Sonya Holm tries making arthritis hand cream from excess vegetables

The finished arthritis hand cream in cute containers neglected since the day they were purchased - until now. Photo / Sonya Holm

OPINION:

There’s always one show-off in the garden.

The self-seeding pumpkin took over the vege patch in a manner that was both bold and arrogant, with the first fruit appearing on the neighbour’s side of the fence.

But ultimately it was just a proliferation of leaves and a strangulation of tomatoes, which in turn were pathetic.

While disappointing this year, tomatoes were the attention seekers last summer. Unstaked, they grew like a rogue wave going up, out and over the garden bed, coming to rest on the ground.

But this year the show-offs are the chillies. By the end of summer, a manageable number of red ones made it to the freezer.

The buggers kept coming, so in an attempt to avoid waste I made three batches of green chilli jam. Photo / Sonya Holm

But the buggers kept coming, so in an attempt to avoid waste I made three batches of green chilli jam. Then I made a chilli jam chicken bake mix.

And then I hung a whole lot up in the kitchen to eventually go red and become dried chillies.

But still they come. Having long lost my appetite, I decided cosmetics was the answer - arthritis hand cream.

I don’t have arthritis but my thumb joints occasionally make themselves known.

The warm sensation in joint and muscle cream is often from black pepper, cayenne pepper or capsaicin. And capsaicin is made from chillies. Boom!

Apart from ginger essence and filters, I used items I already had in the kitchen, including three cute containers neglected in a drawer since the day they were purchased.

For the instructions, Google gave the answers.

The word arthritis makes the experiment sound less fun than making the bath bombs, candles or slime the kitchen table has been party to over the years.

Drying the chillies and whizzing them into dust before sealing them in a container with pure alcohol ticked all the "making magic potion" boxes. Photo / Sonya Holm

But the process of drying the chillies and whizzing them into dust before sealing them in a container with pure alcohol ticked all the “making magic potion” boxes.

The jar sat on the kitchen bench turning a deeper, murkier shade of green.

“Looks like a biological weapon,” said my husband, “you wouldn’t want that exploded all over you.”

After three days, it was filtered, reduced, mixed with olive and coconut oils, and with a few drops of ginger essence, it was poured into my retro containers and a small jar.

It was hard to judge whether it was going to plan, especially given the “stick your finger in and taste it” approach was clearly out of the question.

The end result is a light oily green cream.

The heat is less intense than expected. But what it lacks in bite it makes for in longevity. A slow subtle warmth leaving a long-lasting glow.

The upside, it’s cheaper than chemist varieties and I used leftover chillies. The downside, the ginger essence makes me hungry.

Sonya Holm is a freelance journalist based in Palmerston North.