kigaloween, and the tale of the scary spice

Kigaloween spirit 

Happy Halloween! Or Kigaloween, as I'm celebrating this year. The scariest smell of the week was definitely the overpowering olfactory force of the seeds of dozens of urusenda, or hot peppers (very hot peppers), that I was preparing for pili pili sauce (I followed these guidelines, plus olive oil and salt). Having been in Rwanda only three months, I am already at pains to tolerate a potato without the homemade hot sauce that's available at most restaurants. We use (and love) Akabanga and Sabana at home, but I wanted some of the fresh stuff, so I set about deseeding dozens of the beauties pictured below with the protection of some latex gloves (kindly provided by my friend and housemate, from her stash dedicated for use in archival research--who says it doesn't pay to live with graduate students?). I was not prepared for the power of these seeds! (My hands may have been, but my nose, throat, eyes, and brain were unguarded.) Even the next day--when the bulk of the seeds had been discarded, but a few remained, along with the peppers, waiting for the superglue to dry on the food processor (owned by that same beloved, well-prepared researcher)--everyone who entered the kitchen came away crying and coughing. 

My apologies, housemates! Please enjoy the hot sauce in the fridge, now de-weaponized. 

So I have even more sympathy than I otherwise might for the residents of Irwindale, California, who have filed a suit against Huy Fong Foods, maker of the indispensable Sriracha (and, even more delicious in my estimation, chili garlic sauce): 

...[In] Irwindale, where the hot sauce’s production facilities are, residents are complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches caused by a powerful, painful odor that the city says appears to be emanating from the factory during production. The smell is so aggressive that one family was forced to move a birthday party indoors after the spicy odor descended on the festivities, said Irwindale City Atty. Fred Galante.

The spicy odor descended! This is the kind of smell news I savor. I can just see the ghoulish little phantasm of a fiery pepper (probably baring teeth similar to those pictured on the pumpkin above) snaking into this celebration, forcing everyone to clutch their party hats and run inside with their cake. A judge will decide whether Huy Fong must "stop production until the smell can be reduced,"and I suspect I speak for hot sauce lovers worldwide when I say I hope the company and the city can come to a speedy resolution. Huy Fong produces 20 million bottles of Sriracha each year, and it's certainly scary to imagine all the foods out there, counting on that delicious spice, remaining bland in its absence.  

sun's up smells

Rwanda is making an early bird of me.

Mwaramutse neza from Kigali! The best things I've smelled here so far (besides my beloved tree tomato) include: herbs from the garden in our yard (basil, lemon dill, and cilantro), still-steaming rosemary rolls and sweet carrot bread made by my bread-baking marvel of a housemate, and the dirt roads after it rained. Here are some smells I've enjoyed reading about:

• Aaron Paul on his Breaking Bad co-star, Bryan Cranston's, smell: "To be honest, he smells like a freshly bathed unicorn on a summer day in Barcelona." 
• My friend Stephanie Santana's excellent close reading of We Need New Names: 

  NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names ends its first and last chapters with the same sensory detail: the alternately ‘dizzying’ and ‘delicious’ smell of Lobels bread. It is a smell that wafts through otherwise macabre scenes. In the first, a woman hangs dead in a tree and the smell is only imagined, as Darling (our narrator) and her young friends anticipate with delirious joy the bread they will buy by selling the dead woman’s shoes. In the last, it is a real, overwhelmingly delicious smell that accompanies the death of something that the children were looking for and wanted desperately to find. In the simple smell of fresh-baked bread we find joy, hope, death, desire.  

• I've been meaning to write something about the farts and hearts of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but Willa Paskin said it all on Slate: 
  

  Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, TLC’s divisive reality hit about the antics of an energetic, self-identified redneck family, begins its second season on Wednesday night. To celebrate the show’s return, TLC has wedged scratch-and-sniff cards into issues of People and Us Weekly, and will prompt viewers to use them during the show’s premiere, possibly scratching to sniff bad breath, fish, rotten milk, a baby diaper, a fart, or maybe something more pleasantly aromatic—cheese puffs? The scratch-and-sniff is a goof that sounds about as enjoyable as eating the snot-flavored jelly beans from Harry Potter, but it effectively establishes just how the producers want us to feel about 7-year-old Honey Boo Boo and her family: that they are totally fun and totally gross. I’m with them on the former, but it’s the producers who are gross. 

