Oh, for Pete’s sake!  I cannot believe I did this.  See, I am stupid.  There.  I said it.  I switched the Swapmania dates in what’s left of my mind, putting it on today as opposed to FRIDAY – WHICH IS WHEN IT WILL BEGIN AND WHICH IS WHAT WE HAD ALL AGREED UPON.

sigh.  le sigh.  el sigh.

I’m feeling persackly like this  this image is from one of the funniest threads I’ve read – evah – on Basenotes

So….since I am woefully unprepared with a post, let me tell you what’s going on in my world.

a.  I am falling in love.  With Jubilation 25. Again.  And again, it’s thanks to the body cream.  I’d always admired it but from a respectful distance -  I wore it often but just couldn’t seem to unwrap all the layers.  The body cream is the perfect gateway drug to the perfume.  As with Epic, it allows my mind plenty of time to investigate the nuances.  For those of you who are a bit overwhelmed by the line’s opulence but know you would love it...if only….the body products really are the way to go.

b.  Ditto Frederic Malle’s Iris Poudre.  Couldn’t stand the perfume.  Then I tried the body cream.  Now I’m buying both.  Just as soon as I hit the Lottery.

What I’m reading:  Well!  I’m all over the place, since my bestie dragged me kicking and screaming into the New Millennium, getting me a KINDLE for Christmas and loading the little bugger with 300 books!  Malcom Gladwell’s  The Tipping Point, Molly Birnbaum’s Season to Taste are currently occupying my eyeballs, to great delight.

What I’m Cooking:  Not a damn thing.  But I did promise you guys the homemade Hostess cupcakes recipe but I can’t find it right this minute and the clock is ticking so here is the recipe for my green curry, which is about the only thing I can taste these days anyway.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Yield: 1 cup (enough for 1 large curry)

Ingredients:

• 1 stalklemongrass minced OR 3 Tbsp. prepared frozen or bottled lemongrass (available at Asian stores) – you can also used dried (I get mine from The Spice House to use as an emergency backup – if you do use the dried, put it in a tea ball or some muslin and steep it in a little bit of simmering water or stock – otherwise you’ll get these gritty bits in the curry)
• 4-5 green chilies, sliced (Thai green chilies OR jalapeno) – I use jalapenos because I grow them and the smaller the hotter, as you prolly know.  I like it HAWT, so I use a lot of little ones.
• 1 shallot, sliced, OR 4 Tbsp. minced purple onion
• 4-5 cloves garlic
• 1 thumb-size piece of galangal OR ginger, thinly sliced (or you can just chop it up and throw it in the FC with the rest of the stuff, like I do)
• 1 cup chopped fresh coriander/cilantro leaves & stems
• 1/2 cup fresh basil
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. ground white pepper (available in most supermarket spice aisles)
• 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
• 3 Tbsp. fish sauce; Vegetarians: substitute 1 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tsp. shrimp paste (available at Asian stores); Vegetarians: substitute 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 Tbsp. lime juice
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• 3-4 Tbsp. coconut milk (enough to blend ingredients together) – if you are not around some coconut milk a bit of unsweetened, shredded coconut in either regular milk or some chicken broth will do the trick just fine.  When I’m in a huge hurry I just throw all this stuff in a blender/food processor with some store-bought pesto and Blam-ola !!! The perfect curry sauce.

Preparation:

1. Place all ingredients in a food processor, chopper, or blender.
2. Process well to form a fragrant Thai green curry paste. Taste-test it for salt and spice. If too salty, add a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon juice. Add more chili for more heat. Your curry paste is now ready to be used. You can bottle up any leftovers and keep it in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Freeze thereafter. ENJOY!

So that’s my quick story.

What’s yours?  What are you wearing today?  Reading today?  Eating/cooking/drooling over today?

by “Don’t Panic!  March Will Be Back” Musette

March is finishing up some stuff that is taking up 10,080 minutes this week so I’m stepping into her Size Sixes (I’m 5’9″ tall and …well, let’s just say those boots iz squallin’!!!)

