New-obsessions week, day 3: Coconut oil

If you heard there was an all-natural product that had inbuilt antiseptic properties and was an amazing moisturizer, and so pure you could actually eat it (and it would do you good on the inside too), and that on top of all this it smelled amazing, well, you'd go out and buy some, wouldn't you?

Well, there is. It's coconut oil. Go and get some. (Trader Joe's does a good one for a great price, but they have it all over these days.)

There are a gazillion websites telling you all the bazillion things you can do with coconut oil, from using it as a coffee creamer to curing athlete's foot to a personal lubricant (ahem) to polishing your furniture, so I won't ennumerate them all. 

But so far I've been using it as a facial and body moisturizer, make-up remover and cleanser, and have put it on mosquito bites (sure, why not) and fried some chicken in it. (I scooped up about a third of the jar into a separate container to keep for cosmetic use, so that I'm not actually eating from the same jar that I'm slathering my cracked heels out of.) I have great plans to do some deep conditioning on my hair with it soon, and make a body scrub with sugar.

The interesting thing about this oil is that it's liquid at 76 F and higher, and solid (like lard, for instance, or butter) below that. Coincidentally, 76 F is just about where our air conditioning is set in the summer, and upstairs is usually a little warmer. So at the moment, the jar in my bathroom is usually liquid while the one in the kitchen vacillates from one state to the other depending on whether the oven is on. It doesn't matter; it can turn from solid to liquid and back multiple times daily without doing it any harm; though I do like the soft-butter consistency for a body moisturizer when I can get it.

But the best thing about it is the smell. Remember ages ago I was washing my face with olive oil? Well, that was nice and all, but I did get a little tired of smelling like a salad. No such problems here - unless you hate the scent of coconut, I suppose. Does anyone? Is that possible? Well, I don't hate it, and to be honest, I would probably buy anything that smelled this good, no matter what was in it. The lovely all-naturalness is just a bonus.

It was Emily at The Nest who first drew my attention to this wondrous stuff, and she keeps promising to do a big long post about it, so please do just consider this a mere preview of what the expert will tell us, just as soon as the expert is done taking five children to Germany and back, not to mention all the amazing crafting, painting, homeopathing, homeschooling, doll-making, and baking that she does on a daily basis. Go check out her lovely blog and tell her I sent you.