TV Series Inspired DIY Jalapeno Muscle Rub

If you’re a member of Netflix then you know that they’ve really stuck to their guns about creating their own Netflix Original TV Series. And everyone of these series, whether you loved them or hated them, have been brilliantly made, captivating and have even included some well known actors and actresses. Not only did Netflix Originals end up with fourteen Emmy nominations for 2013, but their new additions to film are really making statements and could further change how people choose to receive and pay for television as more and more people are giving up their overpriced cable and satellite tv subscriptions for Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime Instant Video, and boxes like the Roku player (I love mine!) that offer free movie channels like Crackle. Original series include House of Cards, Hemlock Grove and their newest series from the creator of Weeds, Orange is the New Black.

Personally I love Orange is the New Black although my boyfriend can’t stand to watch it. Orange is the New Black is both a comedic and heartbreaking series that takes place in a women’s prison and stars the character, Piper Chapman, as a regular woman who’s play it fast and dangerous past comes back to basically bite her in the rear. She lands herself in prison as a result of plea bargain in order to pay her debt to society.

One of the interesting facts about Piper is that she is a soapmaker in which she and her partner, who is married and about to have a baby, have just gotten their line of soaps accepted into Barney’s. Due to Piper’s arrest and incarceration however, their success and fame via Barney’s seems to have been put on hold. In an effort to make good on and insult Piper made during her first day in prison in which she insulted the prison food prepared by the head cook and fellow prisoner, Red, that led to her being starved out for over a week, Piper falls back on her bath and body diy knowledge to make a rub for Red’s sore back consisting of cocoa butter – that she traded for with a chunk of her hair to be used in another inmate’s weave – and jalapenos that were gifted to her by another inmate suffering from a crush. While Piper has to “manually” chew the jalapenos and spit them out to concoct her sore muscle rub – which I found inventive but also pretty much gross – it does win her meals in the cafeteria again. It’s that event that led to a DIY for this jalapeno rub on Free People’s Building 25 blog.

Lucky for you their version of the DIY Jalapeno Muscle Rub Recipe doesn’t involve chewing the jalapenos up first. Instead they combined cocoa butter and the seeds from a jalapeno. I suspect they didn’t use straight cocoa butter since cocoa butter is a solid at room temperature, and instead used a store bought cocoa butter “cream” that includes ingredients other the cocoa butter. If you’d like to make your own cocoa butter body butter that’s a spreadable semi-solid at room temperature, I recommend using one part cocoa butter, one part shea butter and one part carrier oil. Melt them together, then run the seeds through a food processor, stir them into the melted butter and allow to cool. As Piper used the whole pepper and not just the seeds, you could run the entire jalapeno pepper through a food processor and stir it into the butter.

While I suffer from body aches and pains regularly I’m still more than a little frightened to give this recipe a try. I am super sensitive to pepper heat in foods and the thought of this ending up in my eyes or on more delicate skin areas is enough to persuade me not to try this out. The burn of pepper isn’t easy to get rid of. There would also be variables as the intensity of the heat based on the proportions of pepper versus cocoa body butter used and the heat of the particular peppers used. I’ve found that the heat of some peppers, even of the same type, can vary in intensity.

Should you be daring enough to try out this recipe, please let me know how your jalapeno pepper rub turns out. In the meantime I recommend using essential oils of clove, black pepper, nutmeg, ginger and/or cinnamon to create a warming rub for aches and pains as 1-2% of your recipe. Or up to 3% if limited to a specific area of your body. Using avocado, carrot seed, coconut or argan oils for the oil in body butter will help to hydrate and moisturize if needed as we begin to head into cooler weather.