Argan Oil and Why I am Going to Throw Out All My Shampoos

No doubt my recent trip to Morocco changed my thinking. I think every word of every post I put up last week suggested that. I have gone to far lengths to make sure that my food is clean, and pesticide and chemical free as I can, all while supporting local purveyors. Yet so much of what I slather onto my body or clean my house with has not fallen under the same watchful eye. I have changed my cleaning products to Seventh Generation products. Mostly because Diapers.com will deliver these items to me overnight FOR FREE!!

Let my diverge for one moment. I LOVE Diapers.com. If you have never ordered from the site and you have young children, you need to know about this. If you live in New York City and have a doorman, then even more reason why you need to know about this site. Diapers.com is located in NJ, and I believe they ship from Pennsylvania (forgive me if that is wrong). They ship every diaper (regular and cloth), wipe, cream, ointment, etc under the sun. But they also ship formula, baby food, sippy cups, bottles, breast pumps and all pump accessories, pacifiers, clothes, vitamins, toys, books and other various baby gear. You name it these guys have it! Recently they opened a sister site Soap.com that sells the same vast variety, but of soap items. From them I have gotten all my Seventh Generation dish soaps, dishwasher gels, laundry detergents, etc. But the BEST thing about them is that they offer free shipping on any purchase over $75, maybe even over $50 now. And when you are buying diapers, your orders are all more than $50. But it gets better-the free shipping always gets to me the very next day. So if I get close to running out of diapers, I can always count on Diapers.com to get me what I need before I am running to the pharmacy down the street with sleepy children in hand just to get some before the damn place closes. (Those of you who know me personally have heard my proclaim my love for this website. But for those of you who haven't, this is completely truthful, unsolicited, unpaid, etc. No one has given me any incentive to say any of this, though I am not opposed to Thank You presents....my contact info is right there on the right hand side bar *winkwink*). Yes, you might get a slightly better price on some items by shopping at Costco. But when I factor in the $10 worth of tolls, plus gas and membership fees, I am not saving a dime. Besides, I don't have to go anywhere to get these all important baby items from Diapers.com. I even do my Christmas shopping with them every year....sigh...True Love.

Anyway, back to my regularly scheduled post. I began to realize that my shampoo and facial moisturizers, the soap I use on my skin and the soaps I was using on the kids are all conventional and contain a bazillion ingredients-many of them I cannot pronounce. And they are expensive. What's up with that?

When I was in Morocco, my dear friend MS introduced me to Argan Oil. Perhaps you have heard of it? Or perhaps you have heard of the high end Moroccanoil products? Moroccanoil is a specific company that produces salon products that contain Argan Oil (among more conventional ingredients). Argan Oil is the oil that is extracted from the kernels of the Argan Tree. The Argan Tree grows in Morocco mainly and perhaps only a few other places in the world. The kernels contain a pit that when pressed, release an oil that is very high in good Fatty Acids. In Morocco, people have been cooking with the oil for hundreds of years. They also use a more refined version of the oil for use in soaps and hair treatments, and even directly on the skin itself. See the breakdown of the Fatty Acids by percentage (taken from Wikipedia)

Fatty acid
Percentage
Palmitic
12.0%
Stearic
6.0%
Oleic
42.8%
Linoleic
36.8%
Linolenic
<0.5%

I did pick up some Argan Oil while I was in Morocco (wouldn't you?). The stuff here in the States can go for as high as $25 an ounce, or more. So of course it was a coup to be able to get fresh Argan Oil for a fraction of that price. Since I returned, I have been using a drop of it on my face every morning and evening in place of facial moisturizer. My skins looks great. I also mixed some Argan Oil with Coconut Oil (probably one part Argan oil to 3 parts coconut oil) and poured that mix over some dried rosebuds that I also got on my trip (see picture above). That mix of oils smells coconutty and rosey, it is really lovely. I have been using that mix on the dry skin on me legs and well as directly on my hair before I go to bed.