I lived in an urban environment for most of my adult life and never gave much thought to the good ol’ days – most cosmopolitan areas are constantly shifting so you don’t have much time to mourn What Was – besides, I have a really fragile visual memory that is only now allowing me to recall the visual past – I’m one of those people ror whom, if you knock down a building and replace it with another, in the time it takes for that new building to go up I’ve forgotten what was previously there (for awhile I’d forgotten that the Palmolive Building in Chicago still existed (I only saw it from Lake Shore Drive as a child, with its famous Lindbergh Beacon).  Sad, but true….but these past 5 years, writing for the blog and living in a rather static environment, has allowed my skittering mind to settle and reflect on a lot of my early sensory experiences.  Here are a few of them:

Thinking about the Palmolive Building got me thinking about toothpaste (don’t ask) – when I was a kid we used Ipana, which I loved (great taste!!) – then my mom switched us to Crest (ew).  I miss Ipana.  It always smelled – and tasted – like that intriguing Beeman’s Gum which I could swear came in tablet form, like Chiclets.  Am I making that up?  Anyway, I love the smell of both of those.   Does Ipana still exist? 

Nervine.  My mother suffered from depression and spent most of her waking moments in a otc-induced fog, to keep from killing everyone in sight.  This was in the 60s, so there was no Cymbalta – in fact, we’d not yet accepted depression as a chemical imbalance.  You had ‘nerves’, if you were a woman, and took ‘powders’.  My mother took Nervine.  We all knew to get the hell out of the way when she pulled that glass tube out of the medicine cabinet – but I always was fascinated by that glass tube, with those tablets…because they FIZZED!  I would peek around the bathroom door (I was 6) and listen for the plop! and fzzzzz!  and once, even sneaked my nose in the glass when she turned her back (it tickled).   To this day I have a fondness for effervescent tablets because in my house those tablets were a mysterious signal that everything would level out in an hour or so and I would get my mother back.  And dinner.

A-1 Salve (Wizard Products Co, Chicago).  Apparently this company got binked on several occasions in the late 40s by the JAMA Bureau of Investigations and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misrepresentation (false claims!  can you IMAGINE?  what a concept!)  – but what did that matter?  My folks LOVED this salve, reputed to cure everything from eczema to ringworm and the corresponding sulphur soap, which purportedly killed everything in its path.  The petroleum base and rotten-egg sulphur smell equaled HEALTHY TIMES in our household.  I came upon half a boxtop, when I was clearing out my pop’s old meds cabinet and those smells came roaring back, just from the visual!  I’ve forgotten the scent of 90% of the ‘fumes I reviewed in the past 4  months – but A-1 salve?  Nevah!

Poly-vi-Sol. Brown bottle with bulb dropper.  3 drops on the tongue in the morning.  Is there any Boomer alive who doesn’t remember the smell and that weird B-vitamin taste?  But I don’t remember it smelling or tasting bad – just very vitamin-y.  And all my peers seem to remember it similarly.  Funnily, this current generation of moms (at least those on the blogs) seem to find it VILE!  Did they change something?  Again, for me, this is one of those ‘everything is totally okay in my world’ smells, unlike Cod Liver Oil, which smells like terror.  To this day.  Fish Oil tabs are my Cross To Bear now.

So….what are your Good Ol’ Days smells?  Mine seem to be all about dosing and slathering but ymmv – Perfume?  Food?  Patent Medicines?  Housecleaning supplies?? (my household madeleine  is Sprayway Glass Cleaner)  – would love to hear about them!  I have a buncho samples to give away, including Givenchy’s Dahlia Noir – I was going to review it but Robin @ NST did it way better here  - no reason to reinvent that wheel.  It’s worth a sniff and I’ll throw in a couple of other samps to a few winners via random.org

by Musette

So……I’m still having sinii issues but the saline flushes are helping a lot.  Forget the neti pot.  Since my biggest problem is the post-nasal ickola, I just snort the stuff like a walrus, to clear out all that schtuff!   TMI, I’m soooo sure but, hey!  y’all are family and family gets to share the good, the bad and the goober.

Perfumes are still a bit weird, with the exception of some heavy hitters like Carnal Flower and Tribute Attar, both of which could blast through the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.  The heavier Amouages and Malles have withstood this long sinus siege – my biggest fear is that, in my altered state, I might’ve terrified some Uninitiated with an over-application.  Nobody’s keeled over, so far….

