Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about food on this blog. Patty’s incredible raw pizza.  Tom’s trip to the Fountain.  My green curry, fresh from the garden.

I started thinking about Life a few days ago – silly little things like Trash Day beget that kind of reverie.  Every Tuesday is Trash Day around here – and there’s a certain comfort in that kind of ritual…but there’s also a melancholy.  Each Tuesday is a Tuesday I will not get back – and at my age I have more behind me than ahead of me.  I was making my mother’s corn pudding (aka ‘fried corn’) on Sunday when the melancholy hit me.   What will become of all these recipes’?  My memories?   All the people who do love these recipes are my age and our kids couldn’t care less…..sad…

And then I thought of you guys – each with your own precious memories.  And so many of them revolve around food.  Let’s face it, perfumistas are, first and foremost, hedonists.  We love scents and sensations, with a huge overlap into food and drink – you don’t have to go any further than a Facebook perfume group to see that.  There’s always some photo of something scrumptious on one of those pages.   I want those dishes.  All. Of. Them.  Preferably I would be borne on a silken barge to the preparer’s house, where there would be a lavish spread..  yeah, uh….phone hasn’t been ringing peeople!  So. in lieu of that I would be happy with the recipe.

I thought it might be fun to share some of those favorite recipes with each other.  There are so many of us, with such diverse tastes – and every time I hear of some wonderful dish or cocktail my mouth waters – so why not share them with each other?  Here’s what I want to do:  I’mo post my Mamita’s Fried Corn recipe here – but for the rest of you, you can either leave a recipe in the comments or   1.  drop a comment telling what you are thinking of sharing…then, when you have a minute, drop the recipe off at chicocoascentsationATgmail.  In about a month I will gather all of them together and put them in a Posse Taste Book and link everybody to it.  Whatever the recipe:  any sort of food or drink….a perfume concotion….whatever tickles your fancy.  Submit as many or as few as you like.  I will not be editing – I am simply compiling (will do so by ‘type’ apps, main dishes, desserts, etc)

Here’s the Fried Corn Recipe:

1 doz ears fresh corn, shucked and washed

2T unsalted butter (though my mom used Imperial Margerine – hey, it was 1960!)

2T canola oil

1 yellor onion, minced (actually just chop it fine – don’t make yourself crazy)

1 medium clove garlic, chopped fine

Salt,pepper to taste

Equipment:

A large-hole grater

A large skillet.

Okay – that’s the easy part.

Take 6 ears, cut the kernels off the ears.  reserve the cobs.

Take the other 6 ears, cut the kernels – but cut them only halfway off (in other words, slice lightly rather than deeply into the cob – the whole point of these 6 is to retain as much of the ‘milk’ as possible)

once you get all the kernels cut, take the cobs and grate the rest of the corn ‘meat’ into the kernel bowl – the first six won’t be as milky as the following 6 – at the end you should have something resembling kernel-y slush.

melt the butter into the oil in the skillet, add the onion – cook for about 1 minute or so (just to get it settled in there) add the garlic.  Cook for another minute or so.  Oil/butter mixture should be lightly bubbling.  Add the corn mixture.  Turn to medium-low.  Cook for about 20 minutes, covered.  Uncover, stir, cook another 30 minutes on medium low.  Finish cooking on low, covered, about 40 minutes more (this is a slow-cook dish).  Check to make sure it’s not scorching on the bottom (though some like the scorched bits – I’m not one of those folks).  Stir every now and then.

Corn mixture should thicken on its own – taste for doneness (do NOT ask me – you will know when it’s done – if you have it on low you don’t have to worry – whole cooking time is about 1.5 hrs, thereabouts.  I like to cook it sloooow.  Seems to keep the freshness and sweetness intact).  Salt/pepper to taste.

I’ll throw a couple more in the hoppa once I start getting yours – I know a lot of you have asked about the brownies I made for the Chicocoa Scentsation  – I’ll submit that one.  My friend Francine has given me her vaunted Francine’s Potatoes – and even though it’s over 100 degrees here, I would almost be willing to fire up the oven, these sound so incredible.

