http://www.uddercream.com/

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-...

Tiger Balm is from Singapore and works for both muscle & joint pain and itching. It's an herbal balm and I can attest to it's incredible effectiveness. Not sure if you can get it in Maine, but if you can, you should give it a try.

1) organic coconut oil (about $10 for a one lb container on eBay, it should last for months), feels good on the skin and hair, it's also a very healthy fat and you can cook with it.

2) jojoba oil, more expensive but works really well. Also great for dry hair.

3) Crisco! Seriously. Yes, it's icky, but a lot of plastic surgeons recommend it for post-op healing.

Whatever you use, put it on while your skin is slightly damp, like right after a shower, to lock in the moisture.

-- I like the generic version of the hand lotion with oatmeal in it, and I'm good with the oatmeal and lavender skin soap.

Oh, you want sources? whyn't you say so?

Walk up to the store, and buy yourself some bar Ivory. Yeah, I know; but it's cheap, and it works. The other thing you need is some rolled oats. Not instant oats (quick cooking is fine, though). You might want to see if you can find some oat bran cereal (some grocers will have this in the hot cereal section) and use about half rolled oats and half oat bran. What you want to do is grind it up pretty fine (it should be as fine as cornmeal, at least; at home you won't likely get it much finer, and you want a little of the bran to remain coarse enough for scrubbing).

You'll also need a grater, and you're going to grate your bar of soap with this. If you get the big bar of Ivory soap, you can put up to 6 tablespoons of oatmeal / bran mix in your soap.

Now, you want some heat. If you have a hot plate use that, and a pie pan, and put about a tablespoon of water in the pan, then add your soap shavings and your oatmeal. If you don't have a hot plate use a microwave or put a heavy saucer on your iron and melt your soap in a pie plate in that. If you can afford it a few drops -- no more than 1/4 tsp -- of lavender essential oil is nice, too, but that's not the hill you want to die on, mmmmkay?

Add another two to three tablespoons of water and melt all the soap, stirring steadily. Once it's all melted and looks like gravy, pour it in a mold (I usually use an old muffin tin), set it somewhere out of the way and let it harden back up.

Presto: good soap for your skin, about as gentle and cheap as it gets.

(Yes, you can avoid commercial soap. No, it won't be nearly as easy.)

The other thing you can do is make yourself some cheap skin first aid: on the top of that wood stove you're heating your house with set a heavy ceramic or metal vessel (go down to the thrift store and get a big old glass baking dish for $3 or so . You don't have to have it uber-clean and shiny-new. But I would NOT use a terra-cotta garden pot, 'cause if it cracks it'll leak and leave you with a mess.)

Set it on top your stove, fill it up with water, and pour more water in morning and night. The idea is to humidify the air you're heating. You'll breathe a little better, too.

strong-stomached. I don't remember what it's based on but it always felt like mucus to me. It's good on sunburn though.

I've had good luck with two products:

1. Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Moisture Cream. It's marketed for use on babies suffering from dry chapped skin due to diaper rash. It works wonders on my hands and arms. Find it at any drug store or grocery store that sells baby and skincare products. I always find it in the baby aisle.

2. Eucerin products. Eucerin makes a few lotions and creams for dry cracked itchy skin. I've used it when cracked skin starts to bleed. Get at most drugstores.

No ideas on the fruit flies.

Pickled Sweet Green Tomatoes

Very good on hamburgers/hot dogs/greens with cornbread... if you want a traditional use for relish, dice instead of slice the tomatoes, and substitute up to half the weight of tomatoes with red/yellow/orange peppers, for contrast and xtra tastiness.

is what I use these days instead of bag balm or udder cream. It has little or no scent, is absorbed directly into the skin, and heals the dryness in the skin. Here's a link to the Basic Organics version for sale on the web, but it's also available in store generic versions (e.g., Walgreen's, etc.). I first bought it many years ago when my wife had her knee joint replaced (the surgeon suggested vitamin E oil to minimiuze the scar). We discovered that the ointment was great for all kind of dry skin conditions. Although it's an ointment, it's absorbed quickly into the skin and doesn't leave you feeling icky or sticky. It's great for feet, knees, elbows, and any other chapped or dry skin.

I got nothing for you on the fruit flys.

man, you people sure know how to make beauty hard work! just kidding.

