ResolvableOwl
Notorious Lyear
Boa noite, let me introduce myself. I'm João. By my birth, about a year ago, I've been stuffed with a pound of the finest unrefined babaçu palm nut grease from the jungles of northeastern Brazil. Now is time for a farewell – but I don't want to look back in grief, but rather reminisce about this satisfied, busy, and exciting time, that I had spent under the wings of an oddball of a nocturnal bird of prey, who prefers hunting exotic oils over hunting mice.
But one after another.
It all started with the eternal bureaucracy of SAP tables, ingredient lists, and scrolling through botany literature. Driven by a mix of curiosity, procrastination and boredom, my then-not-yet-owner browsed through the offerings of some online stores, and compiled a “what to buy once I'm grown up” shortlist.
As things go, the purchase became inevitable. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to present myself from my best side, face to face! It was easy to convince my owner to call me by my original Brazilian surname: babaçu (not sure where that weird international double-s habit came from). Though labelled „Nicht zum Verzehr geeignet“ (“not for human consumption”), my smell and melting was just too seducing to not be tasted as well… and oh boi, delicious!
I eagerly lost weight to give birth to various soaps. Teamed up with cocoa butter, I turned into white chocolate soap; real, dark chocolate colour tiny cute bars of dark chocolate soap. Alloyed with poppy seed oil, and dyed with an extract of erva-mate chimarrão (also from my Lusophone home country), I've bubbled up a luxurious liquid soap. And so on.
I've always been the lauric oil of choice, for faux chocolate, faux sushi, faux cheese, faux (sweet) salt bars, etc, etc. Not only soapy stuff, but also to amaze northerners' palates with a unfamiliar yet intriguing taste to confectionery, biscuits, sponge cake, chocolate, etc (off-label use, I know, I know).
Until this cheap and bland and soulless refined-to-death palm kernel oil appeared all of a sudden – to make me envious? to remind me of my nigh end? to stress how interchangeable all of us lauric oils are?
Anyway. Eventually, time has come to spare the last mere two tablespoons of my oily soul, and oh, meus queridos, it should become a grand finale! Melted in the summer afternoon sunlight, together with cocoa butter (once again!) and lovely deep red flourescent pumpkin seed oil.
But I hadn't anticipated what my friends, the sodium hydroxide and the acetic/citric acid solution, have prepared for me: very special fireworks! BAM went off the great fountain of lye, after the PP lye bucket had softened from the heat of solution/reaction (and its lid a bit too tightly closed), and sprayed boiling hot lye everywhere! Gosh, I don't want to scare you with what I had to witness, just one word about how important protective gear is. ALWAYS. WEAR. GOGGLES.
One uneventful week of soapmaking moratorium passed (I've sought shelter in a dark and chilly fridge) … but now, the last bits of my greasy freight now eventually merged with lye, and is now slowly turning into the last new batch of babaçu-bearing soap, probably in a long time.
Don't be sorry. I'm still around, just not as this buttery paste on cold days, and thick liquid on warm days, but as a herd of very special soaps, silently curing along, and ready at all time to give off decadent towers of fluffy lather and to cut through any dirt.
Lembranças,
João
But one after another.
It all started with the eternal bureaucracy of SAP tables, ingredient lists, and scrolling through botany literature. Driven by a mix of curiosity, procrastination and boredom, my then-not-yet-owner browsed through the offerings of some online stores, and compiled a “what to buy once I'm grown up” shortlist.
As things go, the purchase became inevitable. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to present myself from my best side, face to face! It was easy to convince my owner to call me by my original Brazilian surname: babaçu (not sure where that weird international double-s habit came from). Though labelled „Nicht zum Verzehr geeignet“ (“not for human consumption”), my smell and melting was just too seducing to not be tasted as well… and oh boi, delicious!
I eagerly lost weight to give birth to various soaps. Teamed up with cocoa butter, I turned into white chocolate soap; real, dark chocolate colour tiny cute bars of dark chocolate soap. Alloyed with poppy seed oil, and dyed with an extract of erva-mate chimarrão (also from my Lusophone home country), I've bubbled up a luxurious liquid soap. And so on.
I've always been the lauric oil of choice, for faux chocolate, faux sushi, faux cheese, faux (sweet) salt bars, etc, etc. Not only soapy stuff, but also to amaze northerners' palates with a unfamiliar yet intriguing taste to confectionery, biscuits, sponge cake, chocolate, etc (off-label use, I know, I know).
Until this cheap and bland and soulless refined-to-death palm kernel oil appeared all of a sudden – to make me envious? to remind me of my nigh end? to stress how interchangeable all of us lauric oils are?
Anyway. Eventually, time has come to spare the last mere two tablespoons of my oily soul, and oh, meus queridos, it should become a grand finale! Melted in the summer afternoon sunlight, together with cocoa butter (once again!) and lovely deep red flourescent pumpkin seed oil.
But I hadn't anticipated what my friends, the sodium hydroxide and the acetic/citric acid solution, have prepared for me: very special fireworks! BAM went off the great fountain of lye, after the PP lye bucket had softened from the heat of solution/reaction (and its lid a bit too tightly closed), and sprayed boiling hot lye everywhere! Gosh, I don't want to scare you with what I had to witness, just one word about how important protective gear is. ALWAYS. WEAR. GOGGLES.
One uneventful week of soapmaking moratorium passed (I've sought shelter in a dark and chilly fridge) … but now, the last bits of my greasy freight now eventually merged with lye, and is now slowly turning into the last new batch of babaçu-bearing soap, probably in a long time.
Don't be sorry. I'm still around, just not as this buttery paste on cold days, and thick liquid on warm days, but as a herd of very special soaps, silently curing along, and ready at all time to give off decadent towers of fluffy lather and to cut through any dirt.
Lembranças,
João
