#BeautyPost: Homemade Oats-Lentil Facewash & Scrub

Hi everyone!

I love creating things. I have a food blog, Aishwarya Eats. I have made most of my gifts to my husband and my family. I run a tiny homemade chocolates business. Heck I've even made the idol of Ganeshji last year, for the awesome festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. And now I've been bitten by the bug of making, right at home, some skin care and beauty products.

The deal is, I'd rather know what goes on my skin than depending on commercial ingredients. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people the word "chemical" automatically means bad. But I'd rather depend on certain proven and safe alternatives that have been used since times of our great great grandparents and even before them. And thus was born my Homemade Oats and Lentil Face Wash and Scrub.

The principles behind making a scrub is very simple. It is ultimately a mix of ingredients that suit your skin type the most. You cannot follow a one size fits all approach to skin care. For examplie, we know neem as heaven for the skin right? Well not for me. Neem makes me break out into acne like never before. Sandalwood is the best coolant for your skin, but my mum's face turns tomato red if she uses sandalwood powder. You know your skin best. I have given all my ingredients, but feel free to substitute with what suits your skin better or even remove what you don't have.

The basic ingredients: Oats, red lentil that have been soaked in water for a while, dried lemon peels, a splash of almond oil and chickpea flour and turmeric, or the grandmothers' favourite besan-haldi. Oats is a gentle exfoliant, the almond oil moisturises from deep, the powdered lentil adds a lovely shine to my skin, chickpea flour a gentle way of removing the pollutants from the face and haldi is an antiseptic and brings a healthy glow to the face. I have added to that a capsule of vitamin E, which is very healthy for skin and the pulp of the aloe vera plant. Aloe cools and soothes your skin after a long week. You can leave out the aloe, just keep it in a powder form.  

Method of application: Just take a bit in your palm, and apply to a wet face. If you're using the powder, add a bit of water, make a paste and then apply. Massage till it spreads and leave it on for a couple of minutes to let it absorb. Then gently massage it off under the shower. You can absolutely use this daily.

A note of caution: you absolutely must store this in the fridge if you're adding the aloe. Keeping it out makes it ferment and you can't use it anymore. I lost a small batch to that error :( 

Homemade Oats and Lentil Face Wash and Scrub

You need

• A handful of oats
• A handful of washed red lentil soaked in a little water for an hour, then drained
• Besan
• A pinch of haldi or turmeric powder. Even better if you have the turmeric root, use a tiny bit of that grated.
• The peel of one lemon or orange, dried. You can dry the peels in the oven, just heat at the lowest temperature setting for 30-40 min on the fan or convection mode.
• A splash of almond oil
• The contents of one vitamin e capsule
• The optionals: one aloe leaf, sandalwood powder, ground tulsi or neem leaves, rose petals, etc

The how:

• First, grind the oats and the peels together to a semi fine powder in a dry blender. Take out and keep aside in a dry bowl.
• Then take the lentils in the blender to a semi fine powder.
• Add the oats, peels, besan, haldi, vitamin e and almond oil into this and blend to combine. 
• Whatever optionals that you add to this should be added at this stage.
• Carefully take it out into a sterile glass or plastic jar, and tightly close.
• If you use the aloe, it will become quite watery at this time. Add more besan or oats to this mix to thicken to a batter like consistency.

Again, if you're using the aloe, you MUST refrigerate it.

And that's it! 

Try a small batch and let me know how it goes :)

#MovieReview: Disney's Zootopia

Now there may be mild spoilers for this, so avert your eyes if need be.

Disney has 3 generations. The classics: Snow White, Cinderella. The Prince Charmings and the true-lover's-kiss.

The new: Lion King, Aladdin. The 90s nostalgia and the true-lover's-kiss, so to say. 

The now: Tangled, Frozen. The sass, the hot-hot-HOT male lead (I'm looking at you Flynn Rider!) and though less, but still the true-lover's-kiss, interpreted in different ways.

And then there's this. Zootopia. Legitimately ushering in a new phase, the 4th generation, altogether for Disney.

Now see this, I was going to write out a Facebook review as I usually do, but I have a lot more to say about this. So much so I busted out a new blog for this and more to come.

Not only is it, graphics wise, the MOST detailed Disney film till date, but it packs the punch of subtle humour, bust-my-guts-humour (Flash the sloth, you've seen the trailer), and things that are far too much experienced in life and less spoken, much less in a Disney movie.

The story goes thus, without letting too much out. Judy Hopps is a bunny, spunky and smart who wants to be a cop, even in the face of a lot of discouragement. She becomes one, in a completely male-and-large-animal space and is given a useless post. In a good-but-ends-up-very-bad twist, she is handed a high priority dangerous case which she must solve, or else quit. She ends up collaborating with a wily hustler fox, and they uncover a sinister plot. Just when everything was alright, things take an unexpected turn with her losing her friendship, Zootopia turning into a town which no one had imagined, and she quits. How she returns, and repairs her friendship and reinstates Zootopia to what it was, forms the rest of the story.

But there's more to the story.

There's treatment of females in the real world.

A female lead, who is not taken seriously by anyone. Not in the cute way, if there ever was one. Hollywood would know that. But in the crush-your-dreams way. There are her parents who discourage her, not to be cruel, but in a genuine well-meaning way, for they're scared for her, a tiny bunny in the big city. There's the village bully who hurts her because she stands up to them. There's her not giving up. Just. Not. Giving. Up. It's her against the system, when she is included in an all-male police force as the "token bunny" as part of the new policies of inclusion, but only on paper. There's her being given an absurdly difficult task, purposely to watch her fail, because she spoke out of rank. There's her making mistakes. There's her idealism being shattered. And there's her returning.

There's a lady who has a big post, the assistant to the male mayor. But as she knows, says and accepts, it's little more than a secretary. She is happy for the small bits flung out to her. And she knows her job is to secure the vote bank of the large section she represents.

There are the terrible problems of today.

Unreasonable police detainment, *SPOILER ALERT* there's using fear as a control mechanism, us versus them, there's labelling and discrimination basis something that one has no control over. There's media misrepresentation. It's incredible how a Disney movie ends up talking reasonably about things that mainstream media doesn't even understand.

Any of these two paragraphs sound familiar to our lives today?

What there's not...is romance. Disney, so far ALWAYS known for a romance, or at least a theme of love a la Frozen. Zootopia operates on a different plane altogether. There's no theme of romance or love. And I cannot begin to tell you how refreshing that is. To see a spunky as all hell bunny's story to prove herself, without any subplot of love is just what the kids need to see. Everything isn't centred around relationships. There's self, there's differentiating between right and wrong, there's our fellow people, there's friendship, there's pure brainwork and hard work that goes into success. That's what the kids need to know.

Now to the fun part. Zootopia is HILARIOUS. There are jokes that the kids will squeal over, and there are jokes that the accompanying adults will bust a gut laughing at. There's the amazing track "Try Everything" by Shakira, the beautiful Gazelle, that's bound to be an addition to your workout playlist. There's Disney referencing itself, what with breaking the fourth wall being in fashion lately. And it does so marvellously. Comic timing is spot on, the level of detailing in animation is stunning, with 64 different hair textures being identified and recreated for the animals in the movie.

All in all, an absolutely FANTASTIC watch. 

I'd give this a full 5 stars!

Disney, you've really hit it out of the park with this one.