Balbec Ingredients

Energetic Wrappings: We're Making the Experience Better

Energetic Wrappings: We're Making the Experience Better
We are introducing better packaging etiquette. You know our lovely eco-felt envelopes? Well now, each time you receive one in the mail to keep your cleansers and hydrosols cool and fresh, you will also find an envelope stamped and addressed back to us. Unless you wish to keep your eco-felt envelope, you can place it (along with the twine if you wish) in the addressed envelope and mail it back. I'll keep it for you for the next time, repair it should it so require, and send it back to you with your next order, with another stamped envelope--and a $5 credit toward any oil of your choice--to use or accrue, it is entirely up to you. I know my customers are environmentally conscious and don't need an economic incentive, so please don't think of it as such, but rather as a way of using our collective resources more efficiently.

In Pursuit of Patchouli

In Pursuit of Patchouli
In the mid 1990s I moved to NYC for graduate school and there was much to love: I could walk everywhere, there were independent movie theaters, grocery stores were stocked with asian pears, olives, lots of chocolate, litchi nuts, litchi-flavored gummy Japanese candy, donut shaped peaches, prepared gorgeous meals, excellent teas, Portuguese rolls, and fondue in packages. I regularly called home to describe my trips to the grocery. There was opera and Summer Stage in Central Park, the yoga studio was a quiet, spartan space with florescent lighting and a curtain for a changing room. There was Body and Soul in Tribeca—a Sunday daytime dance club that my best friend attended like church. No velvet ropes, no degrading lines, no alcohol-- just a great stretch of music for dancers wearing sneakers.