I have really really curly hair. My curls did not manifest until I was about 13, before that my hair was just wavy and would get easily tangled. I had noticed that my hair was very frizzy and unkempt when I was about 11 or 12, but I never though anything of it. I thought I just had lousy hair. I did not know that one's hair could simply...change. But change it had. I realized when I was a freshman in high school that if I did not blow dry my hair but rather let it air dry, it would curl. But it took years to refine the process of washing and applying product until my hair was not a frizzy mess. Now my hair is much healthier. I am using sulfate free shampoos, conditioners and products. Curly hair is usually very dry. My hair is rarely ever shiny because it is so dry. The sulfate free shampoos (and only washing once a week) have helped, but I have mostly just accepted that my hair would be dry. But now it is all different! In using the oil in my hair, I will just dip my fingers into the jar and massage the oil into my locks. Not too much, I don't want greasy hair. But just that little bit at night before I wet and style my hair the next morning has helped immensely. In the span of one week, my hair has truly never looked healthier. It has never been so tame, and my curls have never been shinier. I have a ways to go. But I really recommend this. If you can't find Argan Oil, Coconut Oil by itself would work just fine.

But, that bring me back to my first thought...If I can use Argan Oil on my face, why do I need expensive facial moisturizers. And if I don't need expensive facial moisturizers, what about body lotion? And if my shampoo is full of chemicals and drying agents....maybe I don't need that either? Wow, I just saved myself over $100 a year by cutting all that junk out.

Tomorrow, I will expound on the soap issue. I found Castille Soap, and I believe it will change me even further....

What is Poverty?

Our trip to Morocco was a real game changer for me. I am seeing the world in a totally different way now than before I left. I expected to fly across the ocean and see some really beautiful things that would leave me breathless. I expected to see some special craftsmen that would inspire me. What I saw instead was thousands upon thousands of people living simple traditional lives. Lives that were uncluttered by many modern “conveniences”. And the irony is not lost on me that in the US, one of the wealthiest countries on the globe, I am trying my damnedest to lead a life that is closer to what they experience.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, our second day in Morocco we all traveled to Fez. Fez is a bustling and vibrant community. There was everything you could possibly imagine you would ever need, blankets, butchers, vegetables and fruit, cheeses, oils, olives, dishes, wedding crafts, shoes, clothes. All manner of special little shops were just smushed one on top of another. Some shops were 100 square feet or maybe smaller. In the area of the medina that handled fabrics I saw huge piles of sheep skins that were waiting to be spun into yarn. Next door, a 6 foot loom waited to spin the yarn into cloth.

The famous tannery in Fez is another example. There is a large tannery located within the medina. Skins will be soaked for 4 days in a mixture of lye and water and pigeon droppings to bleach the skin and remove the hair. Then the bleached skins will soak in vats of vegetable dyes for days or weeks until the entire skin is desired color. Then the skins are dried and conditioned and then used to make everything from wallets and purses to jackets and shoes. We went to a gorgeous pottery factory too. Local clay is mined from the hills and then brought back to the factory to soak in water to soften it up. A potter then spins the clay into dishes or bowls or tagines, whatever is desired. Then it is fired, painted and refired. Up until recently, when there was concern for clean air for the workers, the pottery was all fired in kilns heated by burning olive pits. Talk about recycling! These are three good examples of craftsman taking what is found in their local community and creating something useful with it. These craftsmen and those before them have been doing things the same way for centuries. There is a tradition of craftsmanship in Morocco. And the process has changed very little.
I never realized how much my life was dependent on the industrial complex. It seems like almost everything we consume, slather onto our skin, wear, etc, comes hermetically sealed in plastic or is made in a place with heavy equipment. Most things are made by “craftsmen” who couldn’t make their products without heavy automation and equipment. Automation and machinery has turned manufacturing into something done by an unskilled workforce. But these craftsmen in Morocco seemed to make astounding goods out of virtually nothing, some old sheepskins, rocks that were just laying around in the local hills. These are talents that must be learned and honed. I had tremendous respect for these men.