•  Charles Baxter, on his writing routine, in the Daily Beast: 

  I work during the morning. I pace; I stare out the window. I sit with my head in my hands. If I can feel myself breaking out into a sweat, particularly from my underarms, and if I give off a noticeable body odor that even I can smell, I know the writing is going well.

12.12.12 smells

At 11:11, we wish, and on 12/12/12, we list: 

1) Smell of generosity: Perfume-world-mensch Andy Tauer is in the midst of his annual advent calendar giveaway-spree. May each of you win something fragrant! 

2) Smell of paper flowers:  Courtney Mandryk is selling her beautiful conceptual calendar. 'Tis the season!

Smell of stars: My spacesuit arrived! Thanks to those of you who encouraged this purchase via Facebook.

3) Smell of innovation: The Institute for Art and Olfaction is launching soon, and has already taught me that John Milton invented the word fragrance (along with moonstruck, pandemonium, and lovelorn).

4) Smell of superheros: Special Powers and Abilities is Raymond McDaniel's awesome new book of poems for your brain & your heart.

5) Smell of heartswell: Adam rescued Billy from a place that smelled horrific, and, as my friend Hillary put it, we all cried and gave Billy money.  

6) Smell of Wisconsin gone Hollywood: Since we last saw her on Nosy Girl, Emma Straub published her dazzling debut novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. 

7) Smell of cocktail sparkle: Mandy Aftel introduced Aftelier Chef's Essence® Sprays just in time for you to flavor-up your holiday cooking.

8) Smell of sweet music: We're lucky that Nitsuh Abebe has shared his rad list of 50 favorite songs of 2012 (you can listen here via Spotify).

9) Smell of Dancing Girl: Lucy Biederman's wonderful chapbook, The Other World, has gone on sale since she graced us here on Nosy Girl.  

#10's smell, but not one of his library books

10) Smell of library books: My husband, Nosy-Interviewee-to-be & PhD-student extraordinaire, is nearly finished with his toughest semester of graduate school yet, and I admire his work ethic & his restless intelligence more than ever.

11) Smell of new baby: Since her interview posted, Katie Miota Stolzman started a badass blog (and became a mother)!

12) Smell of va-va-voom: Charlotte Boulay (the first-ever Nosy Interviewee) had her gorgeous poem, "Talking to the Dead," in last week's New Yorker. Wowee!

nosy recommends: burt's bees baby bee multipurpose ointment

This smells so sweet! Not sweet like frosting, sweet like darling. Burt's Bees Baby Bee Multipurpose Ointment just smells adorable. It's light streaming in the open windows in the farmhouse bedroom where your white sheets were just air-dried the day before and the host, one of your oldest friends, left a little mason jar full of gummy bears on your bedside table (just the orange, yellow, and adhesive-colored ones). This tub's pudding is cuddly but not cloying, and comforting with a chewiness I associate with that tantalizing pull to bite the brand-new nub of pink eraser on a fresh yellow No. 2 pencil (it doesn't smell like that eraser, but like the feeling you imagine it will have between your molars). Even though I've learned that petitgrain is a bitter orange note, there's a homier smell I associate with the word petitgrain that comes to mind when I sniff this ointment. I would like to smell coumarin (one of the ingredients listed, along with shea butter, almond oil, beeswax, and coconut oil) and see whether the compound accounts for the dollop of countryside I'm getting, since its Wikipedia entry says coumarin is "readily recognized as the scent of new-mown hay," and is found in plants like tonka bean, vanilla grass, sweet woodruff, sweet grass, cassia cinnamon, Deers Tongue and sweet clover.

You can use this ointment, intended for babies' bums, however you might use Vaseline, and it's especially nice on rough heels (sandal season is officially over here in Cambridge) and dry elbows (the season for which is fast approaching). I mainly use it at night, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with perfume.