So drop a line here! Don’t forget – anything is game for this collection – if you are not a cook and you want to submit some other type of recipe, that’s fine.    I did this once for a book community and someone submitted a recipe for PAPER!  Tres cool!

xoxoxoxoA

I missed you guys!!!  But I’m back from my Costa Rica Coma, rested, relaxed and trying to figure out when I can get away next and to where. Marrakesh sounds perfect.

First, I have a drawing I was behind naming the winners on. It’s for a random grab bag of samples. Winners are:  Maureen, sunnlitt and Leslie.  To collect, click on the Contact Us over there on the left, send me your address with a brief note of what you’ve won so I can keep it straight. I will respond to that e-mail, so if you don’t get a response from me in a day or two, send again. Sometimes mail from the contact us winds up in my spam filter, and I never see it, but enough come through that I don’t go digging through them unless prompted.

When I left, I asked about smells of a place or time of year.  Costa Rica has that amazing mix of almost rot with this breezy freshness. The air is perfumed by alternating whiffs of decaying fish and crabs and fruit, with the occasional wafting of the most lush white floral.  When those go by, my nose perks up, and I start sniffing it down, hunting for where it is coming from, and I almost never find it. That’s better, it leaves mystery in life.

On top of the smells are the sounds.  The place we stay in the Osa Peninsula is Pan Dulce, and the house is right off the beach, so you get surf sounds pounding at you second by second, minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day, and it takes you into this really deep place of presence. The absence of internet, phone, tv helps, along with living in a rustic cabin with a star bat sleeping above the stairs.  Oh, you get used to it.  I’m not one for creepy crawlies, but for some reason, I feel like that’s their place, and I’m the intruder. I don’t even kill insects while there.  And then there’s the 5 a.m. howler monkey wake-up call, the afternoon macau scream-fest, as they fight over some beach almonds, then go soaring into the air like the most vivid, elegant pair of Bickersons in the world.  And in the rainy season, every night brings the rain and Tink frogs (that’s the sound they make, loud, almost like a sonar).  Rain comes sometimes as the sun goes down or waking you up in the  middle of the night or as the accompaniment to the howlers as you open your eyes in the morning.

Every time I’m there, as I get to the last day, I’m shocked it is almost over and sad, and all I can do is cheer myself with the thought of planning another visit.  The Osa Peninsula is always described as one of the most ecologically intense places on the planet. I haven’t been everywhere on the planet, but I wouldn’t argue with that statement.  Everything about it is alive and immediate and real.  It talks to a place inside me that has always known life is short –  make it worth breathing, the future is no place to make a home to live in, and everything you have lived was completely necessary.  A lot of cliches?  Well, yeah!  Life is made of up cliches and catch-phrases, but it makes them no less true.  Getting to a place where you are rolliin’ in the deep present is a place to breathe from, inhaling all the broad spectrum of scent life puts out there.

What gets you there? Do you get there?  Do you not care if you get there?    Oh, listen I had a rolfing session right after acupuncture this morning, I’m so squishy right now, it’s ridiculous, so these platitudes will be like mother’s milk for another 18 hours, then I’ll go back to giggling surlishness.

Patty

Sorry for the “punt” last week. I was in a haze of exhaustion from schlepping boxes and unpacking. Now, it’s all over, save for my 3 boxes of DVDs that have yet to find a home outside of their cardboard confines.

For those of you who read my post, In Memoriam, from last November, I have an update: My furniture, my clothing, and most of my belongings have been returned, save for the balance of my perfume collection. My aunt has chosen to hold my bottles hostage; why I don’t know, and I really can’t be bothered to call her attorney to find out. I don’t want this to turn into the “airing of grievances”, but I never in my life thought that perfume could be used as a bargaining chip. Jewelry, yes; art and antiquities, absolutely; but perfume? Come on. As Patty said yesterday, “Life happens”, and I’ve sure as hell had a lot of it happen to me lately. So, “Auntie”: enjoy my ‘fumes. I’m sure they smelled a hell of a lot nicer on me than they will on you. Oh, wait! You don’t wear perfume. Well, if onions and garlic count; that’s about as subjective as Mitsouko and Chanel No. 5.

