Today, after a long while, I took time to prepare some soap for daily hair wash cum a liquid for dish washer. It had been a year since I got the soap nut berries to prepare the liquid, somehow, it just could not happen.
I grabbed some 20 odd berries cleansed it with tap water, used the stone from the hand spice grinder to break open the berries. While I was removing the back seeds inside these berries, recollected that last time when I did the same exercise, I threw off seeds onto my planter and luckily of the seeds has sprouted.
Somehow lost the sprout while we relocated to the new - old apartment (new to us, yet the apartment is 20+ years old !).
It is often said that certain people possessed the magical hand that enabled them to grow anything. One such person is my father, he could even plant a broken balsam and use some soil to paste the broken parts together, still the plant would survive and what not, would be in full bloom sooner.
So, I was thinking, have I also fallen onto the magical bandwagon, or was it just that the soil was so perfect for the seed to sprout! Anyways, I don't possess the sprout/ plant anymore. I have heard that soap nut berries are huge trees. I would to see it one day! Now back to my recipe.
I filled one of the taller vessels around 2-3 litres of water and started to boil them and added these berries onto it and let them boil. In sometime, I was able to see that soapy later on top. I continued to boil them at medium flame to get a concentrated liquid.Then filtered out the liquid alone and added some more water and repeated the above. IO do this 3 times and then I leave the berries soaked in water again. This could be run in a mixer to bring it to a paste and could be directly used as a hair wash/ general cleaner post filtering.
If it is to be used for care then should be rinsed thoroughly to get rid of the berry shells sticking onto the hair. I have experienced that even this last juice still removes heavy oil stains from kitchen tiles with little effort.
I keep the first concentrated extract as a shampoo, with which I usually add another leaf paste either hibiscus or arappu as called in my native (Neotea Arappu Albizia Amara as per google) to be made as a paste, apply on hair and then rinse it. This liquid can even be used on a daily basis, but too much of it would dry your hair and that's where arappu comes to rescue which has deep conditioning effect, so the blend of the duo is just perfect for everyday use.
Another word of caution is the liquid is much harsh on eyes, manner times than the regular shampoo. Though any accidental fall on the eyes can be washed with pure water, it would take hours to get rid of the irritation. But for sure, this is not harsh on hands, unlike other inorganic liquids that I use. Applying a drop of coconut oil post use would reverse all the harsh effects if any.
Onto the second and third concentrate, I mix both of them and use it as a dish washer cum general purpose kitchen cleaner. Its cleaning action on oil stains are remarkable and regular ly use it for gas stove/ kitchen tiles cleaning.
So, yes I am happy that with just under an hour the long awaited organic, home made everyday hair cleanser cum dish washing liquid for the month is ready. I prefer to store it in a steel or glass container and refrigerate it, definitely plastic should be avoided. It is recommended to do in smaller quantities as the shelf time is lesser for these liquids.
Photos will be updated soon!