But we’re not here to talk about nasal ick.  Or over-application of the big guns.  We’re here to talk about Candles! which is something I normally don’t go on about, as they usually aggravate my sinuses.  But you all know my love for the Malles.  And he has three new ones.  Let’s start with Marius and Jeannette:  sunny days at a sidewalk cafe in St Tropez.  Or Choo-Choo Charlie.  Much depends upon your frame of reference.  I barely get to Chicago these days, let alone the South of France, so Good ‘n Plenty must be my immediate memory trigger.  Doesn’t matter, both are fun though the idea of sitting in the South of France AND eating Good ‘n Plenty would set me up just fine… ….anyhoo…Marius and Jeannette is one of the new Malle candles. I don’t know if he is referencing the film or the restaurant (or both) and I don’t care.   It’s a blast!  Really.  There’s no other way to describe it.  First sniff conjures up a hot, sunny day (anywhere – doesn’t matter) and a cool, refreshing Pastis, the ubiquitous anise drink of the Riviera.  Bruno Jovanovic created this (and the two below) for Malle’s Editions de Parfums and I must say I’m a bit surprised, given that I’m not a fan of the perfumes I associate with him (Lady Million? Blue Rush?) – but perhaps his previous clients have not allowed his talent to transcend their marketing briefs.   He’s fortunate that Malle has no one to please but himself and has such discerning taste and appreciation for the perfumers’ art and talent.  Under M. Malle’s aegis Bruno Jovanovic has created, in these candles, some truly remarkable scents.  I actually got the giggles! with Marius & Jeannette!  Fizzy, floral licorice, with a hint of salt-tinged citrus for that sunny sunny, summer day!  Man, I sure could use one of those right now.

Chez Monsieur.  M. Malle has long averred that home fragrances aren’t and shouldn’t be sexy (taking this right from the charming new brochure, though I have also heard him say it directly).  I’m not exactly sure what he means by that, as I would happily scent my home with Carnal Flower, which I consider to be tres sexy!  But he goes on to say that ” the scent of a men’s den is a slight exception to this rule, as one feels, when smelling it, the presence of its proprietor amongst the precious woods, tobacco and books.”

Obviously he has never been to my house.  El O and the dogs own-occupy the den.  The scents of those proprietors, relaxing in all their Guy Glory, is…well, it’s worlds away from the dens of M. Malle’s milieu.  I like his version better – and I know what he means.  Anybody who has ever had an elegant man wrap his coat or jacket around you (think Thomas Crown at the Met, with whatshername, when he plays her with the keys – remember that? )….that frisson when the aura of ‘male’ meets its complement – I suspect that is what M. Malle is referencing.  And he got it totally right in Chez Monsieur.   I think of this as a decidedly urbane scent – I can’t imagine having this candle in my house – it’s not fabulous enough (the house, I mean).  Really!  This is has a very elegant, metropolitan feel to it – or, perhaps the country house library of a sophisticated man who knows himself.  Hearty country squires and arrivistes need not apply.  This is probably the first of M. Malle’s candles that is aspirational in tone (I find all the others ‘friendlier’ in tone).   If I ever get back to civilization I will put this candle in my library.

Notre Dame left me cold.  Not its fault.  Mine.  I was convent raised.  BVM nuns, the meanest in the land.   I am lapsed to within an inch of my life.  Cathedrals give me hives.  Somebody with fewer issues with the Catholic Church will have to revisit this one.  I got a whiff of gorgeous frankincense before I veered away from the candle’s austere chilliness.   But here’s a fun fact:  Frederic Malle was an altarboy!  See?  The things you learn on the Posse!

I forgot to get the persack prices for these three but Malle candles run from $80 – $140 so fall in love accordingly.  When I have this sort of Discretionary Simoleanism again I will probably indulge in this line – they are on par with other niche candle lines, they are incredibly well-crafted and – most important – they don’t make my sinuses ache.  Hat Trick for Musette!

photo of Pastis Marius tray: courtesy my-french-neighbor.com

drawings, courtesy  Frederic Malle brochure – aren’t they adorable?

        by The Mystified Musette

So…I’m still a little stuffy…okay, I’m still JAMMED in the sinii, though I’m wearing Cartier Declaration today and can parse out the bulk of the notes.  Not sure if that’s because I already know what it’s supposed to smell like, so even the sketchiest of outlines could be filled in by scent-memory …or can I actually smell it?  How can one tell?  Like…hey, do you ever wonder if what you see is what another person sees?  Like the color ‘blue’…is that all just a giant psychic agreement amongst us or  do we actually all ‘see’ the same basic shade(s) of color that we agree, in words, that we see.  Can I ever know what ‘blue’ means to you?  And why on earth am I yarking ON about that, you might ask?