Moving on…The bottles I do have in my possession include the 5 Comme des Garçons Incense Series scents. I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in incense lately, and for the past week I’ve been bathing in Jaisalmer, Avignon and Ouarzazate. They’re all spicy, dry and slightly sweet; just what the doctor ordered. I’ve also been cooking up a storm with curry, tofu, vegetables and rice, so I’m guessing my food cravings have caught up to my scent cravings. My three choices draw their inspiration from Morocco, India and France, so at some point, I’m going to have to find a good steak frites somewhere.

What is it about incense that captivates me so? I’m not a Roman Catholic, so the answer is not “because it reminds me of church”. It’s the warmth and calm it brings, not to mention its exoticism. I read a post on Facebook yesterday that said something to the effect of, “Oud is the new vanilla”. I must admit, I’m not particularly fond of oud; it suffocates me, and in my current digs, I’ve had the window open in -10C weather. Yes, I am sans thermostat in this place, and I can already tell that my scent choices (such as they are) will be affected by that. I’m not looking for any big bear hugs as I once did; now it’s all about gentle envelopment. Incense certainly does the trick on that count. When I was 24, I didn’t mind not having a thermostat; 20 years later, I mind. I don’t think I have to explain why.

I’m glad I still have these precious bottles in my possession. Incense is an underrated ingredient in fragrances, and usually, you can barely tell it’s there. I’m referring to the mainstream concoctions we’re all so fond of slamming. I think Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely paid a nice homage to incense, but try finding a bottle of it now. Estee Lauder Sensuous has a wee bit of it, but nothing to get too excited about. No, you have to go searching in “nicheland” to find all the really good incense scents, and I’m fine with that. Like oud, it’s not for everyone, but when you love it, you really fall for it. I’m content to let oud have its 15 minutes; maybe next year, I’ll read that incense is the new oud.

I’ll be residing here every Friday from now on. Please plan accordingly.

Do you like incense? If so, which ones are your faves?

Disclosure: The scents mentioned are from my own (diminished) collection.

Happy new year, everyone!  Thanks for making the Perfume Posse so much fun in 2010.  I’m out of town and we’re taking the weekend off.  I’ll see you Monday in 2011!

image: wikimedia commons

March

On this Christmas Eve, we’re sure everyone is running around like those proverbial chickens with their heads cut off, and the last thing on your mind is reading a perfume review. So, all the elves at the Posse decided to give you, dear readers, a Christmas present: some holiday memories from the vault. We hope you enjoy them. Merry Christmas.

ANITA: I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.  For one, it’s a whole lotta pressure for One Day – what if you wake up and you are Not In The Mood?  What do you do then?  For another, I don’t like hanging around in my pajamas – really!  I’m That Kinda Gal.  A shower-get dressed (WITH SHOES) kinda control-freak gal.  I didn’t use (used) to be like that, though?  All those photos of me and my brother, in our pjs, having a great time….

Growing up we had some great Christmases…my favorite memories are of specific ornaments – y’all have any of those wackadoo ornaments that mean nothing to anyone else in the world…but mean the world to you?  Mine was this delicate porcelain-headed angel.  She had a pink maribou skirt (cardboard underskit) and she was a thing of beauty.  My brother’s, equally beloved, angel was this incredibly cheesy styrofoam cutout with glitter…don’t ask.. mine was a thousand times better…but you couldn’t tell it by the bliss on both of our faces, as those angels were stuck on that tree.

I found my brother’s angel ornament a few years after my mom passed and I finally got around to unpacking our family Christmas decorations.  The thing was a shell of its formerly shell-like self (this was cheap styrofoam, remember? – I wonder who gave him that tacky thing – and why he loved it so) .. anyway, it was headless and had only 1/3 of a wing left…but it took me back to 1962, when the world was still all about What You Got for Christmas and did mom make enough corn pudding to go around and would there be snow – please let there be snow…and……cliche, I know, but it really was a simpler time.. I got such a kick putting it up on tree again.  Alas, it was the last year it went up on the tree.  I did say cheap styrofoam, remember?  The following year I unpacked the ornaments and ….it was foamy dust.  But hey!  it lasted nearly 45 years!  And my brother loved knowing it was on the tree, at least one more time.

