This question pops up at just about every class...and understandably. Because when you're learning to make your own cleaning products, beauty products and health products, you'll often come across ingredients that you've either never heard of, or have never seen available in your local stores.

And many a time when I'm asked this, it's the same answer I give, because so many of the more unusual ingredients are available in one place. N Essentials www.n-essentials.com.au/shop/oils/essential-oils/page/2/

I think I originally found N Essentials because I wanted some cocoa butter. First of all I tried the health food shop, and just couldn't bring myself to pay $30 for this tiny little 250g package of cocoa butter! Especially when some recipes call for that much in one hit! So upon looking online, I found N Essentials sold a whole kilo of cocoa butter for $33. Much better. And it's organic unrefined cocoa butter :-) I know the website clearly states it's not to be taken internally, but I actually used it in a herbal cardamom chocolate mouse cake and in making dairy free chocolate, along with using it in DIY beauty products and soap. And I lived to tell the tale.

 And while checking out the N Essentials site www.n-essentials.com.au/ I found a vast array of other items I'd seen in recipes we wanted to try at home...like evening primrose oil, argan oil, castor oil, shea butter, bentonite clay, rose water, jojoba oil and essential oils at prices much more affordable than I'd seen elsewhere.

Essential oils that are free of carrier oils, additives and are actually pure (not chemically produced) are something you use often in all these DIY recipes. While I use medicinal/therapeutic grade essential oils for our first aid and healing, those therapeutic grade oils are a bit too good (and pricey) for things like soap, candles and some cleaning products. For example, I saw a soap recipe that called for 5ml of Rose essential oil. Now, therapeutic grade rose oil can cost about $350 for 5ml! There's no way you'd put that in soap. And I saw another soap recipe calling for 5ml of helichrysum essential oil. But 5ml of the therapeutic grade costs about $130! Again, you wouldn't put in soap, or anything else non-healing related!
But on the other hand, you don't want to use low-grade 'essential' oils that most likely have additives and defeat the purpose of making your own pure products. I've had essential oils from ebay that fit this category. They very obviously smelled like they had carrier oils and/or additives in them. And please never buy or use the fake essential oils from $2 shops. You can't produce real essential oils at those prices, they don't smell genuine and I don't consider them safe to use.

N-essentials essential oils are great for these DIY recipes where you want quality, but don't need it to be therapeutic grade quality. They are totally pure, no carrier oils or additives. I tried the frankincense, bergamot and sweet orange essential oils from N Essentials and was especially impressed with the frankincense. I used it in soap, homemade kitchen spray and candles and found it held it's scent beautifully. The citrus oils were also used in soap and then washing powder. They performed well also. I think they have about 70 different essential oils to choose from. And they are stored in amber glass bottles, or metal bottles for the larger quantities (1L bottles available), which is vital with essential oils, that are compromised by plastic.

I haven't tried them myself, but N Essentials are now also stocking soap colouring powders, dried flowers/plants for soap and even soap nuts! So it's a very convenient place to collect your soap making supplies in one hit.

Hopefully this helps you as you hunt down all the new ingredients like essential oils you need for those recipes you want to try at home :-)

As many of you would know, SLT isn't running a September class, there's so much happening with Carnival of Flowers etc. I'm hoping to run something from Birdsong (located in Cranley, next to Toowoomba) in these Spring school holidays, but we had a terminally ill family member and I didn't want to arrange anything when we didn't know how long he had left. He died Sunday just gone, so now we await funeral details.

If it works out, we'll try and run a soapmaking class again, as people have asked when the next one will be. If you are interested, make sure you are on the SLT mailing list, as that is where details will be sent through. Sorry it will likely be short notice, but life's been like that lately!

It may sound disgusting, but after a thorough cleaning of the hooves, making broth from them is very nutritious. I remember reading Pollyanna to the children and Pollyanna had to take "Calf's Foot Jelly" to crabby old Mrs Snow, the invalid. Calf's foot jelly? That caught my attention, as I'd heard mention of making broth with hooves, and due to the high collagen in hooves (that's what they make a lot of gelatin from) the broth can be so rich that it literally sets like jelly.

So when we were killing 3 sheep it was decided we'd give this a go. Sheep's hooves are obviously dirty to start with. So here I've taken them out of a stockpot where I had the soaking while we gutted the sheep, and then laid them out on netting to gurni down.

I gave them a good spray and then returned them to the soaking pot.

Next they need the hair removed. Apparently some people use a knife to dehair them, but that was hard! It felt like we were wasting time, so I made use of my 10 year old son's love of playing with knifes and paid him $5 to skin them for me!

I gave them another hit with the gurni and then returned them to the soaking pot for another 24 hours.

Then back to the netting for another gurni the hooves went. By this time they were MUCH cleaner. The reason the cleaning process takes a few days is because there's some hard packed dirt in those hooves, and soaking really helps soften it for removal. Every time we soaked, we put fresh water in the soak pot too. And we let the pot sit in the cold room (fridge would be fine) while soaking. If you don't have a gurni, I'm sure some scrubbing brushes or scourers could get the job done.

Finally the hooves were ready for stock! I used the large slow cooker and 2 of the hooves with the usual vinegar, veg and seasonings and let it simmer away for 48 hours. The results were impressive! The broth came out a lovely deep colour and had a nice thickness to it. And interestingly enough, I've been eating some soup I made with it each day, and I'm the only one in my family of 8 who hasn't been hit hard with the flu!

So Pollyanna must have been onto something taking a sick woman some calf's foot jelly!