A friend of mine recently gave me one heck of a present, a massage.  So I made my reservation and at the appointed time I introduced myself to a lovely young woman and proceeded to get undressed.  She offered me the choice of deep tissue or hot stones and naturally I answered “Yes please!”  After an invigorating deep tissue massage over my shoulders and the length of my hamstrings she switched to the stones.  The stones were kept in a crock pot of water at 125 F, rubbed in oil then she placed two of them on my lower back and the other two were slowly glided over my hamstrings.  Wow… Great stuff.  So when I got dressed I lifted the stones out of the pot and took a look at them.  Basalt lava stones that had been sanded down.  Later I looked online for a set and Damn! $50.00 for rocks!  A couple of days later I was driving past the Reedy River so I pulled off and went stone hunting.  Now I need to say right now that I am not a massage therapist, I just now how to make a certain woman happy so if you want a real massage may I suggest this place.

The river water felt pretty good on a 95 degree day

I pulled out some stones that had been worn fairly smooth, I believe these are a mix of slate and limestone

Then I set the stones out in the sun to dry for a day, then boiled them for several minutes to kill anything nasty, dried them out again then got to work with some sandpaper. The lower the number, the heavier the grit. I started with 80, then moved up to 100 then finished with 150 grit

I opened up a cold beer then got busy

After about 20 minutes of sanding…

Eventually I had three good looking rocks that were fairly smooth

I have a small crock pot that I used to use at the restaurant and you can buy good massage oil at that French department store, Tar-Jhay.

I used a kitchen thermometer to monitor the temperature of the water, Placed the three stones in and about three hours later (at massage time for Mrs. Malik) it read 155. Yikes! So I pulled the stones out and let them sit until they were very warm to the touch. Remember to rub the stones with oil prior to placing them on anyone’s soft skin 😉 The next time I removed the stones at 138 and it was perfect, still hot but the right temperature for rubbing with oil.  Add a nice glass of wine and you’ve got a memorable evening…any wonder why we’ve been married for 25 years?

Author: ChefJohn

Cook without tattoo, writer without a pen