clove bud-oat castile soap

This is my fourth post describing my fabulous Spring Soap Set, that is now on sale - it includes all 5 brilliant soaps at a discount that saves you $10 off the normal asking price. Not too shabby, eh?

Now on to clove bud-oat castile soap. I was surprised at the recent art festival to see many men interested in this one. Although clove, a spice, is certainly not masculine or feminine I just assumed perhaps since I love to cook with clove that it was more of a girly thing. I stand corrected. It was described by one customer as mysterious, another customer described it with delight as "sneaky" :c) I think it is just an unexpected smell. It is clean and spicy yet some how sweet and faintly and intoxicatingly smoky.

So what can we learn about cloves? Well those strange nail-shaped little spices you grind up for baking special goodies happen to be the beautifully fragrant and flavorful dried flower bud from a tree. Just imagine them when their crimson flowers are in full bloom! Yum. Cloves are native to the "spice islands" but they made their way to the Middle East and Europe very early on (1000BC!) and eventually around the globe through the spice trade. They have historically been prized in many cultures.

Cloves are an important cooking ingredient in chai tea blends, savory Indian dishes as well as in Mexican cuisine. They are also an important component of Chinese incense and are well known for their use in clove cigarettes or 'kretek' to deliver the medicinal properties of cloves directly to the lungs (probably not the best idea when mixed with carcinogenic tobacco but they were developed in the 1880s when doctors recommended smoking so it made sense at the time). They are used heavily in traditional medicines for everything from pain killing in dental emergencies to aiding in digestion. Clove bud oil has valuable antiseptic properties and is used in aromatherapy for warming and comfort.

I ground the cloves with organic rolled oats to create a more moisturizing bar and mildly exfoliating bar then added clove-bud essential oil. The scent is spicy and exotic making it an aromatherapeutic escape every time you wash.