This is the map of Brazil, I marked with arrows my hometown of Rio de Janeiro and up north, Belem, the place I usually visit when I go to the Amazon forest. They are about 1500 miles apart - about the distance from Miami to Maine.
Even though I was born in a big city and raised to be a beach girl, my parents would always take me to the beautiful forests of Rio (we have the largest urban forest in the world) where I learned to appreciate every aspect of being in contact with Nature, even the bugs.
In 2010 I decided to stop in Manaus, a Brazilian city in the heart of the Amazon forest, for a couple of days on my way to Rio. It was in this trip a street vendor offered me Pracaxi Oil, I was having a horrible melasma at the time and trying all sorts of chemical treatments. Four weeks after starting with the Pracaxi I decided I had to, somehow, share the many amazing Amazon products with more people. And five years later Rainforest Chica is doing just that! It is extremely exciting and rewarding!
The Ver-o-Peso Market is located in Belém, capital city of the state of Pará. It is considered the largest open-air market of Latin America and supplies the city with various types of food and medicinal herbs from the interior of the Amazon forest, mainly provided through the river.
It is called "Ver-o-Peso" following a colonial era tradition, since the tax collector's main post was located there, which was called "Casa do Haver-o-peso" ("Have-the-Weight House"). It was there that the taxes over goods brought from the Amazon forests, rivers and countryside should be paid to the Portuguese crown, but only after their weight was measured, hence the name, which later suffered a contraction. It is one of the oldest markets in Brazil.
I was reading a few bad reviews on Trip Advisor, and I can't deny it, they are right, the place does smell, it is loud, not too pretty, very crowded at times, no one speaks English and if you don't pay attention and follow the usual "traveling to South America" rules, you will lose your wallet. Still, one of the coolest places I have ever been, and all the gringos I met there, agreed with me (strangely enough, most of the bad reviews came from Brazilians).
The market is located in the old part of the town, by the port and besides a big old warehouse, it is open air covered by big fixed tents. There you can find: fruits, veggies, herbs, oils, cures, candles, folk medicine, dried meats and fresh fish, jewelry and crafts and a bunch of little kiosks selling quick food and drinks: croquettes, beer, juices, sandwiches and the local favorite, their staple food: fried fish an acai.
They usually serve a fish called "filhote" which literally translates to "tiny son" but, ironically, is a huge fresh water fish that can reach up to 600 lbs. They eat it pan fried with a light flour coat. Their acai is just the pulp blended with water. As I was sitting there eating it for the first time, the locals were trying to teach me how to eat it, asking questions and cheering me on.
Mangoes, starfruit, cupuacu and passion fruit pulp (in the yellow bags).
I had never seen quite a few fruits and veggies they sold there, while they do have the southern imported apples, grapes, watermelon and oranges, and some local known ones, like passion-fruit, guava, mangoes, soursop, the most fun part is walking around checking out all their exotic goodness.
I felt like a kid in a toy shop, I asked questions, touched everything and, of course, bought a bunch of different stuff. I have videos of me trying some of them on my YouTube channel. While most of them are quite good, I don't recommend that amount of exotic fruits in one sitting... It may cause a week long war in your belly (caused in mine, and by then I was in Rio for Carnaval! I had no time for that!)
Pupunha, a little fruit that needs to be cooked and tastes like potatoes and the locals like to eat for breakfast with black coffee, local boys selling fruits.
Separating Cupuacu's pulp from its seeds is hard task and needs to be done with scissors - Bacuri. was quite interesting, strong smell and taste, not bad, just like nothing I have had before. A lot of the fruits from the north have thick, strong skins and white pulps strongly attached to the seeds.
Dried meat and fresh fish. The meat comes from the south of the country, the fish is locally caught and sold daily at the market and to restaurants. They don't use fridges for their fish, they lay them on a counter and use a thin layer of ice on top. It gets less weird the longer you visit, and by the third time you eat fish there, you don't worry about it anymore...
Tons of Brazil-nut and cashews, seeing these usually expensive snacks being sold for the price of peanuts, makes you go a little overboard. I was walking around with 5 kg bags. Grapes and apples brought from the south of the country and the local guava usually cultivated in community farms.
Their jewelry are made from seeds, fish scales and leather. They are colorful and either made by indigenous tribes or inspired by them.
Me, in white, probably asking a thousand questions to that bacuri vendor.