 "Mr. Autumn Man, enjoying a seasonal stroll." --The Onion 

Other things I recommend right now, from past Nosy Interviewees and from the planet: 

• Elisa has been doing some great perfume writing on her blog lately, on her new favorite leather, lilies, and underwear perfumes. I loved this line: "From a distance, the impression is not unlike my vintage Shalimar – a powdery floriental with a smoker's cough." Elisa and I disagree about Agent Provocateur, which she thinks goes from uptight to dirty, and I believe to be so raunchy in its opening that I leave a small grace period before leaving the house with it on. 
• Rebecca has a wonderful poem, "Self-Portrait at San Carlito," up at Verse Daily (and a book coming out in 2013!!!).
• Natalie wrote an excellent review of Zadie Smith's NW for Fiction Writers Review, and highlighted one of the book's best lines: "Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became."  
• FALL! I am definitely a shameless version of Ms. Autumn Woman, and if you encountered me on the street yesterday, you would have been subjected to a six-minute (minimum) reverie on how incredible fall smells and feels and looks. I like to celebrate its arrival with an annual reading of Colin Nissan's brilliant "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers," and suggest you do the same, whatever the weather where you are.

your breath smells in the news

In last week's issue of New York magazine, Jason Feifer tests the Topland Etiquette Checker, a personal breath-stank analyzer that uses a smiley face system to rank your mouth on a scale from "infinitely kissable maw" to "dead animal baking in the summer sun." Feifer "soiled his mouth with garlicky onion dip and coffee," used a series of "masking agents" including gum, mints, mouthwashes, strips, natural remedies, and whiskey, and subjected first the Etiquette Checker, then his wife, to the waft. You can check out a chart detailing the results, and the verdict (a the machine deviated 43% from Feifer's wife!) here. I'm so curious about this project. How many days did it take? Did Feifer use these masking agents in the order listed? How many did his wife smell in one sitting?
 

Screencaps via Jezebel and Huffington Post

In other smell-your-loved-ones'-breath news, Honey Boo Boo Child (aka Alana Thompson) & family recently participated in what Tracie Egan Morrissey delightfully described as "an interesting parlor game" called Guess Whose Breath. You can watch the clip here (scroll down to the second, smaller video screen) and if you're in the mood for more but need a little nudge, let Rachel Shukert convince you that "your mind is [not] too beautiful to sully with the Victorian freak show that is modern American television" in her compelling essay on how the fascinating Thompson family provides "a reflection of the classic immigrant experience."

In still timelier breath news, when I went looking for the Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet screencapped above, the first thing I saw in my twitter feed was an assertion that "Romney breath smell like canned yams and taco meat," as speculated by @seanverde and re-tweeted by Heems of Das Racist (@HIMANSHU), who is, at the time of this writing, on a real Romney smells tear, RT-ing lots of poop & bullshit-themed tweets, but also speculation that Romney might smell like crayons, gravy, mildew, or Cheetos. And there are so many post-debate tweets about Romney's smell and breath to choose from (balloon air, baking soda, old bath water, Lay's Dill Pickles + Spicy Ketchup--these all come from real tweets)! As @silvyysilv says,"ppl are going ham on Romney breath."

three for thursday

This photograph! Discovered via @Baratunde and delighting me to no end. Some additional digging reveals that the woman is a performance artist, but she still chopped that onion on that train.

The science behind that beloved old book smell, as explained by a Richard from AbeBooks who pronounces "deterioration" in a pleasing way:

I am fully obsessed with Harmless Harvest's Coconut Water. Be warned: once you try it, you will find it difficult to enjoy other brands of bottled coconut water. This stuff smells (and tastes) so fresh and nutty and yummy; after I've finished drinking, I save the bottles until the smell is gone (always wearing eau de weirdo around here).

stinky springtime links

image via

Some fresh stinky tidbits to send you into your weekend (May it be fragrant!):

• Hitting right in the sweet spot of Nosy Girl's Smells & Stories Venn diagram is this New York Times piece, "Your Brain on Fiction:" 

"Words like 'lavender,' 'cinnamon' and 'soap,' for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells."

• Also squarely in that sweet spot, a beautiful, pertinent passage from The Art of Fielding, a book I finished yesterday and highly recommend: 

  "He could smell the way Owen's life and habits--weed and gingery cleaners; bookbinding glue, stiff white soap and garlicky tang of his skin; hardly a trace of Henry except for a faint bouquet of ribbed gray sock--had imagined themselves deep in the walls and floorboards of the place."  

