The Story of Soap

I'm guessing you've never given much thought to how soap is made, why it works, or how to tell good soap from bad. I didn't have the first clue either, before getting hooked on this fascinating soap making journey in my own little urban kitchen many years ago.

It turns out that soap is actually a salt -- who knew? It is the creamy, dreamy lusciously-sudsing result of combining fats and oils with water and lye. Sounds improbable and ucky, but it's true. The chemical process that occurs when all those things are thrown together in a pot on the stove is called "saponification", and the end result (if I do everything right) is lovely bars of high quality soap, loaded with skin-soothing and moisturizing glycerin.

Early American settlers made their soap from rendered animal fats, water, and the ashes saved from their wood cooking fires. Fortunately, I don't have to butcher a cow, slaughter a pig, or cook all our meals over an open fire to make soap today.

All of my soaps are made with high quality olive, coconut and soy oils (the fats) and good old lye (the alkali). If you're cringing at the word "lye" in your soap ingredients, I don't blame you -- but rest assured the lye is completely consumed by the chemical process of saponification, and the bar of soap you are holding now is as mild and pure as a fresh spring rain.

One of the coolest things that happens during this saponification process is that lots of natural glycerin is created -- right inside every bar! The big soap manufacturers today extract all that wonderful glycerin out of their soap and sell it to other big companies who use it to make other things -- like hand lotion. This is why store-bought soaps are typically so drying to the skin, and why you have to then buy lotions and creams (containing the glycerin that got extracted in the first place) to put the moisture back in. Our soaps will never dry your skin -- in fact, you may find that with continued use you can give up using hand lotions and body creams all together!

Those moisturizing qualities of the high glycerin content in our soaps also mean that the soaps will 'melt' faster if left sitting in a puddle of water in a soap dish. So please be sure to leave your soap air-drying between uses, not swimming in a puddle.

Our scented soaps contain only the purest, phthalate-free, essential and fragrance oils. This results in a lightly scented soap that smells great in the shower, but won't linger on your skin to interfere with other fragrances. No artificial colorings or preservatives are ever used. All herbs and flowers used in our soaps have been grown organically in our own urban gardens, then air-dried, pulverized and added to the soap. I also make a Pure and Simple soap, containing only olive, coconut and soy oils, with nothing else added. This soap is great for babies and anyone with super-sensitive skin. Try a few bars of my soaps today -- I think you'll fall in love and never go back to store-bought soap again !