light, bubbly moisturizer. All right, so this has had time to cool to room temperature. This is the fun bit, whipping it up just with an electric whisk to get loads of aeration in this moisturizer. Look at those ripples. That is beautiful, and it smells so good. Just in that short time infusing into the olive oil, we've got enough lavender and calendula in the mix. Now, what I want to say is I'm not an expert at making cosmetics like this. I used to buy shea butter, and I still do from time to time when I haven't made my own, from some really incredible artisan makers of natural cosmetics, particularly shea butter moisturizers. I want to shout out to my friends, Earth to Earth Organics. They make incredible shea butter moisturizer and a whole range of herbal cosmetics with their homegrown herbs from their garden in Wales. So shout out to them. If you want to support them, click the link beneath this video. But this is how I'm going to make my cheats version, and I'm pretty happy with that. I'm going to get this into the jar, and I'll apply it to my skin pretty much every day, or whenever my skin feels like it needs that soothing moisture. This is whippy delicious. It's so natural, I can literally eat this. I'm joking. You're good though. Do not waste a scrap of these precious ingredients. And because we're going all out and making our own moisturizer, I'm just going to garnish like it's a dessert, just with a few lavender petals, because why not? And I'm even going to grab some calendula. Just get them on top too. All right, so my lids go on. These make the perfect gift. Actually, my mum and dad use them now since I've been making them. And they actually do store for a long while because there's no water in this mix. These are just oils. They do last a long time, so a good three months. But to be honest, I use this in my hair and on my skin, so it goes quite fast. But it's a joy when you're using your homegrown ingredients, plus the magic of shea butter and cacao butter. Beautiful. Done. I never thought I'd be making my homemade moisturizer on the channel. But there you go. We all evolve and change over the years for the better, hopefully.