1. eat flax seed oil daily. as a very wise beauty store employee once said to me, "what you put on the inside of your body has ten times more to do with the way your skin looks than what you slather on the outside." i feed flax seed oil to my grandmother, who has a serious skin condition as well as diabetes. i also swear by it myself. i can literally see the difference in the size and depths of lines on my face (not that i have many, /princess) when i skip the flax seed oil for two days or more. when i start taking it again: presto! just the other day the guy carding me said, "you don't look your age. no, really, i'm not just flattering you." i get that a lot.

2. http://www.aubrey-organics.com/category.... i also swear by this stuff and have converted many similarly vain female friends. it's pricey, but it lasts a long time. i use the #1 series of Rosa Mosqueta moisturizers as well as the Rosa Mosqueta roll on oil. it has the added benefit of speeding up the process by which skin heals scars and wounds.

fruit flies are the bane of my existence and i've found little to combat them. they seem to really like wine, however. leave a cup with an inch of wine in it, and boy do they all come for it. and drown. but really, the only solution i've found is to just not have any exposed foods for them to light upon and breed in. their life cycle is really short too, so it's very hard to get rid of them, i think it only takes one fertile fly to make a million babies.

can be processed and canned just as well as red ones. they aren't so good for making say, a sauce. but they are just fine for making soups, salsa, and other recipes in which there are other vegetables in addition to tomatoes. green tomato salsa is especially tasty.

and i second keeping the air in your house moist. buy a humidifier (a cheap used one on Craigs List for the financially challenged) or just keep a pot of water on the stove. i do that all winter long.

is they keep a couple very large containers of soapy water on hand to wash all the fruit and veggies. Then they wipe them down and re-wash with no rinse. Fruit flies may have already laid eggs on stuff before it got to your house (or your stand), eggs which will hatch and continue the infestation.

Soapy water rinses off those eggs, and if you don't rinse the already adult fruit flies find the soapy residue on the surface of your fruit an unappetizing environment.

I told this to a friend of mine who opened up a weekday fruit & veggie stand on the first floor of a downtown Atlanta office building and for the first few days found himself plagued with clouds of the little critters. It worked.

It works in the garden too for cabbages, broccoli, lettuce and other leafy stuff, spraying them with a mild solution of dishwashing detergent. You have to re-spray after every rain, though. You're probably already doing it outdoors.

Try these suggestions from Gardener's Supply:

Controls

Getting fruit flies out of the kitchen takes a bit of persistence, but it isn’t difficult and doesn’t require any pesticides.

Eliminate or contain their food sources: Refrigerate or cover ripening fruit, especially bananas, peaches and tomatoes. Cover your kitchen compost.

Search the cupboard for potatoes and onions that have exceeded their expiration date.

Mop up spills under the refrigerator and rinse out discarded bottles and cans, especially beer and juice containers.

Clean out the garbage disposal and follow your nose or fly swarms to other infestation sites.

Set up a fruit fly trap. These consist of an attractant, such as cider vinegar, inside a bottle or container from which the flies can’t escape. A cone of paper set above a bit of vinegar in a glass or bottle works for some. I prefer the more aesthetically pleasing fruit fly trap from Gardener’s Supply. To prevent future infestations, I keep a trap on my kitchen counter all year around.

I'd been thinking about getting the soapstone trap, but now I think I will try the vinegar, and see how that works - it's a lot cheaper!

Shepard's Cream Lotion. It's over the counter, and expensive. But one large bottle will last you a couple years and it works.

Not much. Basic Bio often includes fruit fly genetics labs, and you can always tell when they're running because there are fruit flies in all the hallways, the offices, everywhere. ("Oh, look, there's a coral eye x dumpy!") Traps are what we usually try. Cider, especially oldish, fermenting cider, works well.

Re the itch, there's a trick taught to me by someone who grew up in a sharecropping family in North Texas. Anybody who knows about North Texas chiggers knows this is going to be good. It's also simple: hot water. Take paper towel or a wash cloth, dip it steaming hot water, and apply it to the itchy area as hot as you can stand it without burning yourself. There's a weird spike of sensation right when you do it, and then the itch is gone for hours. It works for any kind: insect bites, eczema, you name it. If you do it over a long period of time, it will dry the skin, so it's important to apply cream afterward ... the udder balm would be just right.

here's another idea. The nutrition angle is right on. I've always been troubled by dry skin, but when I was is grad school my adviser told me to get more vitamin A in my diet. My source of choice is carrots, which I love anyway, but a supplement could probably work (don't overdo, since A is stored in body fat). Likewise adding lots of those healthy walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, chia etc. adds healthy fats and Vit E to your diet and and ultimately, skin. Note that using healthy oil -containing dressings to salads and veggies has been shown to increase absorption of vitamins in the meal.

