A Fruit Salad, and a Little Off the Top

What do quail eggs, bananas, green tea and cantaloupe have to do with your hair?

Everything, if you take your hair to Tina Cassaday Creations’ Beverly Hills salon.

With such treatments and products as Orange Creamsicle Conditioner and Cantaloupe Cocktail, the salon’s list of offerings reads like the menu at a health food restaurant.

Cassaday mixed her first “fruit fix” for hair in 1980 and now counts some of Los Angeles’ highest-profile celebrities as clients. Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Jack Nicholson and Jamie Lee Curtis all pay up to $425 a gallon for fresh-mixed hair smoothies, she says.

“It’s amazing what hair responds to,” says Cassaday. “Fruit is a wonderful food to eat, but it’s also a wonderful food for the hair. People love it.”

People without $425 for hair potions can buy the essence of the fruit shakes in 4-ounce tubes for as little as $22.50 each. Cassaday whips up her fruity concoctions on site in a large blender and personally mashes them into the scalps of salon patrons.

She also creates a special spray--trademarked “Hair Scents”--designed to both moisturize and perfume your locks. And there is plenty of fruit in Cassaday’s lipsticks--Fruit Lips--which are heated up at the counter and mixed with butter and exotic fresh fruit oils before being molded into sticks and lip pots.

Nicholson’s favorite Banana-Banana conditioner is one of the salon’s biggest sellers for those with less hallowed heads. It’s blended fresh with bananas, ginseng, coconut-sesame oil, vitamins A, E and K, apples and sugar cane.

Curtis’ favorite is the Orange Creamsicle Conditioner, according to Cassaday, who spikes the citrus smoothie with vitamin A, keratin protein, ginseng, awapuhi, kukui nuts and a special mix of sugar cane, apple and green tea leaves.

“Feeding your hair is as important as cleaning it properly,” says Cassaday, whose salon also offers the usual menu of hair color treatments (from $225) and cuts ($60). “People like pretty bottles and suds, but hair likes vitamins, minerals, oils and other natural substances.”

According to Cassaday’s hair-care philosophy, the topical application of vitamins and minerals can stimulate hair growth, improve scalp circulation, make hair look and feel cleaner, stronger and healthier.

Some of Cassaday’s recipes are easy to whip up at home. For a Cantaloupe Cocktail, she suggests mixing wheat germ oil with lecithin, plain yogurt, half a peeled cantaloupe, and one quail or duck egg “for protein.”

To help your tresses look and feel fuller, Cassaday suggests combining blackstrap molasses with honey, which, she says, is “thick with trace minerals.”

Cassaday says her newest creation--Fruit Lips--is poised for international expansion. Her wands and pots of orchard-inspired lip colors in such hues as Coral Guava, Ginger Orange and Melon Kiwi will soon be carried at some of Britain’s trendiest lipstick boutiques.

Personalized Fruit Lips are created in combinations of such yummy ingredients as coconut, champagne, nutmeg and vanilla, and can be ordered by calling (800) HAIRBYT.

At the request of an associate of the pop group Spice Girls, Cassaday has created a new Fruit Lips flavor she calls Spice. Although she won’t reveal the exact recipe, Cassaday does say the lipstick has nutmeg, cinnamon and colorful flecks of various spices.

“What’s great about Fruit Lips,” giggles the diminutive Cassaday, “is that the taste goes on the lips, not the hips.”

A sentiment recently echoed by one of L.A.’s most popular restaurateurs. During a recent hair treatment at Cassaday Creations, the famous chef quipped, “Tina, your salon smells just like my restaurant. But without the calories.”

Nature Mist Screen Protector

A natural, light, spray-on mist designed to protect hair from the sun.

In a blender, mix:

1 pint purified water

1 tbsp. wheat germ oil

1 tbsp. aloe vera gel

1/8 tsp. lecithin granules

Transfer to a spray-mist bottle and apply once every two hours to hair.

Banana Whip

Created as a moisturizer for dry or chemically treated hair.

In a blender, mix:

1 tbsp. plain yogurt

1 tsp. wheat germ oil

1/8 tsp. lecithin granules

Squirt of honey

1 tsp. sweetened condensed milk

1/2 banana

Brush on hair in downward direction (“with the cuticle”). Wrap scalp in plastic bag for 45 minutes and rinse thoroughly. If split ends are a problem, add 1/4 of an avocado to mixture.

Tip: If you have permed hair that seems extra dry, add 1 quail egg or 1/2 regular egg to the mixture. Rinse thoroughly with lukewarm water.