How To

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How to Wash Your Face

A couple months ago, my husband read a Real Simple article out loud to me called “Yes, There Is a Right Way to Shower.” We mainly thought it was hilariously dumb, although I suppose some people don’t get excruciatingly detailed instructions on how to shower from their parents, so I bet it serves a worthwhile purpose for some people.

Plus! As much as I wanted to poke fun at this article, I ended up learning two new things. First, that you DON’T need to leave conditioner on your hair; supposedly it works immediately. (I am suspicious.) Second, that you should wash your face at the END of the shower. The latter tip, I put into practice immediately. I’d been washing my face first thing in the shower for… decades, so it took a bit of effort to change up my routine. But now I wash it at the end of the shower. And I like it. (Sometimes I still forget, and get out of the shower, and then have to get back in to wash my face. But that’s only happened a handful of times.) (I also have been showering in as cold water as I can stand; Jenny, I think, recommended washing my face and hair with cold water as helpful for my rosacea. Plus, it’s so hot ALL THE TIME that I rather enjoy the cold showers. My teenage self – who routinely got yelled at for using up all the hot water, so long did I linger under the steam – wouldn’t recognize me and my five-minute cold showers.)

I’ve never been great at washing my face. I will admit, guiltily, that I very rarely washed my face AT ALL (except in the shower) until I was in my thirties, and even then, I would usually use one of those dreadfully wasteful Neutrogena wipes or a Noxzema wipe and call it good. (I know, I know.) I would just… go to sleep in whatever makeup I was wearing and then wash it off in the shower the next morning. (I still find that the Neutrogena wipes are the best way to remove eye makeup.)

But now that my skin seems bent on destroying my life (why yes, I do tend toward hyperbole, why do you ask?), I am much more rigorous about washing my face. And I hate it. 

I’ve been using, on the advice of my dermatologist, Cetaphil facial cleanser. It’s mild and seems to mostly work? I honestly have no idea; my skin seems to flare occasionally of its own mercurial whims, and I have no idea why. (Thankfully, it has yet to flare so horrifically as it did back in late April/early May. I am armed with my sulfur face wash and antibiotics prescription for when it inevitably happens again.) 

In addition to washing my face in the shower (which I do as quickly upon concluding my day’s workout as possible), I wash my face in the morning and at night, at the same time I brush my teeth. (Same general time; I am not doing both simultaneously. I use a washcloth to wet my face with cold water. Then I use my hands to lather up the Cetaphil and apply it to my skin. Then I use the washcloth to wipe away the cleanser. I have a little towel rack on which to hang the damp washcloth, which keeps it both close to hand and away from my dry bath towel.

The thing is… the washcloths don’t last. I change my bath towels every week, and I get that a towel used to clean a dirty face might not last THAT long, but they seem to go two or maybe three days before they start to get a little stinky. And I don’t have that many washcloths! So I go through all the washcloths before I have a chance to launder them (while I change my bath towels weekly, I wash them every two weeks) and when I am out of washcloths I have to turn to my hands. 

I CAN wash my face with my hands. But it’s AWFUL.

Inevitably, water pours down my wrists and pools in my elbows. It also cascades down my face and dampens my sideburn area, a portion of my hair that is prone to corkscrewing wildly at the least exposure to moisture. Water also slides down my chin and trickles down my neck and sets up camp in between my boobs. By the time my face is clean, my entire body is wet and I might as well have just showered. 

Why is this so hard? What am I doing wrong?

I feel like I could probably address a couple of these issues with money. I mean, I could just buy enough washcloths so that I can swap them out daily. Or, if I want to eschew washcloths entirely, I could buy face washing accessories to keep the wetness away. Like, there are cute absorbent headbands and headwraps I could wear while washing my face. There are wristbands (“wrist towels”) as well, which might prevent my elbows from being soaked regularly. But I feel weary at the idea of buying MORE THINGS to address a very simple and regular feature of one’s daily ablutions. Plus, where would I store them and would they also get stinky after a couple of days and would they even work???

Maybe I just don’t know how to wash my face the proper way? How do you do it? How often and when and what products do you use? Even if you don’t have any Life-Changing Secrets, I love hearing how we all do the exact same thing in slightly different ways, so please share your face-washing routine.

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Treat Foods & How to Cook an Artichoke

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A couple of you (hi Lee! hi Kate!) have requested  that I share how to cook an artichoke and I am happy to comply because it means eating another artichoke! Woo!

When I was a kid, artichokes were a Treat Food. You have these, right? Something that your parents would make or buy very occasionally, usually for some special circumstance. And because of the rare, special nature of these foods, they became, perhaps forever, a Treat.

It’s funny to think back on the Treat Foods of my childhood:

  • “Real” Coca Cola: This was something that we only got when we were home sick. It was usually served warm and flat, to settle the stomach. (Is any of this even based in any sort of physiological reality? Who knows!) For a long time after I was living on my own, I’d order Coke at a restaurant because of that special thrill it gave me, of having something normally forbidden.
  • “Real” Sprite/7Up: With exception of the aforementioned Sick Days Coke, my parents didn’t keep full-sugar soda on hand. So on the very rare occasions I got to go out to dinner, I’d order a Shirley Temple. Oh man, was that a special treat! Sugar swirled with sugar topped with sugar disguised as a fruit! YUM.
  • Lobster Tail: I mean, even NOW that I am a grown-up who can buy Coke and artichokes any damn time she wants to, lobster tails remain very oooh-la-la. Once in a blue moon, my parents would order lobster tails from Omaha Steaks or one of those other mail order companies and we’d have them for dinner. My mom prepared lobster tails for my junior prom — and we even got to eat them in the Fancy Dining Room! — which made the evening even more special.
  • Cracklin’ Oat Bran: As a kid, the only cereals my parents would buy on the regular were Rice Krispies or Shredded Wheat – and we’re talking the big hay bale type of Shredded Wheat, not Frosted Mini Wheats. Once in a while, they’d bend the rules and buy a treasured box of Frosted Flakes or Kix. Mayyyybe some Corn Pops. Oh, how I longed for all the sugary, kid-friendly cereals advertised on Saturday morning in between episodes of DuckTales  and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  (heroes in a half shell, turtle power) (why is it that I can completely forget to take Carla to her weekly ballet lesson, but I have the entire lyrics of this cartoon theme song firmly locked into my brain?). Cocoa Puffs, Trix, Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms, From Loops, Cookie Crisp, Golden Grahams — they all sounded so decadent and magical! But no. Those cereals were not permitted in our home. Instead, to prevent us from growing bored of Rice Krispies and Shredded Wheat — though I can assure you the boredom was instantaneous — sometimes my parents would buy a box of Grape-Nuts or Raisin Bran. (I’d rather choke down a pillow of dry Shredded Wheat than eat a raisin.) However, possibly because the name makes it sound much more respectable than it is, they would occasionally be persuaded to buy a box of Cracklin’ Oat Bran. Which is DELICIOUS. I bought a box for Carla the other day and told her it tasted like cookies. Which is 100% true.
  • Crab Rangoon: I totally get why these were a Treat Food: they are SUPER hard to make. My mother would make her own – make the filling, fill the wonton wrappers, fry them in oil on the back porch — and we’d have them on very special occasions. She would even make a plum sauce to dip them in. Oh man were they tasty. Whenever I see them on the menu somewhere, I order them because they are still so reminiscent of Special Times.

Anyway. Artichokes were on the list of Treat Foods, too. My mom would steam them and then serve them with tiny cups of butter for dipping. They seemed daunting, when I was a kid. Finding them was tricky. In our rural northern town, they weren’t available very often. And when they were, I imagine they cost a pretty penny. Plus, after you ate all the delicious leaves, you had to deal with the choke. YUCK. I was so disturbed by the choke that I never ate the heart – which, it turns out, is the BEST PART. Well. I know better now.

Living in a Major City now, in a day and setting where you can get anything at anytime, it is much easier to get my hand on artichokes. And I’ve discovered a very easy way to make them. And they are DELICIOUS.

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I will tell you that they aren’t quick. Prepping them takes maybe… five minutes. But you have to cook them for 30 minutes, so they require planning ahead.

Here’s how you do it.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare a large cookie sheet with foil or a Silpat or whatever.

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Trim your artichoke stem. You can absolutely eat the stem of the artichoke, although it can get pretty tough after cooking so long. So I like to cut it to about an inch or so in length. (Stem not pictured above.)

Wash your artichoke. I use a veggie spray that may or may not do anything, but it makes me FEEL like I’m cleaning my veggies more thoroughly than with plain old water.

Veggie spray

(I used to use a different kind of veggie spray, which is cheaper on Amazon and gets better reviews, but I can’t find it anymore at my local grocery store. And I like how the Rebel Green seems like actual soap. Which I acknowledge may be a turnoff for others.)

Trim your artichoke leaves. Some websites say to cut the top quarter or so of your artichoke off, and you can definitely do that. Or you can use kitchen shears and snip off the sharp end of every leaf. Or you can come to my grocery store where someone does it for you.

Cut your artichoke in half vertically.  You’ll need a nice big knife for this.

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Remove the choke. The choke is the fuzzy part in the middle. I use a big spoon to scoop it out, and then I rinse the artichoke to get any bits of fuzz out. It’s okay if you throw away some of the inner leaves, too – they are hard to eat because they are so small. The heart of your artichoke will discolor almost immediately once you remove the choke. I’ve tried rubbing it briskly with a cut lemon, but that doesn’t really help. And you’re going to roast it so it will turn nice and brown anyway.

 

Use a pastry brush to apply olive oil to your artichoke. I use about a tablespoon, and add it to all sides. Then sprinkle both sides liberally with coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. You can squeeze a lemon into the inside of your artichoke too, if you please. Or even nestle a slice of lemon inside the empty space where the choke was, but it’s totally up to you; it doesn’t make a huge difference, taste-wise.

Put your artichoke halves on your prepared cookie sheet, cut side down. Roast for 30 minutes. You’ll know that your artichoke is done when you can pull one of the outer leaves and it comes off easily. (Choose a leaf from the bottom third of your artichoke, but not one closest to the stem. They don’t pull off easily, and the artichoke will be hot, and you’ll burn your fingers and also incorrectly assume the artichoke isn’t done cooking.)

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While your artichoke is cooking, make a dipping sauce. I like lemon juice plus melted butter (1 Tbsp melted butter, zest and juice of half a lemon), or lemon juice plus Greek yogurt (2 Tbsp plain Greek yogurt, zest and juice of half lemon or more to taste). I usually add salt and minced garlic to both sauces, and sometimes paprika to the yogurt. A chipotle yogurt mixture would also be delicious.

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You eat an artichoke in a Leaves First fashion, scraping your teeth against the bottom part of the leaf to remove the meat. As you get deeper into the artichoke, the leaves have more meat until sometimes you’re eating half to three-quarters of the leaf itself.

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The heart is the best part. In the picture, I am eating it with a knife and fork like a proper human. In reality, I often leave the heart in one piece and dunk it in the sauce with my bare hands. Decadent!

Enjoy!