Let’s prove “them” wrong — those folks who say we’ll gain an average of seven pounds during the holidays! You know what it is? Those delicious foods have scents that we crave, but the foods themselves can be kinda <meh>. Admit it! You want the fragrance, not the calories. Demeter Fragrance to the rescue! I was happy to be hosted to experience it.
Gingerbread reminds me of the sweet cake-type of gingerbread with sugar icing that has many spices, including cinnamon. This is what they say about it:
Gingerbread has been baked in Europe for centuries. In some places, it was a soft, delicately spiced cake; in others, a crisp, flat cookie, and in others, warm, thick, steamy-dark squares of “bread,” sometimes served with a pitcher of lemon sauce or whipped cream. It was sometimes light, sometimes dark, sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, but it was almost always cut into shapes such as men, women, stars or animals, and colorfully decorated or stamped with a mold and dusted with white sugar to make the impression visible.
Long before there was David McCullough, there was the American Trails Series — a collection of some of my favorite books ever. In The National Road, they talk about some poor slob who had to walk from Fort Duquesne (what is now downtown Pittsburgh) to Annapolis. People pitied him that the little taverns along the way often didn’t serve meat, but instead, gingerbread and a glass of milk. He had tummy troubles and was depressed over the loss of his son . . . the gingerbread was just the perfect comforting thing to him.
Sugar Cookie smells to me like the process of making fresh cookies: cutting the dough, a whiff of secret ingredient (lemon extract? buttermilk?) going to a granular sugar scent. It’s light and the notes are sophisticated enough to wear at work. This is what they say about it:
The Frisbie Baking Company: In this otherwise simple baking operation we find the origin of the earliest Frisbee! The company offered a variety of bakery goodies, including pies and cookies, and therein resides the root of the controversy, for there are two crusty schools concerning Frisbee’s origins: the Pie-Tin School and the Cookie-Tin School, each camp holding devoutly to its own argument.
The Pie-Tin School claim Yale students bought Frisbie’s pies (undoubtedly a treat in themselves) and tossed the prototype all over Eli’s campus. These early throwers would exclaim “Frisbie” to signal the catcher. And well they might, for a tin Frisbee is something else again to catch. The Cookie-Tin School agrees on these details save one: they insist that the true, original prototype was the cookie-tin lid that held in the goodness of Frisbie’s Sugar Cookies.
Not surprisingly, at Demeter, we subscribe to the Cookie-Tin school, although our Sugar Cookie is not based on the old Frisbie Baking recipe. Demeter Sugar Cookie smells like the founder’s mother’s sugar cookies, clipped from the Ladies Home Journal in 1963.
Mulled Cider smells like fresh, tangy apples — not mealy, blah ones — with some snap, as well as freshly grated spices. Like people of yore, I could drink cider all day, every day . . . in place of water. That’s not a great idea for the waistline or for diabetics. Sigh. Wearing the fragrance is a good substitute and if you need something warm to drink, make some hot tea. Here’s what they say about it:
Autumn in a bottle, with notes of sweet apples, cinnamon, spices…….
Cider is a relative of wine, with almost as ancient a history. Cider was common in England back before the Christian era, where apple trees were worshipped as sacred. Especially in New England, cider was an immensely popular drink with the pilgrims and was drunk at meals by everyone, including children. Even clergymen, while denouncing ‘harder spirits’, would drink cider as a matter of course.
Instead of baking up a storm — destroying your kitchen and diet — this holiday season, Demeter Fragrance would make a thoughtful choice!