Btw – that cheesy angel outlasted my chic angel by 20 years, like a mutt v. a purebred.  Maribou stuck on cardboard….somewhere, that cheesy angel is laughing his headless self right into Cheesy Angel Heaven.

MARCH: I was late arriving to the annual holiday chorale at the local Presbyterian church on Sunday.  It’s this time of year when I feel most acutely the distance between my desires for my life and reality.  The sun was just setting, it was bitterly cold, and the church was jam-packed.  I ended up sliding in near the front, two pews from the Christmas tree, next to an elderly gentleman who was already nodding off in the toasty warmth.

I was wearing Mandragore, simply because that’s what I’d put on that morning; Victoria at Bois de Jasmin and I have chatted about how we’re drawn to cologne-y scents this time of year, they seem so refreshing and hopeful.  The church had run out of concert programs so each piece was a surprise.  I settled in.  I smelled the familiar church scents from my childhood Christmases – the fir tree, candles, old wood and wax, and knew myself both blessed and happy.

Toward the end they dimmed the lights so that only the lit Christmas tree was visible.  I thought, this cannot be more perfect.  And then the choir began to sing, a capella, in the darkness, Christina Rossetti’s simple, beautiful words, rendered in the old hymn: In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…  Best Christmas present ever.

NAVA: As a Jew, I’ve never technically celebrated Christmas, but I did love going over to my next-door neighbors as a kid, in my pajamas, to watch them open their gifts. There was always one under the tree for me, and it made me feel like part of the family to sit there in my jammies watching them open their gifts. My mother would always send over some latkes with me, sharing a little bit of Hanukkah with our Italian-Catholic friends. There was nothing religious about it, and it always gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling to be included. I still think about those Christmas mornings every year, and the memories never fail to warm my heart. Then, it’s on to a movie and some Chinese food.

PATTY:  Christmas Eve growing up is when our farm world came to a stop.  Yeah, we still had cows to milk that night and twice the next day, but my parents wound down and stopped giving us extra chores, so it was a huge vacation for us.  Every year, we had all spent a couple of Saturdays at the Baptist Church (I converted to Catholicism later in life), learning our parts for the Christmas Eve program, which always included “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with lots of hissing ssssssssss’es.  And every Christmas Eve, my mother would bundle us all up, my dad would wave goodbye to us since he wouldn’t step foot into that church again — oh, there’s a story there.  He used to go every week as a kid, and one Sunday when he was probably 13 or 14 he and his friends and probably a brother or four were sitting in the back, someone farted – not him, oddly enough – and he laughed, as did most of the other boys. His uncle was the preacher, stopped whatever barn-burner sermon he was on, and said, “Dick, since you can’t behave with your friends, you’ll need to come up front and sit with your mom and dad.”  He was mortified, but figured he deserved it. But when Uncle Curly didn’t call out any of the other boys who had laughed, he just got mad. He had an overdeveloped sense of justice and was willing to do the time for his crimes, but wanted to make sure everyone else did theirs.  He swore from that moment on he would never set foot in that church again. And he didn’t, except for funerals of his parents and brothers and sisters and, finally, his own funeral.

So he stayed behind while all five of us kids and mom went to that little country church out in the middle of nowhere. The real tree they had scraped the ceiling, and the smell of pine was everywhere.  Back then they had those bubbling oil candles on there – I think at one point they had real lit candles! on there – and big ornaments, and underneath the tree was what seemed like a mountain of presents – one for every child in the Christmas program.  And when we were done, they’d pass out the presents, and also pass out a little brown bag of goodies – milk chocolate stars, orange slices, peanuts, walnuts, ribbon candy.  They always gave us one extra for “Uncle Dick.”

When we arrived back home, throwing off our coats, running into the house, we’d give Dad his little bag, which he was hollering for when the door opened, just to make sure we didn’t make off with it. He’d paw through it, pulling out the orange slices, which he loved, and the peanuts. Then we’d each have to hand him our sack, after we’d taken out the stuff we really wanted, and he’d take out the peanuts and things he wanted that we didn’t care about.  This took the rest of the evening as we happily chomped through our Christmas treats, told stories of who had screwed up during the Christmas program, laughed, until we fell into bed, waiting for 4 a.m. when the house would be alseep and we could sneak out into the living room and start unwrapping presents.

