Luxuriate with Decadent DIY Body Butter

Marge (00:00:07) - Welcome back, my friends, to another glorious week. If you're finding your skin is a little dry, I have just a thing for you this week. Infused body better. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified Ganjier, Marge and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. And thank you for joining me today. Hello, friends. How are you doing? I'm glad you're here. If you're joining me for the first time today, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen. And if you're a long time listener or even a medium time listener, I appreciate your listenership so very much. It really keeps me going. That is literally the only thing that keeps me going. And I appreciate you. And this week we're going to have a fun episode, as usual, and I'm glad you're here for it along with me. Before we get started, let's take a look at an amazing review that I got recently.

Marge (00:01:06) - I love reading these. They make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. This one was a five star review entitled perfect. I was just looking for recipes and how to keep things interesting. This is an awesome show and that came from hey hey Ray J in the United States. Thank you. Hey hey Ray J. That's kind of fun. Rolls off the tongue. I really appreciate it. Those types of reviews really help the show get discovered by other listeners out there. And there is a thing. Podcast discoverability can often be quite difficult and challenging. And when you're an independent podcaster like myself, I do everything myself the hosting, the editing, all that stuff. I'm a one woman show and I'm not part of a network, and there's a lot of other podcasters out there like me that are doing this kind of thing. And reviews like this really help get new podcasts discovered. I shouldn't say new. Obviously, this podcast has been around for a while, but helps podcasts get discovered, generally speaking, and I'm always rooting for the little person out there who's working hard at bringing something fun for people to listen to week after week.

Marge (00:02:10) - So thank you for that. And if you do want to leave your own review, I encourage you to do so. There should be a link in the show notes at the bottom or in your podcast player notes somewhere as well. And if you're so compelled, it really makes me happy. You can imagine me sitting, looking at my phone or on my laptop and just smiling away over here. Next, things you can make with hemp I haven't done this in a couple of weeks. I think I've just feeling a little not inspired, I suppose. We did cover so many things already that you can make with hemp. It's really quite impressive, but this one was one that I hadn't come across before and originally came from High Times Magazine. And it is a sports car. Yes, you heard that right. The new sports car has been making headlines over the past couple of years, because it features a body made out of hemp. The company's design uses hemp fibers that have been tightly interwoven and then covered with a super hard resin.

Marge (00:03:17) - The car jumped into the spotlight last year when Jay Leno drove one of the cars on his show, Jay Leno's Garage, and I don't really follow Jay Leno, but if I if memory serves, I do believe Jay Leno is a real car aficionado and likes to collect cars and drive cars and knows quite a bit about the automobile. But as I dug a little deeper as well, I do believe that this car is out of production at this point, and I'm not sure why I didn't dig far enough, but there was one article that suggested that it is made with £100 of cannabis. Or hemp, I suppose in this particular case. So interesting, the creative things that people are doing to use hemp in a productive way. It's really fascinating. Is there anything this plant can't do? Anything at all. I don't think so. Doesn't feel like it at this moment. Well, thank you for indulging me. Now on to our recipe for the week. Infused body butter. So I've been making this body butter for years now.

Marge (00:04:23) - Literally. I had a friend that lived in my neighborhood for a while several years ago. And Jen, if you happen to be listening to this, hello, I miss you. It was really great to have you in my neighborhood when you were in my life at that period of time, and we started making body butters together. We did have like a little company for a little bit. We called it Live Naked Skincare because a lot of the products that we were making were using very easily accessible products you could find in your kitchen, even. But I think we spent more time drinking tea and talking than we did, really focusing on building a business. So it didn't really go very far. But that's okay, because some of the recipes that I learned to make during that time, I'm still using it making to this day, and I often like to use them. For myself and gift them to friends and family and people that I care about so a lot. A lot of positive things did come from that relationship.