• Nosy favorite D.S. & Durga gives New York magazine a peek at their studio. I love the details and the promise of those tiny bottles. Woodyamber! Beaver extract!  

 The makings of East MidEast must be on those shelves somewhere! [photo by Wendy Goodman]

• In a column called "Politics, Odors and Soap," Nicholas Kristof mentions a study that found people "offered harsher, more moralistic views after 'fart spray' had been released in the area."  He also notes that conservatives "secrete more skin moisture when they see disgusting images, such as a person eating worms. Liberals feel disgust, too, but a bit less." Does this make for sour-smelling conservatives who grow harsher and more moralistic in the company of their sour-smelling brethren?
• Do you read the blog Letters of Note? They recently posted a letter of advice, well worth a read, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. The letter referenced Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 and this couplet burrowed into my brain: "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds/Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
• Thanks to Britta, Beth, & my dad for these last quick links:
• Astronauts lose their sense of smell in outer space (so they crave hot sauce and look like Charlie Brown).  
• Hot on the heels of their story that spicy foods may promote heart health, NPR reported that "intense aromas lead to smaller bites." This story does not address the inverse phenomenon of instantly needing to take a giant bite of anything yummy that you smell.
• The pope gets his own fragrance, and you'll never wear it!

women smell well

[image via the Guardian's What is there to celebrate around the world on international women's day?]

 
Maria is reading What's Going on In There: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, and she sent me this passage:  

"There is one caveat about the observation that newborns innately respond to the odor of a nursing mother's breast: this effect has been seen only in girls and not in boys of the same age. In fact, females of all ages are more sensitive to odors than males...Older girls outperform boys on various tests of olfactory discrimination, while women of all ages are known to be more sensitive than men to a variety of odors."

Speaking of women and smelling, if I were anywhere near the Bay Area, I would beg, borrow, or strain a credit card to attend this "dinner devoted to the haunting magic of scent," featuring an incredible lineup of talented women.

While I'm helping you spend your money, I hope you'll visit Scents of Self on March 10, when Ari's Smell Good Do Good sale begins. I rustled up a few items to sell, including a decant of Serge Lutens' Jeux de Peau and a tube of L'Artisan Parfumeur's  Thé Pour Un Été lotion. All proceeds go to benefit Refuge, a UK charity working against domestic violence.

Today, International Women's Day, would also be a great day to visit Kiva and support a woman entrepreneur in the developing world. Use this link to make your first loan free.

fresh stinky links

Have some coffee; stay awhile.

• Don't miss past nosy interviewee Emily Gould's great essay on the beginnings of her scent quest and her appreciation of Perfumes: The Guide. I hope she bought herself a brand new bottle of perfume the day this piece posted. 
• Over at First Nerve, Avery Gilbert writes about the results of a Polish study called "Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odour." People sniffed slept-in t-shirts and could tell if the wearer was neurotic. 
• Ari of Scents of Self is hosting a perfume sale to benefit Refuge, a UK charity working against domestic violence. If you have perfume (or other suggested items) that you're willing to part with for a good cause, please check it out. 
• Orangette was already the source for my go-to granola, but tonight I tried this new recipe she recently posted. After just a few bites, I already believe it has unseated the standard and now holds the place of honor as the weekly granola around these parts. We'll see how it does with Fage. The olive oil, brown sugar, and maple syrup toast up the coconut and seeds so perfectly, and for the 45 minutes this is baking you will be in love with the smell of your house. 
• Not strictly scent-related, but I wanted to share with you some online treats from other past nosy interviewees:
• Natalie has coined a new, perfect word. 
• Preeta writes heartrendingly about immigration. 
• Rebecca has a new poem to love here. 

redolent byredo read

 [Ben Gorham in bed, image via Into the Gloss]

Woah, I loved this Into the Gloss interview with dreamboat Byredo perfumer Ben Gorham. Lengthy (by internet standards), but worth reading in full, the piece is bursting with insights into the process of a perfumer obsessed with memory and storytelling (the best kind of perfumer, in my estimation). His thoughts on developing a vocabulary for scent are so encouraging: 

For me it was about awareness. If I took you in the lab for two weeks, and showed you a spectrum, you would probably be able to show me things that remind you of specific memories. You would be able to develop your vocabulary to create a perfume. And that was the first phase for me, trying to understand the possibilities. Now when I walk down the street I can smell a lot more-dirty laundry, etc. I don't think it's a heightened sense of smell, it's just awareness. 