That brings me back to my original questions, What is poverty? What does the word poverty really mean? What pictures does it evoke in your mind? Before my trip to Morocco I imagined poverty to be a state of financial inadequacy or not having enough money. I have heard Morocco described as a third world country, so I expected to see some interesting things while I was there. But I did not expect the viewpoint change that I actually experienced. Because so many people living in Morocco are poor by the Western definition. They may only live on a few dollars a day. But I saw markets filled with local people buying. I saw food everywhere, and it was not tourist food, it was local people’s food, oranges, buckets of olives, dried dates and figs tied into long strings, meat and round breads. I did not see people that were disenfranchised. I did not see people wandering around not knowing the shopkeepers, and even those begging seemed like they just happened to ask me because I was so clearly a tourist, not because they set out to beg for money that day. I have no doubt that the government keeps some major visible areas “clean” in this way, we were in a major tourist area. But overall my sense was that this was a community where no one fell through the cracks. Families took care of one another, and all people would find some food during the day, and everyone had access to water through community wells (just don’t drink the tap if you aren’t a native).

I started thinking about what poverty was. If you don’t have any money, but you get the things you need for daily life, are you impoverished? If you have just enough food, but not an excess for your mental comfort, are you living in poverty? If you always have clean clothes to put on, but maybe they are simple and you don’t have a different dress for every day of the week, are you impoverished? If you can get to work by walking or taking the bus, but you maybe can’t afford to fly away on vacations, are you impoverished? I have in my life, been way too hung up on having the “right” pair of shoes, or having a little extra food in my fridge just in case I get hungry, nevermind that I never do. Last week I saw thousands of people doing just fine, leading happy and contented lives on far less money than I live on. They had far less stuff than I did, and they seemed to be more free to take life as it comes. Think about it, how many of us have bought, say, dishwashing detergent weeks before the old box ran out, just in case you needed more. But the store always has dishwashing detergent, and you could just go out when you ran out of the other box! Do you see? If you have spent that money on detergent when you didn’t really need it, imagine how many other things you are buying that you don’t need! Is it possible that with all our wealth in industrialized society we really are just purchasing things that we don’t need and that don’t add to the quality of our lives? If we are not increasing the quality of our lives, what’s the point?

Poverty has a new definition to me. It is not about money, but rather about not being able to connect with the things you need to sustain your life. In the US that may mean that you are an unskilled worker, unable to get a job that pays you enough to buy the things you need. Here in America, you need money to obtain everything, food, shelter, etc. This is a situation where a person might become disenfranchised, or unable to connect with basic goods and services within their community. In Morocco, it may mean a woman who is widowed and cannot easily find work or trade because she is a woman. There are disenfranchised people within all communities. But I think it is the disenfranchisement that is my new definition of poverty, rather than assigning a simple dollar value to it. People can be poor in all kinds of way. Yet they can be rich is all kinds of ways too.

I have spent a lot of time and energy looking at food. The food I eat, the food I serve, food as it is in my community. But I think I also need to examine the “stuff” in my life. I think I might be able to find a greater sense of peace by doing less, buying less, having less. I must remember that my local store is always open, I live smack dab in the middle of a major consumerist city. I will always be able to get what I need. I don’t have to buy extra nonsense just to have it around the house. My kids will do just fine with fewer toys. I can wear last year’s shoes. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I am not going to sit here and say that life is better in Morocco, or fall into the pitfall of blasting American culture. I love my country, we are a great country. We have established freedoms that set the groundwork for allowing all people a base standard of living. Our legal system grants people dignity, and it should be upheld. We do the best we can having a diverse population of people from all over the world as opposed to one ethnic background of people who all believe the same thing. But we have some things we can work on. There are problems within our culture. We can be spoiled. We have narrow definitions of words like “clean” or “safe”. A lot of the time we think we are better than other folks on the world stage. We have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater when It comes to things like litigation and regulation. And the poor in our country struggles as much as the poor in any other country. I learned last week to be very thankful for all the blessings I have in my life. I have been given great gifts. I must cherish them, and never focus on the portion of the glass that isn’t full. In this way we can all be rich.

This Post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays!

