Coconut For Chapped Lips

When you are forced to live off of the land small modern day annoyances can become life threatening situations. For example if you get the flue. In the modern world you basically just wait it out. But what if you need firewood so you don't freeze to death? Now I am not trying to suggest that having chapped lips is going to directly kill you. I am, however, suggesting when little things that go untreated can compound upon each other to increase your misery index and push you closer to giving up.

Chapped lips are annoying. Today you probably would simply apply lip balm to them and then move on. Wouldn't it be nice to have lip balm hand? So prep by saving a store of it up. But what do you do when it runs out?

Fortunately, we don't need modern things like computers and electricity to have lip balm.

You can avoid dry and painful chapped lips by applying coconut oil. Coconut oil can be extracted by boiling.

Start with a brown coconut. Open it up by breaking or cutting it in half. Next, grate out the coconut meat. This is the white part of the coconut that adheres to the inside of the coconut shell.

You can use any type of hard semi-sharp object to grate out the white coconut meat. A screwdriver or a nail would be examples of tools you could use. You can get creative and make special tools to help perform the task faster. In a pinch you can simply use a hard green stick or even a chipped rock.

What you are working for is not chunks of coconut meat, but instead a product that is a mushy substance ground much finer. You can first take out the coconut meat in chunks but, you will then need to break it down further.



Put the coconut you collect in a container and add hot water to the coconut. Heat the coconut meat over a fire until it boils. Remove from heat and stir until it cools. Get a separate bowl. Place in front of you. Place a cloth over the bowl and pour your coconut mixture onto the cloth. Squeeze the cloth to force the liquid through and collected in the bowl. Take this mixture and squeeze out as much of the liquid coconut milk as possible.

To increase yield you can repeat the process with the solids.

Allow the strained liquid to cool and settle. The bottom layer will be the water and the top layer will be the coconut cream. You can let is stand overnight to achieve this.

Collect the cream off of the top and place that over a fire. Bring the coconut milk to a very slow boil. You are just trying to boil off the water from the mixture. You will be left with oil and brownish solids once this is done.

Separate by slow pouring or staining and you will have pure coconut oil to use on chapped lips. Use the liquid oil as is, or mix with beeswax to make a more solid lip balm.