Review: Ecover Lavender and Aloe Vera Hand Soap

Sometimes I worry about reviewing things on this blog. After all, the whole point of the blog was to review green products that the average person could easily obtain and afford. It's all very well for Gwyneth Paltrow to go green (and I'm sure she does it much better than I), but she has a lot more spare cash than I do, so expensive organic items are not a stretch for her. Therefore, when I buy something that doesn't necessarily qualify as "frugal" I agonize over whether I should post it, or risk being found out as someone that if often not all that frugal at all. Case in point: $7 soaps. And then comes a posting gap while I wrestle with my inner demons. OK, so I exaggerate. But that brings me to....

Ecover hand soap. I'd tried to switch to just using bar soaps, because I figured that the plastic packaging for and extra chemicals in liquid hand soaps made them less environmentally friendly than bar soaps. But I was not enjoying them. I mean, actually, they're fine in the shower, but for washing my hands, I prefer the liquid soap. I am also a fan of all things Ecover - I think they are a very environmentally aware company and their products generally work well, although I do squirm a little about the extra carbon footprint involved in shipping the products from Europe to the States. But when I saw this soap on offer at Whole Foods for $4.49 for 250 ml (3.4 fl oz), I snapped it up. Hey, there's a refill that you can buy, so if I love it, I will switch to the refill at some point.

Oh, and I DO love it. It has this wonderful lavender aroma that hits you as soon as you pump out a dollop into your hand. It is very comforting, and at the same time, a clean scent that makes you feel like you are waging germ warfare because of the natural antiseptic properties of lavender. And it clears your head at the same time. And sometimes, let's face it, if we're washing our hands in the bathroom, it is nice to have a burst of a lovely fresh scent to take away any other....odors. Ahem.  It lathers well, cleans well, and have I mentioned that I love the smell? It doesn't seem to dry out my hands, so in my view it is an all-around winner.

Four and a half stars - only a little less than five because of the price. I'd LOVE it to  be cheaper!

Update:  I've been finding this soap a little drying on my hands, so I'm knocking the review down to four stars because of that. I still love the smell, but I'd rather not have to use hand cream on top!

Adventures in homemade greenness

I promised that this was going to be the year when I got better at homemade greenness. And I fully intend to follow through on that promise.  There are so many areas where I waste money and resources buying premade stuff - cleaning products, facial care products and food. 

The first thing I decided to tackle was food. Specifically, seitan. If you don't know, one of the easiest things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint is to eat less meat. You don't have to go completely vegetarian - there are campaigns out there such as Meatless Monday which provide inspiration to go vegetarian one day a week. I am already a vegetarian, but I confess to being a bit of a processed-food vegetarian. So, on to seitan. Seitan is a protein made of wheat gluten (so, if you're gluten intolerant, obviously this isn't for you). It is also known as "wheat meat".  It's low in calories and fat, and super high in protein (for something vegetarian). But alas, it is expensive if you buy it ready made - $3.99 for 2.5 servings at Whole Foods. If you've never tried it before, I suggest buying one of those packets and giving it a go in a stir fry. They are usually sold in chiller cabinets with the fresh tofus and meat substitutes. Don't be afraid to flavor it up with soy sauce, hot sauce, whatever, and even let it go slightly crisp with the cooking. Delicious.

As I have an awesome cookbook called Veganomicon, which promised me that homemade seitan was easy to make, I decided to try my hand at making it. You have to buy vital wheat gluten flour and nutritional yeast, but otherwise the remaining ingredients should be readily available and may be things you already have.  I think I spent about $8-9 at Whole Foods for enough organic vital wheat gluten flour and nutritional yeast to make 8-10 batches of seitan. The recipe I used was similar to this one except I didn't put any flavorings in it other than 1/4 cup of soy sauce, and it only used 1 cup of flour, cooking up in 8 cups of broth/water. Instead of the flavorings, it has 1 tblspn olive oil. Each batch makes 3 servings.

The book authors were right  - it was super easy. And yummy. I even made the vegetable broth myself, from all the wilting vegetables that were cluttering up the fridge and making me feel guilty. Using homemade broth did make it a two-day process, but now I also have 8 individually frozen cups of broth, that I can use in other recipes, and it keeps the sodium content down.

I think I count this as a success! The pic is today's lunch, which was a seitan stir fry.

Review: Tom's of Maine Natural Moisturizing Body Bar

I am back after a long hiatus! Woot!

First things first, soap. I promised you a review of the soap that made me itch. This isn't it. I am having a mental block about writing that review because I still don't know if it was really the soap or if it was something else. So I have decided to move on, put it behind me and just say never again! But I will say that it was one of the $7 soaps, and I am done with $7 soaps for the time being anyway. $7 is too spendy for soap these days, what with the crushing recession and all.