A Real Food Thanksgiving in Morocco

One of the greatest blessings of our recent trip was to spend Thanksgiving with our dear friends MS and MC and their children. Because this is their first Thanksgiving abroad they were especially anxious to have a taste of home.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of them all. I love the food, the smells, the family. I love that it is a whole holiday all about being grateful for the bounty of this life. I cannot think of a better reason to take a couple days off work than to celebrate all the things that we have to be thankful for. I am reasonably religious, and so this tradition truly touches my heart. So many of the blessings of this life are given to us. Even if we have worked hard to make them grow and blossom, we were once fortunate enough to be given the tiny seed by something more powerful than us. So we should give thanks and know that we are not islands, but rather receivers of many countless daily gifts. I love that Thanksgiving is our culture’s way of taking time out to voice our thanks.

Our friends decided that since we were coming they would host a proper American Thanksgiving. They invited some friends, a dear French couple who had seen a Thanksgiving episode of Friends which spurred their desire to experience a proper American Thanksgiving, another French couple, and another American couple who had been living abroad longer. But as is normal for all good plans, the second French couple had to bow out at the last minute and a Peace Corps family ended up taking their place because their own plans fell through. It just isn’t Thanksgiving without accepting all to the table. So there we were, a big group: two Americans, four American ex-pats, two French and two Moroccans, plus three three year olds and three babies.

Our dear friends value real food in the same way we do, so there was never a doubt that our meal would be cooked from scratch and prepared with local ingredients. Besides, it is very hard to find processed ingredients in Morocco (or completely impossible). MS arranged with a local meat shop to order a turkey, which apparently can be procured, and are even common in the countryside. I actually saw one walking around someone’s yard as we drove back from Fez. Sides included cornbread and sausage stuffing, a highly altered version of my family’s famous creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffed mushroom, some homemade cranberry relish (thanks to the store at the American Embassy) and a little runny gravy cooked up at the last second. Please forgive me if I have forgotten something. I am still battling some powerful jet lag.

Desert consisted of an apple pie, a pumpkin pie and pumpkin custard for the gluten free folks. First of all, the pumpkin pie was made from the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen in my life. MC went to the Medina to get pumpkin and bought 10 kilos from a man who literally would just cut part of a pumpkin for you. So he only brought home less than half the pumpkin, but it still weighed over 20 pounds. Seeing it was intimidating! The flesh was so orange and flavorful. I have never had a pumpkin pie that was made from fresh pumpkin before. The flavor was far more intense. The apple pie was simple, apples and lemon zest, vanilla, cinnamon and a little bit of rapadura sugar in a whole wheat crust. But when we bit into it, everyone asked if we had added rose water to the pie. The apples were so fragrant it was as though the orchard had been planted next to a hillside of roses which infused a floral scent into the fruit. I have never tasted anything quite like it.

But it wouldn’t be a true Thanksgiving without a couple of screaming kids. My Things had started to really struggle with food by Thursday. Thing 1 had not eaten any dinner Wednesday night, not even one bite. I think he had only had a couple of bananas and a piece of toast during the day, so he did not have the energy for a house full of guests. He played with the other kids for a while, but just before dinner he began to sulk and yell. I knew we were in for a fight. Both the kids put up such a fight that DH and I ended up in the kitchen with our screaming Things, me with tears streaming down my face from the desperation. Big crowds are hard enough for Thing 1 without the added pressure of unfamiliar faces. Add to that an unfamiliar country and food and it was a recipe for disaster. But having them so upset was also horrible for me because we were in a house full of people we didn’t know (except for our dear friends), people who had never seen our Things more gentle sides. I hate to think that adults will dislike my child, or that we will be “that family”, but there we were. And of course I really wanted all these new people to like us!! I was very embarrassed at my kid’s behavior, it was fueled by their not having eaten well during the day and all that came to a head as soon as everyone sat down to dinner.

Thing 1 never did eat dinner. In fact, though he has never made quite this much of a scene during Thanksgiving before, he has never actually eaten Thanksgiving dinner. Crowds make him crazy and it is very difficult for him to concentrate enough to eat. He eventually melted down into a little puddle and DH had to take him into a back bedroom so he could calm down. He fell asleep at 6pm. Thing 2 had a hard time too. He is regularly a wingy baby with a lot of complaints about your average everyday situations. He was very grumpy through dinner and also did not eat a proper dinner, but he did manage to eat some bread. What a frustrating evening! Every year I look forward to sitting down to a lovely dinner on Thanksgiving. This year I did not get to do that until after both my kids went to sleep. But once I did, the food was delicious. And thoroughly American. The food the company and the setting could not have been lovelier. I just do hope that our new friends were able to forgive our children’s behavior and see it for what it really was-a couple of tired kids on a long vacation a ways away from the comforts of a familiar home.