Well, you might ask…but I sure can’t answer.  That’s not what today’s post is about anyway, though it is an intriguing question.    Okay – here’s today’s musings.  I was thinking about ‘light’ and ‘fresh’ scents and what they tend to represent in writing and, to a certain extent, to society still today.  This came about recently when I read A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (thanks, S, for introducing me to Inspector Gamache!!!)…anyway, in the story one of the policemen is remembering his time spent in hospital, where he lay near death.  He compares the scent of the woman who sat at his bedside with that of his wife (they are separated)…sounds like the bedsitter is wearing Fresh Lemon Sugar and the wife is wearing Opium.  Wife loses.  He actually reminisces that he would not have come back to that cold hand and that perfume (I am paraphrasing, because I don’t have the book to reference – but it’s a close’un).  The whole paragraph is a paean to light, citrus fragrance being equated with fresh, youthful Life.

Remember the old (as in REALLY old) Harlequin Romance books?  The ones from the 60s and 70s, where the heroine always looked like a Breck Girl and the declaration of love was always just a kiss (I remember reading a Harlequin Presents and actually blushed! when they actually had…uh….you know  (hey, I was 11 when the first ‘Presents’ came out – and I was a slow, sheltered child)..anyway! back to the thought at hand…those girls also wore lemony perfumes.  Or they smelled like lilacs.  The Mean Girl always wore a heavy oriental – I call it the Miss Bingley Syndrome (think of the fabulous Anna Chancellor in her heavy Oriental silks and turbans, contrasted with Jennifer Ehle’s fresh, white gowns and simple coiffures) – and the Bingley always loses.

Okay…the stage is set.  in all types of fiction, lemon and very light florals seem to be equated with good, virtue, youth… But that’s not the part I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to talk about the fact that probably 90% of these books, if not more…are written by women!  So now I’m wondering, are we perpetrating the notion of ‘good’  = ‘fresh’ and “heavy/complex” = “bad’ ?   Not that that’s a judgement call on my part – more curiosity than anything.  I love citrus as much as I love incense – but I wonder how this came to be?  Is it a throwback from when heavy perfumes were used to mask illness, decay and body odor – since a light lemon fragrance wouldn’t do the trick, would the wearing of that type of fragrance signal health?  This is obviously not a scientific query – heck, I don’t even know if I’m right about this but it sure reads like it to me.   My ‘findings’ are also not substantiated by anything other than my ramshackle reading habits; it’s certainly not from any serious commentary on what I’m wearing – guys usually limit their perfume remarks to ‘you smell nice’.    El O couldn’t care less what I wear, as long as it’s not Yatagan and as long as I’m not wearing too much of Whatever Isn’t Yatagan.   Hub #1 preferred greeny/limey things but he’s a Gin Gimlet man so that one is easy.  Most guys I know (GUYS.  Not perfumistos) are in El O’s camp – unless they have a particular dislike of a note/scent they don’t care as long as it’s not overdone.

So….did we start  this, laydeez?   Do we secretly believe that lemons equal virginal freshness and that, when all is over, including the shouting, virginal freshness wins out?   Obviously, if we’re mating, the younger and fresher the ovum the better the reproductive chances, yeah…but does that potential for fecundity translate somehow to Fresh Lemon Sugar? Could that be the explanation for the variation on that theme, the ubiquitous fruity-floral, so beloved by young women?  What do  you think?  Do you care?  See, this is what happens when my sinuses go out and I can’t review perfume.  The mind wanders.  Faaaar afield.

