From the archives - Homemade gifts - luffas and soap (Dec 2007)

While the shops get busier with the excesses of Christmas shopping, my simple life continues at a gentle pace. It was a cooking and odds and ends day yesterday. I baked two fruit cakes, one for my family and one for a gift, and then made butter with local Guernsey cream for a batch of shortbread, also a gift. Hanno had a garage sale happening outside with the results of our decluttering over the past couple of months. Luckily we sold our old stove and oven and some other bits and pieces, and ended up making around $400. There was a constant stream of people and also tea being made and taken out to him, then, later, cold drinks with ice.

I wanted to get all my gifts organised yesterday. I don't give much now and I don't send cards at all, but those I do give to, are very special people. The gifts must be exactly right. I've been storing the last of the luffas from a crop earlier this year and yesterday afternoon I peeled and cleaned them. They've been soaking overnight with a little bleach added to the water as a couple of them were slightly mouldy. A luffa and homemade olive oil soap is a lovely combination and every time I give them as a gift, they're always appreciated.

Homemade soap is a real luxury. It's creamy and leaves my skin feeling clean and cared for. Most commercial soap doesn't contain glycerin, and that is what nourishes the skin. Usually the commercial makers extract the glycerin and sell that as a separate product because it's more valuable than the soap it comes from. That's why those soaps often make your skin dry and itchy. When you make your own soap, the glycerin stays in it and when you use the soap every day it gently cares for and nourishes your skin. Homemade soap, used with a luffa, is the perfect simple indulgence. Skin is the largest organ of the body and you should be careful with those products that touch your skin every day. Using an organically grown luffa from your garden, with homemade soap, is the most gentle and wholesome type of daily skin care.

This photo was taken in February of this year. Luffas are a hot weather crop and are harvested in this area in late February. We grew these next to our poly tank. When they're small and green you can eat luffas as a vegetable. They're pretty bland but, like eggplant, they take on the flavour of what they're cooked with.

This is what they looked like yesterday. I think I harvested about 30 luffas and these are the last of them. That hole at the end is where the seeds fall from.

Seeds and the peeled luffas. They look pretty ordinary at this stage.

They sat in a bucket of water with a small amount of bleach overnight. That was to kill the mould that was on some of them, but it also lightens the luffas.

And here they are this morning drying on the back verandah.

The addition of a good homemade olive oil soap makes this a wonderful gift for either a woman or a man.

I'll finish preparing my gifts this morning. I'm also baking bread, washing the floors and ironing. Things not sold in the garage sale will be boxed up and given to our local St Vinnies. This afternoon I'm writing letters and a couple of reports for work that have to be ready tomorrow afternoon. I doubt I'll have time to do them tomorrow.