As for me, that day in Morocco didn’t feel much like Morocco at all. It was American through and through.

You Took Your Kids to Morocco for the Week of Thanksgiving?

Seriously, have I lost my mind? Yeah, I totally did drag my kids to Africa for a week during the Thanksgiving Holiday. And actually, the good far outweighed the bad. There was some serious bad. But when you haul a three year old and a one year old 5000 miles away from home and across an ocean, what can you possibly expect?

Last February, pre-blog, some dear dear friends and their children relocated from New York to Morocco. It was a devastating blow to lose such a good friend, and even more difficult because their Things are the same age as my Things. In fact, Thing 1 is all but carrying on a torrid love affair with their three year old daughter. They play, they fight, they share, they kiss, they make up, they hold hands everywhere they go. I cannot think of anyone that Thing 1 plays so well with. So, needless to say we were very sad when they left New York. Yet we all must make lemonade out of lemons. And our lemonade came in the form of a trip to Morocco, a mysterious place that has always been on my top 5 places to go before I die.

We left New York the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We were booked on a direct flight from JFK to Casablanca. The flight was overnight and the Things both slept the whole way. What a relief. They even both got enough sleep that they were in decent enough moods all day Sunday. Mommy did NOT sleep on the plane, nor did Daddy. Daddy took a nap when we arrived at our friends' home, but Mommy stayed up. I was good and loopy by the time we went to bed Sunday evening.

Monday morning we all drove to Fez to stay for two nights. Fez is an absolute must see if you travel to Morocco. Fez is known as the spiritual heart of Morocco. And I can see why. Winding streets, the best artisans in the country, and all around you the juxtaposition of modern living amongst centuries old cultural traditions. We stayed in a lovely Riad on the outskirts of the Medina. A small short door on a slim quiet cobblestone street opened up into a towering three story home/ hotel surrounding a central "garden".Though the garden is all inside and there is no dirt, it is mostly like a beautifully tiled living room whose ceiling extends all the way to the roof of the building while the guest rooms form the outside of the home. It was exquisite.

The food in Morocco was also lovely. A third world country because of it's lack of development, farming and agricultural are the main work of the country. Though there are modern grocery stores, most Moroccans shop in the much cheaper local medinas, or city centers, where local farmers or traders sell fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, grains, nuts and dried fruits. In Fez I saw a man selling raw milk fresh from urns on the side of the street. No joke. Interestingly enough, organics abound, but maybe not for the reasons you might think. The average farmer living in the countryside is too poor to use fertilizers and pesticides on their produce. They are too poor to buy their cattle grain feed. So most meat is organic and grass fed by default. Processed foods do not hold a place in the basic Moroccan diet, except for the more wealthy modern people who are eager to westernize. It was very different to be in a country where the poor ate healthful unprocessed organics while the wealthy ate more prepackaged, low nutrient foods. Very different from home! Though one thing is the same as the west, sugar reigns supreme. Sugar is added to yogurts, mint tea, tagines, b'stillas, honey soaked cookies, you name it. I felt like everything was tasted slightly sweet.

Another thing I was kind of amazed with is that the concept of convenience foods are almost unheard of in Morocco. To go coffee or take out dinners do not exist in your average restaurant in Morocco. I did not see one Starbuck's anywhere I went. And while I am sure that in the more modern wealthier areas such things do exist, such as in the more upscale areas in Casablanca, the only takeout we found in Fez was one restaurant who wrapped up some of their items loosely in tin foil. But hummus wrapped in tin foil is a challenge to even the most organized eater. But it is still easier than having 2 three year olds and 2 one year olds, a couple of whom were overtired and jet lagged, sitting in a restaurant. Even in the other cities I visited, sitting down to a meal with others was the preferred custom, not grabbing a sandwich on the go. Street food was really the one exception. But I did not see every corner covered in hot dog carts like you do here in New York. I only saw inexpensive street fare in the medina, and they are concentrated in certain areas. I definitely found that I could not get what I wanted everytime I wanted it. I wouldn't even have noticed that I had so many silly food cravings until I wasn't able to act on them. By the end of the week, we fell into a groove. We started to relax and take things they came. If we came across a snack, that was our good fortune. If we didn't, then we just waited. OMG, we were unable to have everything we wanted. And we survived. It might have taken some getting used to, but it was worth it to expand our viewpoint.