I too have been curious about how a place maintains its smell over many years and much change:

If I had to pick a favorite [from the line]--I don't know, they all have a special place--but I did, quite early, a fragrance based on a place in India where my mother was born and raised. It's outside Mumbai, it was a place that was very green, I remember visiting it as a child-it was a picnic spot. And when I came back, semi-grown up, it was massively developed, but it smelled the same. So I became very intrigued, I thought--how is this possible? What has changed, what hasn't changed?

I'm not especially familiar with the Byredo line (in part due to the lack of samples at my local Barneys), though I would have purchased Oud Immortel on impulse (a rarity for me when it comes to perfume) had it not been beyond my budget. After reading this piece, I'm itching to get to the Byredo counter and smell everything--especially Green, the fragrance inspired by the "green bean essence" of Gorham's absent father, and an upcoming scent that inspired the exchange "More goat...less goat."

I understand completely what one of the commenters said about liking reading about perfumes as much as smelling them--I felt that way reading this article, imagining milk on skin, what Mexico smells like, and why Gorham's girlfriend rarely wears perfume, and I even feel that way reading lists of notes, the promise in those simple lists, so like musical chords in their potential to be new again each time.

stinky links c/o sweet friends

Friends! I love it when you send me stinky links. I'm trying to cut down on both Google Reading and Facebook, so e-mails with smelly bits I've probably missed are even more welcome than usual. 

Lola (who will hopefully be featured in the very near future as a Nosy Interviewee) sent me a fun link that proved I love reading about what people like to smell even if I've never heard of them (it also further proved that I simply must smell this CK One Shock for Him!) as well as an interesting piece from SF Gate that included a section on fragrance trends by decade suggesting a link between our stressed-out tech-(dis)connected world and a rising popularity in warm and cozy gourmand fragrances. 

Anne sent me this quote from Perfumes: The Guide, and the magic of Google Image Search (you know you can drop in images to search, right? So fun! And unsettling!) tells me that it comes from a window display at Shakespeare & Co. Books in Berkeley:

(If you want that smell in bottle, In the Library by CB I Hate Perfume is lovely, and Karl Lagerfeld is also at work on a book-smelling perfume that I have a hard time believing will actually be called Paper Passion. If you want to read some books about perfume, author and perfume-lover Denise Hamilton gives five suggestions in this super-informative interview.)

Somewhat related (though it proves I've done a poor job staying off facebook, which has lately become a collection of these quotes-on-photos, no?):

Their apartment won't smell as sexy anyway!

Speaking of sexy: Bus musk! I like saying that. Thanks to Janet for this cartoon, "Smells Like a First Date":

hot stinky links

 photo by clemmac

Nosy readers whose olfactory interests extend beyond the reach of my vacations and what my friends smell like may be interested in some of these stinky links:

• "The Smelliest Block in New York" shares cover space with Ryan Gosling's torso in this week's New York magazine: "It’s a mystery, the stretch of Broome Street between Allen and Eldridge—a quiet little block that smells like high meat and old squeegees."
• Like Elisa, I marveled at this notion of "high meat." So immediately evocative--but what does it mean? Speaking of Elisa, her latest On the Scent column just went up, and I could listen to her talk about labdanum all day.
• Smell-O-Vision in our homes (or on our cell phones?!?). My preferred smell in any movie theatre is hot popcorn (it's half the reason I go), but I'd still like to get a whiff of this device. I can't imagine how much more successful/invasive an advertisement for food would be if you could actually smell it.
• A companion piece to the case of the stinky block has Chandler Burr giving an olfactory tour of Manhattan that includes a description of birthday cake-infected sidewalks, insight as to why Coppertone smells so good, and one mention of "really, really, really upscale hot dog."