I've tried every lotion, potion, and ointment ever made to overcome dry skin and my experience is that stuff in tubes usually contains less water and usually lasts longer on the body...but there isn't all that much difference, especially regarding price. They treated me with the oatmeal stuff, even in baths, when I was a child, but it didn't do all that much good. Aveeno sells lotions with it if you want to try it. My advice, especially with all the handwashing mania over the flu, is just reapply to hands and other body parts whenever you wash. Carry a small tube of something with you and if your car, if you drive.

And cook up soups and stews to fill the kitchen with steam on a semi-regular basis...even a back burner kettle to maintain humidity wastes energy.

As for fruit flies, I'm still harvesting strawberries and red raspberries and some flies are constantly around. I just try to nail them between my hands whenever I can zero in on one....works fairly well but drives the dog crazy.

good luck.

of energy nearly so much as it is a serendipitous humidification.

heating air dries it out; adding back some moisture isn't just good for the human but actually for the furnishings, etc. in the house. The key is "some", not "overmuch".

That radiant energy from the heat's going to rise anyhow; using some of it to heat water isn't wasting it, just putting it to an additional use.

at my place what with the fermenting and garden veggies all over the place, especially this time of year. I second the wine bottle method, leave just a bit in the bottom (don't waste too much!) and it attracts quite a few.

Seattle-born here (i.e. fragile rainforest flower), and in a former life was also miserably dessicated by your east coast winters & evil bugger steam heat.

Three things did the trick:

1) Vaporizer. Like a humidifier only cold air. Sweet, glorious humidity: in the bedroom if nowhere else. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. And, theyre dirtass cheap!

2) Believe it or not: Baby oil. Really. Slather some on while still wet just out of shower and towel off. Doesnt make the mess you'd think, and alligator skin: begone.

Its what dermatology calls an "occlusive": basically, any persistent hydrophobic substance you can tolerate on your skin to retard the spontaneous winter migration of moisture across your stratum corneum. Apricot oil, petroleum jelly, baby oil, beezwax, lanolin, dimethicones... anything that you find doesnt otherwise irritate your skin, feel so greasy you cant stand it, or wear off /evaporate too quickly. Mineral (baby) oil is refined enough to feel inert to many people, nonirritating, and if applied to wet skin, seems to be deposited in a thin enough layer it doesnt feel nasty. Go figure. The alkane chains in mineral oil are 'lipophilic', similar enough to the lipid lamellae that are already waterproofing your stratum corneum, that I expect they are going to interdissolve a bit.

3) For broken up chapped hands: For some reason nothing on earth works like that little tube of "Neutrogena Fragrance Free Norwegian Style Hand Cream". Its just some ratio of glycerin and some stearic emulsifiers .. but works a damned TREAT. Heaven.

Lastly have to second (or third or whatever) the vote for flax oil in the diet. Hoover up a couple tablespoons a day, in a protein shake or something, it is the single best thing aging men like ourselves can do for blood lipids, blood sugar management.. oh, and skin too.

Im 43 and still get carded from time to time, is all Im sayin.

Updated: ScienceDaily confirms what we all already seem to have figured out.

corn oil from corn and peanut oil from peanuts. How do we really know where that baby oil really comes from? Just askin'.

in it, which should be avoided on the skin. the body can't break down mineral oil and it ends up clogging pores. i could be wrong here, but i seem to recall that from my Aveda salon days.

because it isn't down-home and old-timey and cheap, but I swear by Vitabath. I always had dry skin till I started using it. My experience is with it as bubble bath (as opposed to shower gelee); wash with the bubbles and don't rinse it off. (It's quite gentle. As local subway celebrity dematologist Dr. Zizmor says in his book about health and beauty products, it's for people who aren't dirty to start with. I laugh because it's true.) The original flavor, Spring Green, smells nice.

For hands, elbows, and back of heels, just a smidgeon of petroleum jelly, the best vapor barrier ever (Zizmor again). A teeny amount does not feel greasy. Less is better.

For the face, Cetaphil.

Thanks, Dr. Zizmor!

used the way the folks above recommend for petroleum jelly. Cover it with a soft rag (old t-shirt, worn sock) and plastic (bread bag) overnight.