Vinegar Friday and winter woes

TGIVF!

Every once in awhile, it's good to revive Vinegar Fridays, don't you think? I just wanted to remind you of some of my favorite winter tips in my book.

With the cold winter weather, a lot of us end up with dry skin. Here are two tips that may help, starting with your feet.

Add 1/2 cup of ACV (apple cider vinegar) to a foot bath filled with warm water. Soak for 5 minutes or so. The result is baby soft feet. *Of course, if you have extremely rough skin on the bottom of your feet, the results will not be the same. Up until a few months ago, the ACV foot soak was all I needed to keep my feet soft. And then it happened... maybe it's age; maybe it's my diabetes, but I need to be more proactive in the care of my feet these days.

Moving up a bit, or a whole lot, actually, here's a remedy for dry skin on your face. This one is divine... really. It's called Martha Washington's Vinegar Facial Mask and is found on page 25 of my book, VINEGAR FRIDAYS (you can buy it here).

Mix up the following ingredients:

1 egg
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Apply the mask to your face and relax for 20 minutes. Rinse with warm water and pat dry. Better watch out, though -- people might look at your radiant complexion and start assuming you're pregnant!

Now let's talk cars -- I hate when I use my window washer fluid and the wipers are so dirty from winter grime that they just spread a mess across my line of vision. Wiping them down with a soft cloth soaked in undiluted DWV (distilled white vinegar) will help stay squeaky clean. You can keep a damp vinegar cloth in a wet bag in your car for on-the-road assistance.

If you're still trying to shed those extra holiday pounds, you might want to check out Chapter 9 in my book: The F-word. I gleaned some goodies from Dr. Ann Louise, otherwise known as the "First Lady of Nutrition." In this chapter, I discuss how ACV is effective at burning fat, whittling the waist, jump-starting your metabolism, shedding cellulite, and, as a bonus, it detoxifies as well! Grab a copy of the book and find out how!

Keeping it green, soft, clean, and healthy with vinegar,

How about a Vinegar Tuesday?

Theo Van Gogh

People are always telling me they miss Vinegar Fridays, so I thought I'd slip in a Vinegar Tuesday today. For those of you who really enjoyed VFs, I will be releasing a book in the fall with all the vinegar tips organized in a semi-logical order! I hope you'll buy it.

Did you ever start unloading your dishwasher only to find a bunch of miscellaneous gunk accumulated in one or more of your glasses? How does that happen?! Unfortunately, I find it happens more often when I'm using 'green' dish washing products, which makes my husband emphatically state, over and over again, that we need to go back to Cascade.

Anyway, I was emptying the dishwasher yesterday and pulled out two glasses that were simply not going to be put away. They're tall narrow glasses that are difficult to hand wash. So I put a little water in them with a teaspoon of baking soda. Then, I added the magic ingredient -- distilled white vinegar. Just a splash of it was enough to cause the effervescent reaction I was hoping for. All those tiny little natural scrubbing bubbles attacked that dishwasher gunk in no time. Voila! A couple of shiny glasses! I can't tell you how excited I am about this new discovery!

Today is truly a vinegar Tuesday for me. I started out in the shower rinsing my hair with apple cider vinegar. I alternate how I do this. Some days, I pour 1/2 cup in a jar and add 2 cups of water. At the end of my shower, I simply pour this on my hair as a final rinse. Other days, I put a tablespoon or so in the jar with a cup of water and use it like conditioner after I'm done washing my hair, thoroughly rinsing it out. This is the best detangler around ... and it's completely natural. If you have light-colored hair, you might prefer using distilled white vinegar instead.

Next, as I was making my coffee, I grabbed the Dr. Bragg's Organic Unfiltered Raw Apple Cider Vinegar from the cupboard and took a tablespoon, followed by 8 oz. of water and then a thorough rinsing of my mouth (it will erode tooth enamel if it just sits in there!).

After breakfast, I took a couple of vases into the kitchen and took the dead sunflowers out of them (to be put in the compost pile). The vases had that dead-flower-slime in them, so guess what I did? Yep. Baking soda, water and vinegar. The foaming is actually cool to watch -- your kiddos will love it!

So that was it with the vinegar ... so far. On the agenda for later today or this evening -- a apple cider vinegar foot bath. A 5 minute soak in one cup of ACV in a basin with warm water creates the softest feet I've had since I was a toddler. Seriously. It's amazing how soft my heels get. If you have rough feet, you have to try this.

After the foot soak, I'm going to repurpose the ACV-infused water and give my cat a bath. Theo is not aware of this yet, and he won't be too thrilled when it actually happens. But the results will be well worth it. You see, Theo is allergic to bug bites. So every summer, he ends up covered in scabs. Poor thing. Then his fur gets a bit oily and yucky feeling. The vinegar bath will sooth the itch and make his coat amazingly soft. I might endure a few scratches in the process, but like I said, it will be worth it.

That's my Vinegar Tuesday. Let me know if you have a Vinegar Tuesday of your own!

Keeping it green, healthy and soft with vinegar,

Hana