Where the time goes when its not here in Normal entries

1 cup, give or take, coconut oil (cosmetic grade)
1/3 cup mango seed butter, give or take, raw
1/3 cup, give or take, shea butter
1/3 cup, give or take, cocoa butter
1 tblsn jojoba oil
1 tblsn vitamin E oil
Some water
About a third of a cup of beeswax, raw.
4 grams Rick Simpson Oil https://merryjane.com/health/everything-you-need-to-know-about-rick-simpson-oil

Sometimes it helps to write down approximate directions. If I pretend it’s for, say, you, it helps me to write it down. I never follow recipe’s, I start off with good intentions, or at least familiarize myself with the basics. This is not a virtue. Sometimes it works wonders with food, most times I can salvage the food even if it doesn’t work wonders, or I’ll eat it anyhow. This is only my second time making a topical and this is a departure from my last one.

The last one worked really well. Ok, the efficacy was great, the smell was adequate, the overall feel was greasy, greasy like coconut oil though the wax makes it start off hard. For that one I just used coconut, shea and decarboxylated flowers (reefer flowers). Decarboxylation is the key. The flowers alone aren’t active. When you spark a doobie (combust dried flower) you activate the cannabinoids, they change from one type of thc and cbd to another. I’m not talking down to you, I forget the scientific terms. To release the thc and cbd you want for cooking or salve you have to bake the dope for about 25 minutes at 220 to 240 Fahrenheit, then it’s active and fat soluble, which makes coconut or olive oils a great conductor, or, you know, butter, but no animal fat for a topical. You could use butter, but do you really want to smear butter on your skin?

Rick Simpson Oil is already decarboxylated. I left a link up there, there are a lot more links, dude is a medical cowboy hero, and though initially he was self-serving (curing himself) he gave the world his recipe and story. Because this is a more complicated salve I thought I’d skip the decarb step.

So, I put the shea, cocoa, jojoba, vitamin E in a crock pot. In a sauce pan I slowly melted the coconut oil at 170 (one and a half on my stovetop dial, I checked last time with a meat thermometer) and squeezed the rick Simpson oil (RSO) slowly into the melted warm oil, stirred until the two were combined (RSO is thick and gooey), I took it off the burner and added it to the crock pot. In a couple of hours, I’ll add the beeswax. When that melts in I’m going to put it all in a blender, add a bit of water and essential oils (I’m thinking citrus and bergamot and lavender, 12 drops, 6 drops, 6 drops respectively, though, honestly, I didn’t use enough in the last batch and I did more than 12/6/6) and water and then blend the shit out of it.

The last step is an effort to make it less greasy. I was reading some ladies blog about skin care products she made for her and her kid and that was her suggestion for making it smoother. It was not the only tip I found, but others included weird shit, ranging from preservatives and pesticides to soy powders and such.

Although I talk about being a social worker and a salesperson, a good twelve years of my life I was a cook. When you cook in a restaurant presentation is paramount. Seeing how this is for me (and it works great on my mom’s arthritis) presentation is less important than efficacy, so it’s more a matter of curiosity and a pride that I’m going to try and make the presentation and the application more … pleasant? Yeah, let’s go with pleasant. If I fuck this up it won’t be because of the water or blending. The worse the water and blender could do is make it more difficult to get out and put in containers.

I also went a bit heavier on the mango seed butter (it dries hard) and a bit lighter on the coconut oil (which, seems to me, is greasy. Greasy might be too negative a word, I just mean it doesn’t absorb quickly, so your paws are oily for a while. My first batch was green from chlorophyll and as greasy as coconut oil and smelled mostly like shea butter. It works great, perhaps a bit better than the store-bought version, certainly as well as the store bought extra strength.

The cosmetic butters are relatively inexpensive, and given what street prices are the flowers were relatively inexpensive. For the amount I made it comes out to roughly a third what the equivalent amount in store bought balm costs and I have enough left over cosmetic butter to make this batch and at least four more.

I’m guessing that the RSO amount is equivalent in potency to the amount of flower I had used in previous batch. It’s a pretty fair guess. My overall math skills are marginal, but I do simple math very well, if I’m off in potency calculations it won’t be by much. Everything else being equal, the bud is the easiest ingredient to add after the fact (easiest as in nothing else would need to compensate, just melt it all down again, decarboxylate some flower and keep on low heat for about a half an hour). There’s no need to take any out, it can’t be too strong, it’s a topical. Um, I think a topical that’s too strong might show up in a UA, certainly in a hair or blood test, but it won’t get you high.
That’s part of what makes Rick Simpson a folk hero, although his shit can really fuck you up, his use and mine have nothing to do with stoniness. He cured his skin cancer by applying the RSO directly to the skin cancer and covering it with a Band-Aid. Ok, once more into the breech.