The market has the, mostly commercial, old part of the town on one side, the river on the other, little bay with the boats that bring their goods on one end and the main historical port on the other.
It is an amazing place for the open minded and I hope to, one day, plan a Rainforest Chica group trip to Belem with friends and customers!
Everywhere I look I see these gorgeous soaps: Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. Some of them look like sculptures, I would just put them in my living room and look at it all day long.
But unfortunately I haven't seen many soaps made with the products I sell, which is understandable, as they are a lot more expensive than the regular ingredients most soap makers use: coconut oil, palm oil, cocoa butter, shea butter. And besides the fatty acids, I am not very sure the butters and oils properties survive the saponification process (if you know, please, send me a message.)
After spending many nights lurking on soap making sites and playing on Soapcalc's lye calculator (they have most of my products on their list of fats and promised to add the ones they still don't have). I bit the bullet and bought the basic tools needed for it - scale, stick blender and a thermometer, it all cost about $35 on eBay.
I bought a very expensive lye on Etsy - there are many cheaper ones everywhere, but for my first batch I decided to splurge. Besides I like the bottle, I don't trust me to buy lye, a poison, in a plastic bag.
I improvised for the rest, a milk carton for the mold, jars and spatulas I had in the house.
My first soap was a half batch with Ucuuba and Tucuma Butters, Pracaxi and Brazil Nut Oils.
It made a very dark soap, since my mold was too big for such a small batch, 2 days laters I decided to cut this one in small pieces and use it inside a new soap!
For my new soap I used: Cupuacu, Murumuru and Tucuma Butters, Buriti, Andiroba and Brazil Nut Oils.
Followed the instructions to a T (I think), even waited patiently for my fats and lye solution to get down to about 110°F.
The soap got a lot more orange than I thought it would be... I was aiming for a whiter soap, but in order to reach the right balance for my soap I had to use quite a lot of Buriti Oil. The saponification process started super fast which made me freak out. And the soap felt a bit oily to the touch at first, which also made me freak out, actually all I wanted was for an experienced soap maker to hold my hand and say it would be ok.
I couldn't wait to cut it, there were no pockets of lye or grease, the texture felt ok. Even the fine white layer on top of it seems to be normal (I Googled, thankfully soap makers are awesome sharing people).
This is it 4 days later.
I think the hardest thing about soap making it is the wait. Four weeks until I find out if it works, if it won't leave a yellow Buriti layer on everything, if it won't fall apart, and all the other things that can go wrong with a soap (actually I think that the worst has passed.)
So it isn't pretty, but it is mine and very unique! If it turns out good I will throw a party!
I saw a recipe on a French site a few weeks ago that asked for "black cocoa butter", that got me curious, I called my people in Brazil and they said there was no such a thing. After little research, I found it on Ebay (what can't you find there?), but when it finally rechead me, I realized it isn't cocoa butter, it was what we call in Brazil "cacao mass", raw cacao, what is left behind after removing the butter.
I wasn't sure how that would work on a skin product, but I am happy to say, the results were very nice. It spreads nicely, the skin looks and smells wonderful, I do not recommend it for hair, as it is a bit too thick. Here is my Brazilian version of the French recipe.
Melt the Cupuacu Butter in a double boiler over low heat heat. Mix the oils in. Separate it into two equal parts and transfer them into two different containers. In one of the two containers, add the cocoa butter cut in very small pieces and heat if necessary to melt. Let cool a bit and then put the two preparations in the freezer for a few minutes. Take them out and mix them well again, you can use an electrical mixer. Put back in the freezer.Transfer both butters into a container keeping them separate.
I did mix mine to a whipped butter consistency. For that you definitely need a electrical mixer.
The dark butter will be slightly harder because of the cacao. Use that side for body and the other for neck and face.
Answer: Cold pressed oils, also known as cold expeller pressed oils, are oils obtained by mechanically pressing the oily parts of the plants in a temperature controlled environment. The friction, necessary for this process, causes temperatures to rise, the harder the plant being pressed, the higher the temperatures can get, temperatures can not rise above 120°F (49°C) for any oil to be considered cold pressed.
This process is not as efficient as using heat and hexane, but the oil remaining from cold pressed seeds, nuts or vegetables has no trace farm chemicals, no hexane molecules, no poisonous trans fatty acids. You can find many of the amazing cold pressed Brazilian Oils at my site Rainforest Chica.
