… I hear your eyebrows scrunching together from here. Don’t worry, this is decadent.
I go through coffee. Many cups a day. This brings me the dilemma of disposing of the grounds. Many people just put them in the trash, filling land fills. Some people compost them or put them directly on acid-loving plants. I have even mixed dried, used grounds with wax for fire starters. There is always more.
I recently had to invest in a personal-size travel French-press. Within a few months, I went through several coffee makers, including my Francis-Francis. The last was spectacular and I am happy I was not touching it when it popped and took the breaker with it. Investing in the personal sized French-press has been a good stop-gap, but it has also shown me how much I really go through.
If you have read through the articles and recipes on this site, you will know that I try not to waste anything. It is not a leftover- it is pre-processed ingredients.
Keeping the above in mind, I wanted to use more of the grounds and not just dump them out into the sink. By the way, it is only if you follow the grounds with hot fat that there is a real danger of anything blocking a drain when you put coffee grounds in it. But on with figuring out what to do with the grounds. An add for an expensive scrub came on the t.v. and I knew what I was going to do.
I have purchased scrubs in the past. It is so easy to make your own that I am not sure why I spent the $20 to $30 per container, but I do like to experiment with products. By using the coffee grounds left in my French-Press, with a little sugar and cream in it, I have hit many of the ingredients in the current flush of hygiene cosmetics. Milk proteins, sugar, caffeine… Yup.
In the summer, I would do this outside, but it is currently January in Wisconsin. Not so much with being outside with wet stuff. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I started.
I could not only feel the dry bits start to come off as I scrubbed, I was finding the callus on the heels were smoothing easily.
Using the plastic netting from around oranges as the scrubby, I washed the grounds and such off, feeling the difference in where I had used the scrub. The rinse was a little chilly, but felt good.
It took a little to clean the grounds from the tub, but not any more than cleaning the tub usually takes.
This can also be used for body scrubs and I know one person who uses coffee for her hair.
Experiment with adding sugar, salt, oils and such to make your re-use of previously used items even more decadent.
Chef Rena