Marge (00:05:15) - And, you know, I remember it fondly. So this DIY body butter I've been using for years, it's rich, it's thick, it's emollient, and it's made with only a handful of ingredients like I just mentioned. And you can easily pick most of these up on your next trip to Costco or put it on your next Amazon order. And I use this body butter for a lot of things. Once it's infused, of course I'll use it for even more things, but I'll use it to apply to my chronically sore lower back, especially in the mornings. That's when I find my back is the most stiff. I do have lumbar issues L4 and L5. Those of you out there who may be suffering something similar, know exactly what I'm talking about. It's right there in the lower back. Most of the time it's pretty manageable, but I do have a few tools in my toolkit to help manage the often constant ache, which is cannabis topicals. Those are probably one of the biggest tools. My tools kit, and I use it pretty much every single day.

Marge (00:06:11) - Get out of the shower in the morning and I'm putting that on my back. Sometimes. If it's bad, I might reapply it later on the day, but oftentimes I don't find I need to. But mornings or when it's the most stiff, probably because I'm just waking up. And of course I've been immobile for a while, so it really does help. And so I use it in that context once it's infused, when it's not infused, obviously I'm not using it on my lower back because it's not going to work the same way, but sometimes I use it on my face. Not so much lately, but I have been using it on my face at night before bed for that extra moisture. My partner Chris will often use it as an aftershave, or sometimes I get almost like a gel in his hair. And one of the things I love to use it for is on my feet. I like to put it on my feet and then some put on socks to help lock in that skin softening moisture.

Marge (00:06:57) - And like I mentioned already, I've gifted this butter body butter many, many times and depending on the recipient, I will get requests for more lesser my daughter. If you're listening to this, I'll have more ready for you soon. She's always asking for some of my body butter, but it's generally a good general purpose body butter that you can use pretty much anywhere on your skin. You could almost eat this, but I will suggest that you don't normally because not all of the ingredients are necessarily food grade. Some of them are, but some of them are not. And for that reason, you wouldn't want to eat. And of course it's going to taste like crap if you do do that. So I don't suggest you do it, but you could theoretically. Sometimes I even put some in many containers of some kind, and I'll have it when I'm traveling in my travel kit, or I'll put it in a handbag or something. So if I need some moisture on the go, which I don't find so much of a problem in the summertime.

Marge (00:07:52) - But once winter hits and we close all the windows and we have the furnace on like it's running right now, I need that extra moisture. Especially when I'm washing my hands a lot. My hands get so dry sometimes I like to leave a little container by the kitchen sink, so it's available at, and it's just nice to have that when you're out and about, because sometimes you do need that extra moisture when you're living in a cold, frosty Canadian climate like I am. So another way to make use of this all purpose body butter. Now, the best part of this is the fact that it's besides a super simple list of ingredients you can make as much as or as little as you want. It's made with olive oil, coconut oil, beeswax, vitamin E, essential oil for scent. And I don't always include the vitamin E, just depends if I happen to have some on hand. I do like to make a lot of sort of body care products, and as I get closer to Christmas, sometimes I start thinking about it more because I do like to gift it to people in my life.

Marge (00:08:52) - And if I have some vitamin E on hand that I've purchased because I have like a little tote with all the ingredients that I keep, if it's in there, great. And if not, then I adjust the formula. To not include it, but. I also do like to play with the various scents. So the fun thing about this as well is that you can choose a bunch of different essential oils to scent it the way you like. Of course, you don't have to add any essential oils. It's not going to have much of a scent without. It might smell a little coconutty, but it doesn't really have much of a scent from what I recall. I personally really like citrus scents, but there's all kinds. Whatever. Whatever floats your boat, whatever you are into, you can make and you can experiment and try it different times. I do tend to make larger batches so that I can jar it up and then have it on hand for when I need it, but I don't always do that.

Marge (00:09:40) - In fact, the last time I made it, more recently, I just made a little bit to try it out with with the infusion, because I haven't too often infused it. Most of the time I've made this body butter. I don't infuse it, I would say, and I was running low on the the. A Tracy's infused pain topical, and I've used that recipe lots of times. It uses shea butter and I really like that as well. It's a different consistency, but I definitely infused it and was using that on my back. But I ran into this and thought, you know what, I'm going to try infusing this body butter that I've been using for so long and see how that works. And so far I've been very impressed. Very impressed indeed. But the great thing about this is that the recipe is basically in percentages. So instead of being like, well, you need this much, you need a cup of coconut oil and a cup of this and a cup of that. You're going to do percentages and I'll link those in the show notes.

