Resolved: food aromas will be reserved for food

[Dave the Cook]

When did we decide that soap couldn't smell like soap and instead had to smell like lemons, oranges or cherry blossoms? What's up with furniture polish (I know, Lemon Pledge has been around for a while, but still)? Who said it was okay to fill my (or anyone's) car with the scent of a fresh-cut Granny Smith?

For a while there, I couldn't face a fresh lemon -- all it brought to mind was dishwashing detergent. These days, thanks to an immersion program comprising gin, Maraschino liqueur and lemon juice, in conjunction with a thorough sequestration of cleaning supplies, I'm on my way to recovery. But I'm very careful about what comes into the house now -- things need to smell like what they are, and not like fruit salad or a central Flroida orchard. Unless, of course, they are fruit salad or citrus.

No one should have to face this olfactory tyranny. Ammonia is strong and sharp, and swears that things have been scoured. Bleach tweaks the nose with the hopeful sanitation of hospitals, and memories that recall the nurseries of the (thankfully) obsessive and compulsive. These are the smells of clean.

You can't steal my food to appease your noses. If, one day, I pass a shelf bearing "SOS Pads with New Pan-Roasted Ribeye Scent," I'm hunting you down. And you'll know what scouring means.

[srhcb]

Then how about food that smells like something else?

For instance; coffee that smells like diesel exhuaust on a cool morning? Or sponge cake that smells like a clean baby?

SB

[Priscilla]

Wait, so no vanilla-scented candles?

Oh all right, I've been 100% beeswax for a few years now, haven't I.

But I know what you mean.

[Pierogi]

OMG, that artifical vanilla scent in candles-slash-personal care items-slash air fresheners is the absolute most putrid smell EVER ! If REAL vanilla smelled like that I don't think I'd ever bake anything or eat vanilla ice cream ever again.

PEEEEEEEEE-YUKE !

[Milagai]

Years ago, when we went camping in one of the US national

parks which had a lot of bears, we got lectured on toiletries

along with food for bear safety.

The fruit smelling toiletries attracted bears same as food did..

so our soaps etc had to be stored in bearproof containers...

I wouldn't care to encounter a grumpy bear, with a mouth

full of soapsuds where s/he had expected coconuts and guavas!

Milagai

[Rebecca263]

Well, my #1 boy has always insisted that I wear "that cookie perfume" when I run out of Cartier. He LOVES the smell so much! It's actually just cocoa butter sticks, for my sensitive skin. He didn't know that, though, for almost 23 years! And, he never would have known, if he hadn't been caring for me during my radiation last winter! How could I hide the cocoa butter sticks, when he had to do the shopping?Ah, the mysteries we women keep!