The amazing side effect of no convenience or to go food is way less garbage. When you are not constantly eating food on the go, there are few wrappers to throw away, no to go boxes, no disposable napkins, no individually sized plastic bottles. We did find a place that would give us to go coffee, espresso with a little steamed milk. It was amazing, and we got it in an Afriquia gas station. But their to-go cups consisted of two double stacked solo cups. Not exactly what I am used to. We had very little to throw away. In fact everywhere you went, you saw that poverty forced recycling. Homes were reinforced with tin sheeting, coke bottles were reused to contain everything from milk to argan oil, as in the picture below. I saw reused coke bottles all over.

Recycling in the US means comforting sterility. Melting down plastic and then remaking an exactly similar bottle. I think the conventional wisdom here is that empty bottles (aka-garbage) hold deadly germs that put us at great risk of disease. But a strong hot wash with soapy water most likely kills everything that could be present. Moroccans, I found, had a very different definition of what it is to be dirty. In fact, most of what I saw, from cities to people, was very clean.

Our friends also took us to their local grain market where one can purchase all manner of bulk flours ground at different levels of coarseness. There dried beans, seeds, dried fruits and oils can also be procured. Whoa. This place rocked my world. For such little money, one can get all local goods. It was brilliant, I got teary eyed. There must have been 6 or 7 different vendors at this market, all selling much the same items. But in Morocco, it is all about who your know, getting to know the person selling your food, you know, personal relationships.

On Thursday, we had a truly typical American Thanksgiving (more on that tomorrow), but since everyone had to work and go to school, and no one else in the country was celebrating, it was anything but typical! And our last few days were really about staying local and relaxing with friends.

Unfortunately, the kids struggled a bit with all the changes. Sleep happened, but bedtime involved alot of screaming and fighting. While everyone ate reasonably well in the first part of the week, by the end of the week, we were down to bananas, toast and milk. Thing 1 was occasionally eating ground beef, and Thing 2 still accepted eggs. While I am thrilled to say that Thing 2 started really talking on this trip, I was irritated that what he learned to say was "No, No, No!" as he shook his head and pushed a fork full of food away. I am not sure if it was the big changes, the unfamiliarity or the stomach virus that eventually all the boys succumbed to (including DH once we got home). Thankfully after we returned to New York, eating recommenced.

This Thanksgiving I felt particularly thankful for dear dear friends, the kind that even an ocean and several months between visits can't turn into strangers. I am also particularly thankful that these same dear dear friends can put my whole crazy family up for a week, even when Thing 1 threw up on one couch cushion, had an accident on another, and I spilled a glass of wine on a third. I mean, what are we some kind of pack of wild animals? Although we are a handful, we do offer fun stories you can tell your friends.

This trip was an unbelievable opportunity to immerse ourselves in a different culture. The times I have been to Europe, I have always noticed a certain simpatico. American ideals of high culture are based upon the European model. Yet while Morocco is very European in feeling, much of their culture and architecture is very Arab influenced. And I think just about everyone here in the States could use a lesson what it means to be Muslim. I found the whole experience delicious, intoxicating, thought provoking and beautiful. The entire trip was a huge paradigm shift. It might be a while before we take another international trip with our kids. The trip home involved several hours of screaming from Thing 2 and a very rude woman who turned to me only halfway through our flight to say "You know, the next time you make travel plans, you should really consider other people." Really? Like I enjoy being trapped on a plane with a screaming one year old? I only wish that Thing 2 had thrown up on her after she was so rude that she made me cry on the plane, instead of waiting until after we got home. But hey, there ain't nothing like the view from the high road folks.