A bookmark a week #5 milk bath

Hello internets!

I have felt entirely unmotivated to cook fancy things this week. I've been super-busy at work and we went to Ipswich for the bank holiday weekend to see family. We had a super-fun time going on walks, playing cards against humanity (not for the tender spirited!), seeing one of our adorable nephews and eating many delicious food.

Ooh I do love a collage

The unfortunate downside was that it seriously limited the time I have for creating kitchen-type-stuff. And I had such plans too... oh well, that'll have to wait for next week.

The other thing that happens when we stay away anywhere is I inevitably throw my back out. I have a chronic bad back after a rope-slide incident in Llandudno when I was 7 and it sometimes flares up at the slightest thing. Such as sleeping on a bed that's a bit too firm. The bed was fine and not bad at all, it's just that my back is bloody awkward. I swear it's much worse since we got a memory foam mattress and I became accustomed to all the comfort in the world. 

Sadly this trip was no different. I woke up each morning kind of stiff and achy, it faded through the day but the cumulative effect has stayed with me since my return. So what bookmark to try today? Why, this one!

http://www.kitchencraftsnmore.net/milkbath.html

I could do with a soak in the bath, and I have all of these ingredients in the house. In fact, I have better, I have some dried lavender that my wonderful mother (her again!) gave me last year that I can pop in to make this even fancier. I also have Dead Sea salt that my wonderful mother (I reference her a lot, huh?) gave me years ago. It may not be an ideal thing to use, but it beats wasting culinary salt!

Yes that is a tupperware of bicarbonate of soda. I buy in bulk.

I read somewhere that you shouldn't use skimmed milk powder, but sadly this was all I had. I'm pretty sure this was all the supermarket sold as, trust me, I would never buy skimmed milk by choice (blech).

So here goes, take the milk powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and whizz up in my amazing nutribullet. Given that the recipe says 1 cup in total makes a bath and I have 3 ingredients, I used 1/3 of a cup of each. Hooray for maths.

 I didn't mind the cup measurements too much here, although it bothered me that the salt didn't tessellate.

I love that you can see the layers. Small things...

I decided to whizz up some of the lavender, adding it after the initial whizzing, but then to leave some bigger bits and stir them in for added fanciness.

Not so pretty

It went massively clumpy after the whizzing so I had to break it up with my hands, but it got pretty finely whizzed up overall.

I then popped it all into a pretty jar to see if it would make it look lovely. 

Maybe with a ribbon?

Now to pour it into a hot bath and see how relaxed I can get.

Ooh... bits.

Turns out I can get pretty damn relaxed.

It was very pleasant the water felt kind of smooth if that makes any sense. I feel like it was moisturising, but not enough so I wouldn't use body lotion afterwards. And I did.

The biggest downside was the normal one after having a fancy herbal bath. You get all relaxed and soaky, have a lovely chilled out time, then realise you're covered in bits of lavender and have to rinse it all off. Annoying.

I will say that my back felt eased after the bath, although that may have been the unreasonably hot water I used. I always think if you can easily get in all at once it isn't hot enough.

I would make this again as a cheap alternative to a lush-style bath thingy, but next time I would add some essential oil as although the lavender scent was strong when I was making it, it faded pretty quickly in the water.

Verdict? Easy, cheap, quick, nice. Not a bad thing to do of a weekday evening.

Love and kisses,

H.