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.