But those two days, my parents were both soft and sweet – it was like Christmas waved a magic wand over them, and no matter how little we had, how few or many presents we could afford that year, they would set aside all the worries of the farm and never-ending work and stress.  It was their gift to us.

Merry Christmas!!!

TOM: Christmas in my family was a Big Deal. Not so much about the presents, since my parents didn’t believe in giving extravagant gifts on that holiday. We didn’t get bikes on Christmas (which since it was December in New England would have been more torture than tribute), we got model cars (me), Barbie detritus (sis), and radio-related stuff (big brother). Luckily they didn’t give necessities as gifts the way that some of my neighbors did: there were no passive-aggressively wrapped packets of underwear masquerading as Christmas presents at my house, thanks. The big deal was about the decorating. The tree wasn’t real. My mother I think didn’t want the mess of a real one. In my re-written family history I tend to paint her as a tireless defender of the forest, standing up to the needless slaughter of conifers by using and reusing a fake tree every year. Surely that had to be the reason since the particular tree in question was basically a thick green-painted wooden pole into which different sized individual branches were placed, a process that took about four hours. Of course this also meant that at the year end the tree had to be carefully packed back up, lest the various lengths of branches got mixed up making next years set-up like a jigsaw puzzle that’s all one color. Other boxes of ornaments and lights were brought down from the attic tested and inspected, new ornaments and light strands were added as old ones wore out or the theme for this year was changed. The tree could be all blue lights and tinsel one year, white lights and red ornaments another, colored lights and hodgepodge a third. What never varied was the placement: in the large picture window in the family room facing the small park on the corner that lent out street its name. The eaves of the two porches were strung with lights, electric candles were in all the street-side windows and I’m sure if she could have engineered it that would have been a Santa ho-ho-hoing on the roof. The first thing anyone cresting the hill on Pine Street would see was our house, blinking blinding holiday cheer. People made a point to drive by. There were also parties, open houses for the neighbors with cocktails and the particularly lethal eggnog we were allowed just a taste of, mostly to keep us from ever asking to again. New neighbors would grudgingly accept a cup, taste that it had more bourbon in it than the state of Kentucky and happily quaff; we thought it disgusting. It was the 70′s and people still drank, and a small town so not many needed to drive.

Christmas morning was sheer torture. We had to get up and eat breakfast before opening our gifts; everything in it’s proper order, thank you. Standards, you know. I think it might also have been punishment for having previously opened our (well, mine certainly) gifts. My parents and my siblings and I had a running, unspoken years-long war over the idea that gifts should be a surprise. When I became about 9 or so I started to stealthily unwrap my presents and wrap them back up rather adroitly. Just one end, so I could see what it was. The next year preventative measures were taken; the gifts were double wrapped. Then boxed up and wrapped. Then wrapped and hidden in the attic. One memorable year, they were secreted someplace in the house and despite searching every corner of two attics, 15 closets and every room in the cellar we were stumped. Until it occurred to me: the car. The wagon was out- all open space. But Mom’s Oldsmobile? Massive trunk, closed up. Of course we didn’t have the keys to that massive trunk. Dad and I used to play chess and in my head I heard “Check”. But in one of those rare moments as in chess where you realize your opponent on the board has made a fatal error, I tried the driver’s door. It was unlocked, as it would be in a closed garage in New England in the 70′s. Then I tried the glove box. Unlocked, giving access to the shiny black button that popped the trunk for you, something Dad forgot. Check and mate.

Sadly between Thanksgiving and Christmas the next year my father had a fatal heart attack while on business in Germany. Token gifts were bought, but until my mother died and the house was sold that tree never left the attic. My last several Christmases were spent with the family of my godchild, reliving decorating the tree (real this time), making the over-the-years more hilariously complicated holiday cards (so complicated one year they were finally in the mail in February) and invariably receiving a 7am phone call to please come over now because said godchild wants to open gifts but refuses to do so until I am present. It’s the only 7am phone call I’m ever happy to get.

I’m even finally old enough to enjoy the eggnog…