Saturday, June 12, 2010

Smelly Things

I love nice smelly things.

I'm down with fragrant candles, burn incense several times a day. I have all sorts of essential oils for my diffuser and have recently acquired a fragrant wax melting device which was the bomb until I knocked it over onto my new carpet and couch. *stupid fragrant wax melting device*

But I have a new love. It started here in Japan. At least I think so. I'm not even sure if the have these anywhere else in the world yet.

You see, my friend just gave me this.



With a little candle holder in the back like so.




Oh, you're thinking it's just another oil heating thing. But it's not! What makes this different is that it heats....


... green tea!




Note the tea I'm using is "new" tea (shincha), very expensive. I got some as a present and drank most of it. There was a tiny bit left and since I didn't have normal cheapo green tea I used this. It smells divine. Roasting tea. MMMMmmm.

However, I hadn't lit the thing 30-minutes before my mother-in-law showed up and commented on how lovely it smelled. She then looked and was aghast to find I was roasting the "good stuff". I apologized as much as humanely possible and promised to buy cheap tea next time.

This is so *not* messy. When you're done you just brush the dried tea into the garbage can or your compost heap. No ruining a 600-dollar carpet for me anymore!

I think I'm going to experiment with herbs and coffee next. Boy, I hope my mother-in-law doesn't show up on those days.


10 comments:

The Heartless Gamer Girl said...

Oooo, how intriguing. I'm going to have to see if I can find something like it here in the States. :o)

~Jaimey

Kappa no He said...

Jaimey, Hey! I imagine you could use one of those essential oil diffusers. It really looks so similar.

Virginia Lee said...

That's a beautiful piece, T. I'm intrigued by the idea of heating tea like that. I love tea scented body mists, so I bet I'd like that too and the odds are Miss M wouldn't be allergic. Hmmm...

Kappa no He said...

V, exactly. It's very subtle but such a wonderful natural fragrance. My mom bought me a bunch of those waxes and I think there is only one or two that isn't obnoxiously sweet. This is so soothing. And I can send you the green tea.

Mary Witzl said...

I used to love going into the basement areas of department stores when shincha came out: the smell of that mingled with shiokara and miso is so wonderful. I miss it so much. But I have to agree with your mother-in-law: burn the crappy stuff, not the pricey tea!

Wish they had something that could produce that great wet stone smell you get when it first starts to rain.

Hilary said...

Tea .. really? I wouldn't have ever tried that. Spices yes.. herbs.. maybe.. tea? Neverwoulda but just might now.

Love the breezy new look of your blog.

Kappa no He said...

Mary! I love that wet stone smell too. And funny all those basement odors, all fishy and tasty. Although I might never actually miss the shiokara smell. Miso, yes!

Hilary, do try! And and a strange thing happened. The tea formed these really cool crystals after about four hours of burning. I'll have to post a pic.

Anonymous said...

Momo got one of those aromatic oil heaters that looks much like your tea roaster, but she hasn't used it since we got our dogs. I guess her sense of smell has been dulled too much.

Are you going home this summer? I'll be in Iowa sometime around the beginning of August - State Fair time!

It's pretty weird that all of my confirmed bachelor buddies have all gotten married and now have kids - therefore the state fair. I asked one about the age difference between him and his newborn, and he said that if the kid was a lot of trouble, that was OK since he'd be dead before the kid was old enough to go to regular prison. Go figure.

Pat said...

Hey - I've really been out of the loop - when did you change your blog image??? Looks nice! I'm trying to figure out how to update ours - it still looks pretty boring. All those widgets are confusing!

So can I just put some loose tea in a bowl and burn it?

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you traitors left the Big 12 for the Big 10! I hope the U of I beats you more often than ISU did! Hrummph!
Imomomo