Marge (00:10:38) - So you don't need to worry. I don't have it off right in front of me. Which why recording and not have it in front of me? I'm not really sure, but if you decide you want to make 250ml of this, then you just figure it out. I think it was 55% of the olive oil, so you'd figure out the 55% gives you how many, how many grams of product. And of course, that means you probably do need a kitchen scale to make that this. This is one ingredient or one kitchen tool that is going to be very necessary to have, I would think, for the accuracy that you'll need to make this. However, this is a pretty forgiving recipe to make. So as far as body care products go, sometimes like like when you're getting into making a lot of things, if you're getting in deep into candy making or chocolate making or a lot of body home body care products, some of the percentages, temperatures, all that kind of stuff is going to matter a lot.

Marge (00:11:34) - And this recipe, fortunately, is perfect for beginner and is very forgiving. So if it's a little off, I don't think it's going to make a huge difference. But a kitchen scale if you don't have one is a very useful kitchen gadget to have, so you can pick one up easily on Amazon for very inexpensive. And it's one of those kitchen tools that I pull out time and time and time again. The one I have is practically falling apart. It feels like sometimes, but it just keeps working, so I just keep using it. And once you invest in one and when I say invest, like I said, you're probably looking like 20 bucks, give or take. You're going to use it over and over again. So that's my PSA of the day, a very useful kitchen tool to have. So if you don't have one by one. But. The ratios are as follows. I know I said I wasn't going to mention them, but I'll just mention them really quick because there's not that many of them.

Marge (00:12:21) - Olive oil 55%. Coconut oil 28%. Beeswax 15%. Vitamin E was 0.5% and the essential oils 1.5%. That should add up to 100. If it doesn't, my math is off and I apologize. I realized when I made it, I added I didn't change adjust it for the infused so that I used for this particular recipe in this batch, but it didn't seem to matter anyway. It turned out just fine. So, you know, like I said, this is a pretty forgiving recipe. Essentially, what I do to make it is I'll measure pre measure all the ingredients. So I have them all ready to go. I add the beeswax to a small pot and I melt it down completely. Then I add the olive and coconut oil melted all mix it all up together. And then sometimes I'll put it. Sometimes I often put it in the fridge to cool off for a little bit, because otherwise it can take forever to mix. And then I add it to the bowl of a stand mixer.

Marge (00:13:12) - I'll whip it on low speeds for sometimes for quite a while, and I'll scrape down the sides from time to time. And then once it's cooled off, more to the consistency that I like, that's what I'll add the vitamin E and the essential oils. And that's where I also added the. So whip it for a few minutes longer to make sure it's well incorporated. And you can also use infused coconut oil for this. I'm trying to think if I have tried this before, I might make another batch just to try it again. The only thing that I was concerned about doing it that way, one is that it could change the color a little bit. This comes out in sort of a nice yellow color. I guess I'm going to have a look at it. I had a jar that. We're sitting here in my office where I record. Okay. Well it's not it's not like super yellow, but it has a nice it has a nice. Butter yellow color, let's say. And if you have an infused coconut oil that is darker and color because there's more chlorophyll in it, for whatever reason, you're going to find that it's probably going to change the color of this.

Marge (00:14:18) - And I also found, I think that the ISO is pretty concentrated. So you can up the potency with not adding too much or changing too much. But of course, you could probably also try doing both. You could use infused coconut oil and the solids, see what happens to really up the potency. But that could also maybe be a little overkill and not necessary. So I mean, you can try it out and see what happens, but if you wanted to do the max potency, you could probably even add infused olive oil. If you were to get into doing that. I might actually also make a smaller batch just to test it out, because it's probably also going to alter the shelf life when you do that, because I just find that sometimes. Once you've infused something, it doesn't necessarily. It sort of it's going to alter the shelf life a little bit. Coconut oil, generally speaking, has a two year shelf life. Who knows how long it's been sitting on the shelf before you pick it up and bring it home to the store.

