by

Perfume Chat Room, August 4

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, August 4, and now we’re getting lots of rain that doesn’t relieve the humidity. I continue to harvest eggplants and adapt my new favorite recipe for eggplant parmesan: Delish’s Skillet Eggplant Parmesan. Last night, I used the same tomato sauce that includes truffle, porcini, and cream, but topped the whole thing with goat cheese instead of mozzarella (which was still in the inner layers). The crowd went wild! I think that version’s a real keeper.

I have more time to cook and garden now, because this past Monday was my last day in my workplace! I’m finishing up a couple of projects and will help transition my successor later this month, but I’m basically retired now. There was a nice gathering for me with colleagues on Monday afternoon, and people said nice things. TBH, I’m not sad to close that chapter. As much as I’ve enjoyed many aspects of my work over almost two decades, it just kept getting more and more stressful, and that was affecting my health more and more. Farewell to all that!

I’ve discovered Trader Joe’s bouquets of “garden roses”, which have a lovely, old-fashioned form like the English Roses I love, but no fragrance! Such a shame, as they’re very pretty and so far have lasted well in a vase.

Luckily, the roses I grow in my own garden are very fragrant, and I’m taking better care of them now, which rewards me with more blooms and fragrance. I have quite a few other flowers blooming, but many of them, like coneflowers, have little or no scent. I love them because they support pollinators and birds, and they now come in all kinds of wonderful colors.

Do you have a favorite scented flower that is NOT a rose?

25 thoughts on “Perfume Chat Room, August 4”

  1. YAY! Congratulations on reaching your retirement OH. Sure there are some final finishings but that should help ease you into the life you were born to live. The life of a lady of leisure.
    SO COOL!

    Scented flowers that I love include wisteria, daffodils, orange blossom, murraya (Aussie mock orange), and jasmine on the vine.

    Portia xx

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. Congrats on your last day, and more time for your garden. Today is actually my birthday, which is basically anticlimactic these days. Will be going out to dinner with the family. Tomorrow night I have been hired to take photos at my husbands 40th high school reunion. (I wasn’t going to go, at least this way I get paid and don’t have to stay until the end…) Sports starts up next weekend with the high school football media dsy and kickoff celebration. And my son goes back to school on Tuesday for football camp, so lots of organizing and packing. How did the summer pass so quickly?? Today I’m wearing 4160Tuesdays Rhubarb & Custard. Yesterday I made s blueberry/rhubarb crisp so it seemed appropriate.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. I hope you will happily enjoy your retirement and your garden. I still have seven years until i can retire, but maybe i will manage to work only parttime for the last years, although there is no chance for the moment. all this free time will surely need some adjustment, but as a gardener you will find something to do.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Congratulations on your retirement! I can think of scents of absolutes more than the flowers themselves, which I may not have smelled properly – osmanthus and narcissus, for example. And frangipani. But I do like and can recall the scent of stargazer lilies; I have been known to stick my nose in bouquets of them in supermarkets!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Congratulations on your retirement! I’m glad that it’s something that makes your life better.

    Even though I don’t mind working at the moment (and I have years and years before I can retire), I hate the stress that comes with work itself and, what’s even worse, with the necessity to stay employed for the next N years. I don’t mind working, but I mind having to work.

    Can you share the souse that you used? I liked the recipe and plan to try it. Do you mind me asking: why did you decide to substitute the top layer cheese? Just for the taste, or were there any dietary considerations? Do you think this dish needs mozzarella, or can you substitute it completely by goat cheese? Was it a regular soft goat cheese or a hard(er) cheese from goat milk?

    Now to flowers. I absolutely love peonies, LotV and lilacs (though, this one isn’t a flower, right?). So, if we’re talking about blossoms, in addition to lilacs, I adore linden blossom (probably my most favorite scent ever), mimosa and Daphne.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • No problem! Here is the sauce: https://www.mezzetta.com/products/truffle-porcini-cream-artisan-ingredients. I decided to use goat cheese as an ingredient because I LOVE goat cheese, lol. I do think you want some mozzarella, because it kind of glues things together. I used pre-shredded mozzarella with pre-shredded fresh parmesan for the inner layers, then for the top layer, I used the shredded parmesan with goat cheese. Then I used the panko crumbs mixed with olive oil and grated parmesan for the crumb topping. If you like goat cheese, it adds that zing to the recipe. I used slices of goat cheese from a “log” but next time I’ll use crumbles, as the slices didn’t spread the way I expected.

      Like

      Reply

    • Oh, and it was regular soft goat cheese. If you want to avoid cows’ milk, you could see if you can find mozzarella di bufala, which is the original kind, or mozzarella made from a different kind of milk. And you could probably substitute Pecorino Romano, which is sheep’s milk cheese, for the Parmesan. Let us know what tweaks you try!

      Like

      Reply

    • You know how much I love lily of the valley! Also peonies and lilacs. And daphne!! I’ve tried growing those several times over the years, and I kept one alive for about ten years, but they’re finicky plants and I haven’t succeeded with one since then. But their scent is amazing, isn’t it?

      Like

      Reply

  7. Finally the day has come. Welcome to retirement!
    Love your recipe & playing with it. I will have another glut of apples this year as the tree has held into most of them due to the wet weather here. There are so many American recipes use apples I’d really love if you could send me a link for some, especially for apple crisp!
    Scented flowers & blossoms. I gave up with having scented cut flowers when DH shared that many give him a nauseous headache. I love big, fat waxen lilies, freesias, sweet peas, viburnum, philadelphus, hawthorn, jasmine, bluebell & hyacinth, scented narcissi & leaving the best til last, linden.
    Basically, if it smells I love it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.