And what would be the equivalent for men?  What would the Harlequin Hero wear?  (I always wanted to write a sequel to the Harlequin Romance, where all the heroines and heroes were invited to some shindig in a giant ballroom – but most of the spouses got mixed up and ended up going home with somebody else’s husband/wife..because if you’ve read more than one of those books you know that all the men are tall, muscular and dashing….like a roomful of Errol Flynn pirates or something.  Just imagine trying to pick our your Hero in a ballroom full of Heroes!   All wearing_______________?

heeheee!

I’d love to know what you all think (women and men).  Don’t hesitate to tell me if you think I’m crazy.  You won’t be the first, I promise!!!

photo:  my local library has HUNDREDS of these.

by No-Nose-Musette

First, I want to thank all of you who offered remedies, doctors, possible reasons, etc for my anosmic, tasteless self.  I am still somewhat taste-free (okay! you in the back row!  stop snickering!)….and smells are limited to what my soft palate can translate.  I’ve mostly given up on chocolate for the time being – it’s just too ridiculous.  I can smell  parts of most perfumes these days, just not in the nuanced fashion I would prefer (for example, L’Heure Fougueuse smells like straight green hay all the way through which, for that price point, is a Total Fail.  So back in the drawer for you, li’l filly! )  Rose is coming through loud and clear – but it’s making me nauseous unless it’s cut with something smoky.  If I weren’t so damn old (and El O so damn snipped) I would suspect pregnancy.  Luckily that is not possible, unless Gabriel came down and left a note that fell off the desk or something….if you see 3 guys on camels heading towards my house, could you ask them to make sure the frankincense and myrrh are perfume-grade?  Thanks!

But enough about my ailin’ self.  Let’s talk about collection.  Since I cannot smell or taste much these days I have been amusing myself with reorganizing my perfume armoire …and reading more of Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife.  In one chapter, she writes of the zookeepers saving the collection of the noted entomologist/collector Szymon Tenenbaum – read this intriguing paragraph:

An insect collection is a silent oasis in the noisy clamor of the world, isolating phenomena so that they can be seen undistractedly.  In that sense, what is being collected are not the bugs themselves but the deep attention of the collector……”collection” is a good word for what happens, because one becomes collected for a spell, gathering up one’s curiosity the way rainwater collects.

I thought that was  just so…lyrical.  And it holds true for any type of beloved collection, I think. though perhaps edible/wearable collections are a bit different.  I see my collection of perfumes as a living thing, mostly to be used.  But it isn’t always thus.  Sometimes I get caught up in the collection itself, rather than the parts.  I ogle the Cartier jewel-tone boxes that house Mme Laurent’s exquisite creations, the matte black boxes from Malle…the variations of elegance that is Dior and Chanel…and it’s time like that that I wonder if I’m in love with perfume or the collecting of perfume.  This isn’t a judgement call, btw – I think there is room for any number of reasons why folks collect.  But reading that paragraph made me wonder about why people collect – and what they do with their collections.  My own perfume collection is modest by some measures, extravagant by others – and the reasons range from love of a certain fragrance or House, spanning eras, to the educational, which I reference-spritz so I can yark about it here but would never wear as mine own.  And sometimes, like an insect collector, well…..sometimes I get an endorphin rush just cataloguing and organizing all the bottles and decants and samples.  Reorganizing haphazardly placed decants and figuring out the best way to catalogue and store little 1ml samples so I can find them easily (each system is carefully thought out  but like any interactive system, is reliant upon the vagaries of human nature.  I am a medfly.  Today’s system has no defense against tomorrow’s ADD)…it’s very calming to lay out a bunch of decants on a towel and, once again, try to figure out the most efficient way to organize them – should they go with their FullBottle brethren or should they repose in the ammo box section……at that point the fragrances themselves are meaningless; it’s all about the collection.

So how do you look at your collection?  It doesn’t have to be a huge one, btw.  If you have 2 bottles and a handful of samples, you have a collection.  But what gives you the endorphin rush or the zen place?  Do you get jazzed about the organization?  Or could you not care less – it’s all about the juice and you don’t care if 31RC is laying up against that bottle of Angel.  Or do you, like me, dance back and forth between those two?  Or someplace entirely different?

visual: en.wikipedia.org

excerpt from:  The Zookeeper’s Wife – A War Story, by Diane Ackerman