organic

Product Love

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

The weather here is hot and humid and beyond gross and my skin is not happy about it! Thankfully, I’ve found some natural body products that actually work and don’t use really bad ingredients. Happy shopping!

Hair – I already wrote about my love for Kiss My Face Miss Treated shampoo (Amazon sells it as a pack of three). Still loving it! I’ve settled on a conditioner that actually moisturizes and isn’t a fortune, Avalon Organics. A little bit goes a long way so it lasts a while.

Body – Avalon Organics comes to the rescue again with a great unscented body moisturizer. I bought a jumbo bottle of it at Whole Foods for about $16.

Face – Boscia Purifying Cleansing Gel is great and kept my skin very clear during my pregnancy. It seems expensive but you only need to use a tiny bit.  My first bottle lasted me about five months. Korres moisturizers are amazing. Sephora periodically sells a two-pack version for $4 more than a single bottle. I thought there was some sort of mistake but no, it’s true. $35 for one bottle, $39 for two. Amazon has some for less money but the selection is spotty.

Fresh Sugar lip treatment is the best ever. It’s hard to find lip treatment that doesn’t contain petroleum! Yes, that’ petroleum like oil and gasoline and all those nasties. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the ingredient mineral oil – it’s the same thing! Just be careful with the Fresh Sugar lip treatment because it will melt in really hot weather (don’t leave it in your bag in a hot car or anything).

Deodorant – I’m still on the hunt. During my pregnancy I used Tom’s Long Lasting deodorant and it was fine. Between the heat and my crazy postpartum hormones, it’s not cutting it these days. As to not offend those around me, I’ve switched back to Dove for now.

Organic Shampoo

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

I read a few books recently that dropped some serious knowledge on my ass about all the chemicals in our health and beauty products. Yuck. Slowly but surely, I’ve been making the switch. I’ve had great success with some products (bars of soap!) and am still waiting for success with others (deodorant – ugh!). One thing I had to search far and wide for was organic shampoo. Actually, that’s not true. There are all kinds of natural shampoo out there, I just wanted one that cleaned my hair. Go figure.

What I found was that organic/all-natural shampoos usually have one of two problems: they don’t clean or they don’t lather. For the ones that don’t lather, I would wind up using double the amount I normally did just to get my hair clean. Consider that a shampoo FAIL. I just kept shopping and Matt just kept seeing half-used bottles of shampoo pile up in our linen closet. That is until I found Kiss My Face shampoo. Praise Jesus! (And with his long, luscious locks and probable aversion to chemicals, he would probably love this too.)

The first one I tried was the Whenever Shampoo which bills itself as good for all hair types. That’s not entirely true. If you have dry hair, you should buy the Miss Treated Shampoo because the Whenever is a little drying. For people with oily or normal hair, either is fine. It smells nice, it cleans like nobody’s business, and it lathers!!

I used the matching conditioner at first and it was fine, but not terribly moisturizing so I wound up switching to Nature’s Gate Tea Tree Calming Conditioner. I bought both of them at Whole Foods but you can get them in the organic section of some Stop and Shops and all the over the internet.

I’ll continue to share healthier beauty products in coming days/weeks, but for now, go wash your hair already!

Why the Girl Scouts can kiss my ass

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

In case you’ve never spent more than 30 seconds with me, I love sweets. I love junk food. I love dessert. I rationalize this bad habit of mine by trying to eat real sweets. Instead of Chips Ahoy, I’ll make cookies. Instead of some slow-churned low-fat ice cream, I like the basic Breyers’ flavors because the ingredients are actual foods instead of, say, acesulfame potassium and cellulose gum (actual ingredients in the Edy’s Slow Churned).  I’m not saying the sweets I’m eating are nutritious, because they’re not, but I’d rather have some fat than a little less fat and a million chemicals.

This is a problem when Girl Scout cookie time rolls around. Have you ever read the ingredients on them? It’s not pretty.

Mmmm, partially hydrogenated oils. Just like Grandma used to make!

In different parts of the country they’re not called Do-si-dos but Peanut Butter Sandwiches and they also have three different kinds of high fructose corn syrup.

But there’s good news! Back to Nature, a food company based in Wisconsin that uses pretty sustainable packaging and works with lots of environmental charities, make cookies that are JUST LIKE Girl Scout cookies, but better. You can find them at Whole Foods, but I also saw a pretty big selection in the organic section at Stop & Shop.

For example, their peanut butter cookies are a total (and welcome) rip-off of Girl Scout Do-si-dos with no hydrogenated oil.

Even as “natural cookies” go, these could be healthier. They have enriched flour which isn’t the best and they’re a little fattening, but they make up for it when you dip them in milk. Wow.

I haven’t tried all of Back to Nature’s products, but I’ve tasted a lot of them and been very happy. Their Fudge Mint Cookies (Girl Scout Thin Mints) are amazing, especially if you put them in the fridge.

Happy fattening (but not toxic) snacking!