So here we are, Tom's of Maine, which retails for about $3.99 but for which I am constantly finding $1 off coupons. Even on the front of the shelf where it is being sold. I wanted to like it so much, I really did. I use the Tom's calendula deodorant, which I reviewed here. It's still working pretty well for me, even after many months, and I really like the smell which is a nice spicy floral. I thought the matching soap would therefore make me smell delicious, not to mention like I had actually planned a combination of fragrances that matched. I had visions of feeling sophisticated.

The soap lathers very well, I have no complaints there. It doesn't contain animal ingredients, which is a prerequisite for me, and we know that Tom's has a good track record with natural products. It seems to be lasting well, and has a nice creamy feel. It even leaves my skin feeling nicely moisturized just as it is. It's just the smell that bothers me. You know when you have a dried flower arrangement and they sit out for about, ooh, a year, and get covered in dust? That's what this smells like. Dusty dried flowers, with a tinge of marigold somewhere underneath the dust. And it lingers on the skin for a while as well so I am going to work feeling like I'm wearing some old clothes of grandma's that I pulled out of the back of the closet. OK, that last sentence is a slight exaggeration - you actually have to inhale fairly deeply to smell it after 10-15 minutes.

Having said that, I do think the smell is more unisex than the deodorant. I can imagine it smelling quite pleasant on a man (provided he were brave enough to try a floral soap to begin with), and if you're sharing soap with your partner it could be a good choice. But, alas, it is not the soap holy grail that I wanted.

Three and a half stars.

Shame on You: Winn Dixie

Winn Dixie is not traditionally a "green" store, but I shop there fairly regularly, mostly because it's the closest supermarket to my home. My local store has recently set up a new "organic and natural" section which actually has a fairly good selection. However, the prices are not fair at all.

Case in point: Kashi Black Bean Mango frozen entree. For some reason that I can't work out, not only does Winn Dixie charge an outrageous price for the Kashi frozen entrees (most are $4.29 in my local store), they single out the Black Bean Mango, which is the only vegan variety they sell, for special treatment. They charge a truly outrageous $5.49 for this product. I can buy the exact same thing for $3.79 at Whole Foods, and we all know that Whole Foods isn't the cheapest store in town. Last time I was in Walmart, they had them for $3.59.

Shame on you, Winn Dixie! And buyer beware - don't get suckered in to thinking that you're getting stuff cheap there. Even if you're using one of their regular $10 off $50 coupons that they give out all the time, this still doesn't bring the price down to anywhere near the price it should be.

Shopping Tips: Whole Foods

Whole Foods has been trying to sell itself lately as being a supplier of low cost healthy foods, in contrast to their whole paycheck image. Sometimes it is working, sometimes not so much. Here's what I have noticed:

They now provide a free magazine at the entrance with a bunch of coupons in which are good for 3 months. And it includes things you might actually buy, rather than the usual coupon selection which always seems to be snack food only. So pick up a magazine every time you go, as you can just keep getting the coupons for stuff that you buy regularly. But read the coupons carefully - there's one for $5 a brand of vitamins, for example, but it is only valid for the 180-tablet size.

When WF advertises on their shelves "2 for $6" deals, they really mean 2 for $6, not like some stores which will give you one item for $3. However, I've noticed (and it's not just in one store) that the offers don't always ring up when you check out. Also, they have a lot of specially marked "Sale" products that again don't always ring up. I was kicking myself when I got home this weekend to find out that I'd missed out on a couple of sales. Keep an eagle eye on the sale and buy-two-for offers as they come up on screen at the checkout - in fact, next time, I'm going to write them all down so I don't forget to raise the issue with the cashier. They have to give you the item at the advertised price so they have to honor whatever they put on the shelf. Perhaps this is a regional thing that my local stores are disorganized, but it has surprised me that it has happened to me so frequently, and like I said, not just in one store. So, pay attention, shoppers!

Ooops!

Sorry for the lack of posting. It's not strictly due to laziness, I promise. I broke out in a nasty, itchy rash and it's taken me forever to switch around all the products I use one-by-one in order to figure out what it was that was causing me to itch. You almost got posts saying how I loved some new soap I was trying, that my favorite deodorant formulation must have been changed, and that a particular brand of toilet tissue was clearly impregnated with some evil itch-inducing chemicals when I finally figured out it was the soap that was causing all the problems in the first place.

Once I am entirely back to normal and reintroducing products again, I will start to review things. Including the itch-making soap.

Shopping Report: Gap women's jeans

Gap has women's organic boot cut jeans on sale for $34.99 here. And they seem to have all sizes available at the moment.