A Bright New Start!

Like most of the UK, life here on the farm has been unseasonably chilly and much of our Easter weekend was spent in the outdoor lambing barns, piling up bales of hay around the newborn lambs to help shield them from the biting winds and occasional snow flurries. Unfortunately for us, it was not much warmer indoors as our boiler broke down on Good Friday morning, leaving us all somewhat cold for the four-day bank holiday break! We were truly grateful for the warmth of a traditional log fire and went to bed wearing layers of assorted woolly jumpers surrounded by a sea of hot water bottles. To warm and brighten my skin I relied on generous layers of our Brightening Treatment, a fast-fix wonder mix of traditionally uplifting and reviving ingredients. For those who haven’t yet tried this fabulous skin-saver, our Brightening Treatment is a truly fast-acting pick-me-up for tired, stressed or jaded skins. Perfect for this time of year, whatever the weather. Working well on all skin types, it has an effect in as little as 30 seconds, making it one of the speediest skin remedies I know.

When first devising the formula for Brightening Treatment, we looked at some of the most traditional natural ingredients, including a fine white clay known as kaolin or English china clay. Ours comes from Cornwall where it is mined, washed, powdered and sieved for fineness and it is highly prized because of its natural purity. Kaolin is an excellent skincare ingredient for treatment masks as it is semi-porous – under a microscope the particles look like tiny sponges – making it very good for mopping up and absorbing the skin’s excess oil from the surface whilst gently drawing out impurities from deeper down. One of the other key ingredients in Brightening Treatment is camphor oil, which comes from further afield as it is distilled from the wood of Cinnamomum camphora, an Oriental tree highly prized for its therapeutic and aromatic fragrance properties. Camphor oil comes from China where it has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years for both its antiseptic and stimulating properties. One of the reasons we include it in Brightening Treatment is for its ability to bring a naturally healthy, rosy glow to the skin (whatever the temperature!) and it is a wonderful way to literally brighten the complexion. Many top models and actresses swear by using Brightening Treatment before a photo shoot as it brings a visible glow to the skin. You can try its powers for yourself at the moment as our terrific Bright New Start offer* (UK only)  gives you a complimentary full-size tube with our latest Cleanse and Polish offer. A wonderful way to encourage a brighter Springtime.

* We apologise that this limited Bright New Start Offer has now sold out and is no longer available.

Easter Egg Hunt

I’ve been in London recently for our QVC shows and spending time going to see our area in the beauty hall of John Lewis, Oxford Street as well as our own flagship store at the top of the King’s Road, Chelsea. I used to live just off the King’s Road and have spent more than 20 years walking up and down its pavements, seeing the shops come and go. One shop which not only remains, but has deservedly expanded, is Rococo, a fabulous chocolate ‘boutique’ run by the dynamic chocolatier Chantal Coady. She has brought fresh new ways with high quality chocolate to the high street, with her fabulous range of unusual shapes and flavours, including my own favourite rose-scented mini chocolate bars. So with Easter in mind, I headed into one of the newer branches of Rococo in Belgravia’s Motcomb Street. Here they have the most beautiful hand-decorated chocolate eggs, stunningly painted and glazed with butterflies, hearts and flowers. We were all so impressed that we chose these beautiful eggs to feature in our fabulous Easter Egg Hunt featured on our Home page.

On the subject of chocolate, I’m also a big fan of Green & Black’s, the organic chocolate company founded by multi-tasker extrordinaire, Josephine Fairley, also one of the co-authors of The Beauty Bible. Her husband, Craig Sams (founder of Whole Earth foods and credited with bringing brown rice to Britain back in the ‘60’s) was sent some organic chocolate to try. Spying this on his desk, she nibbled it and declared it to be the finest she’d ever tasted – and Green & Black’s was born. Jo is often asked whether she and Sam are, in fact, Mr Green and Mrs Black, but in choosing their brand name they looked back to the old fashioned, traditional confectionary brands of their childhood, choosing ‘Green’ for organic and ‘Black’ for the deeply dark brown, almost black chocolate. Recently voted ‘favourite comfort food’ by Good Housekeeping magazine (amongst many other awards) there’s no doubt that a square or two of this divine indulgence really does act as a potent pick-me-up and it certainly has a permanent place in my pantry.

Chocolate is made from cocoa pods grown on the Theobroma cacao tree, a small evergreen native to the tropical regions of South America. It was so highly prized it was called ‘God’s food’ from the Latin word Theo for God. The secret to the best quality chocolate is in its amount of cocoa solids (a mixture of cocoa mass and cocoa butter). Green & Black’s darkest chocolate prides itself on a minimum of 70% cocoa solids and even their milk chocolate contains 34% (more than mass-market plain dark chocolate). More cocoa solids means less room for unhealthy fillers, such as hydrogenated (hardened) vegetable oils and sugar, so the higher the percentage of cocoa solids the better the chocolate is for us. Mass-market chocolate tends to contain around 20% cocoa solids and some may have as little as 7% cocoa solids and high levels of vegetable oils instead. This has led to the EU suggesting that some British brands be re-named ‘vegolate’ as their low cocoa content means they shouldn’t really be called chocolate at all!

Instead of the mass market brands, I always suggest eating smaller quantities of better quality chocolate, which we can eat with a clear conscience as quality chocolate is actually good for us. Mass-produced brands are made with high levels of those dietary villains sugar and saturated fats, but those with a high cocoa content not only have less sugar, they also contain higher levels of interesting antioxidants. These include catechins and phenols, more frequently highlighted in black tea. Dark chocolate contains four times as many catechins as black tea and its phenols help prevent free radical cell damage. Interestingly, each square of Green & Black’s milk chocolate contains 17 calories and each square of their dark chocolate 18 calories – an easy way to ration it as a treat.

When making chocolate, the cocoa solids are separated from the cocoa butter, which can then be added back to the recipe depending on the type of chocolate being made. Pure, natural cocoa butter is a key naturally active ingredient in several of our formulations, including our classic Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser and our newer Gentle Face Exfoliator. It’s also a key ingredient in our soon-to-launch Men’s Cleanse & Polish (hoorah! At last our menfolk can stop stealing ours!!). We use cocoa butter for its superb, creamy emollient properties and also its ability to literally melt onto the skin (in much the same way as chocolate melts in the mouth). As a natural plant ‘butter’ it is also highly skin compatible and also eco-friendly, being a 100% renewable and sustainable natural ingredient (unlike petrochemical alternatives such as mineral oils and waxes). So if you don’t fancy giving chocolate Easter eggs this year, you can always give the ‘gift of good skin’ by choosing cocoa butter in a different form and sharing Cleanse & Polish or Gentle Face Exfoliator with those you love.

Baby news!

We have some exciting news to share with you all – Caroline’s baby daughter, Isabel Anne, was born Tuesday 4th March weighing 6lb 8oz. Both mother and baby are very well.