Marge (00:15:09) - But I feel like infusions often do alter the shelf life, so these are just things to keep in mind. I use an R, so it didn't change the color whatsoever really. And. Returned a really nice and it still works. So you do you. I've never tried it with the infused all of the infused olive oil, and that could be pretty interesting as well. I'm not sure how that would change the consistency, but I guess you could try it out and let me know how you find it, because that would be interesting to learn and I might have to try that. I don't know if I have any infused olive oil on hand right now. Maybe I'll have to make some and then try it in another batch, because the holiday season is coming and I'm starting to think about this stuff. And a lot of, a lot of the times homemade gifts are really appreciated. At least I think they are. I hope the people who are receiving them and saying, oh my God, thank you are also thinking the same thing.

Marge (00:16:00) - Maybe they're not, maybe they're bullshitting me, but it doesn't matter. They're getting more anyway. So the great thing, like I said, you can pick up, you know, a big jug of olive oil and coconut oil at Costco if you're shopping there, or large size formats, so you don't have to worry about using it all up. Once I have the consistency that I like after mixing it in the stand mixer, and I've added in the ISO and the vitamin E and essential oils, if I'm using those, then I'm going to pour the mixed butter into whatever containers I'll be using, and then it'll finally set once it's completely cooled. So it may still seem like it's a little bit runny, but it will set. And. It will. It will work. Just trust me on that. It is a super rich body butter and it has a rich skin feel, which is maybe a nice way of saying that. It can feel kind of greasy sometimes for a little bit once you've put it on.

Marge (00:16:57) - Some people don't like that and I can appreciate that. I personally love it. I love that feeling, and I have been told many times that I have very soft skin. So is it attributed to my body butter? I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes it is. But I'll have to let you decide by making it for yourself and see if you find that it helps you. But it does have a bit of a greasy feeling to it. Somebody gave me a tip recently suggesting that if you get out of the shower and you don't totally dry off your skin completely, and then you add something like a body butter, like something rich like that, that can really help sort of absorb a little bit more. I haven't tried that yet, because again, I don't really mind that that skin feel, but it doesn't last forever. And of course you're going to get dressed and go about your day anyway. You wouldn't be thinking about it, but later you'll be like, oh, my skin is so silky soft.

Marge (00:17:44) - The fun thing with this is if you are gifting it, you can easily find inexpensive containers to put these in from your local dollar store from Amazon. If you want to get serious, you could order them from like a a soap making supply place. There's all kinds of them. You know, in Canada, I'm sure there's even tons more in the United States. And then you can give it a bit more of a professional feel. But a lot of the times you can find great jars and containers that will be suitable at the local dollar store or little mason jars or whatever the case might be. I do like to put it in a nice jar, so that's pretty much it. I really recommend that you try it now that if you're like where I am and it's starting to get cold, and again, we're closing up the doors and windows and turning on the furnace and the air is going to get really dry and your skin is going to dry out with it. This body butter will come to your rescue, and I know that you'll be glad that you have it in your arsenal, whether you infuse it or not.

Marge (00:18:38) - Try it out. Make it. It's really easy. You're melting stuff and you're whipping it, and that's basically it. It doesn't get much easier than that. It doesn't require much in the way of cooking knowhow or skills or any of that stuff. And in the end you'll have something that you can use in gift. And I would love to hear how it turns out for you and what essential oils or what scents you tried when you made it, and if you tried it with any of the other infused ingredients like the infused coconut oil or olive oil, I'd be really interested to hear that as well, or how you chose to infuse it. So if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with some other person that loves a little bit of DIY and you can always let me know what you think about this episode or give me your feedback. I love to hear from you. Emails. Podcast hotline. Also, I have a newsletter you can join that helps me keep these episodes timeless, and I'm probably it's probably in the pre-roll, as we like to say in the biz.

Marge (00:19:32) - But if you haven't yet joined the Bite Me Cannabis Club, I encourage you to do so. It is free for the first 100 members and I'm trying to get people in there. So that is going to be another place where like minded edibles lovers can come together and talk about their weed infused life and if you're thinking of picking up something to help your edibles making life even easier, consider using the products and services on the Marj Recommends page, and that helps support the show at no extra cost to you. So that's it for this week, I believe. My friends, I don't think there's anything else. I'm your host, Marge. And until next time, stay high.