Victoria: 2669 posts

This time of year makes me prone to bouts of melancholy. I don’t like to bid goodbye to summer vacation, August peaches and picnics in the park. Since my school recollections are filled with the institutional smells of many children in confined spaces, burned milk, wet chalk and blackboards cleaned with a musty rag, I can’t get excited about the whole “back to school” thing either. My memory refuses to budge from this Dickensian vision even when prompted by the delicious smells of sharpened pencils and ink; I hated school until I started college.  I get out of my funk once the fall gets further under way and I notice the walnut sweetness of fallen leaves in the morning air and become grateful for any rose still blooming along Brussels’ chestnut lined avenues. But in the meantime, I just make the best of the transition and come up with lists.

Lists are somewhat of an obsession. I’ve been an inveterate list maker since my childhood. My mom treasures a compilation of “books I am going to write” that I came up with at the age of 12. They include “The History of India,” “The History of Greece” and “Constantinople, Jewel of the Byzantine Empire.” (Why on earth did I study political science at the university and not history, I now wonder.) I’m less ambitious these days and instead I just make lists of dishes to cook, places to explore in Brussels, perfumes to try or books to read.

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That tomato is a fruit becomes obvious once you pair it with sugar or sweet ingredients. One of the main aromatic components of tomato, furaneol, is also called strawberry furanone by fragrance and flavor chemists, because it’s such an important note in the complex berry aroma. Incidentally, it’s one of the reasons behind difficulties with tomato accords in perfumery–they smell of red berries if there is even a modicum of sweetness in the formula. It’s therefore natural to treat tomato in much the same way as you would a fruit–cooking it into jams, combining it with sweet pastry or melting it down with vanilla and caramel for an ice cream sauce. Or you can make it into a sweet chutney to be served with grilled meat or rice dishes.

Chutney is an Indian sauce that may be raw or cooked, and the ingredients run the gamut from fruits and vegetables to beans and nuts. I’m a chutney fiend. I firmly believe that a dollop of chutney makes anything better–a sandwich, a bowl of rice, a piece of grilled chicken. So do many Indians, because not only do they excel in coming up with the most unusual chutney combinations, they don’t hesitate in pairing them together. For instance, spicy green coriander chutney is often partnered with a sweet date one. As you dip crisp eggplant fritters first in one, then the other and experience the explosion of flavor, you understand how silly is the whole idea of “less is more.”

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Our US perfume box is ready to make its next round. If you are in the States and would like to participate, here is how you can do it. And whether you’re participating or not, please read Theresa’s perfume descriptions below.

How does it work: To enter, please post a comment answer these questions: 1) are you in the USA, and if you’re a winner, can I share your email address with Theresa? ; 2) do you agree to pass the box onto someone else within two weeks or so (add a couple of your own samples and share your sampling notes with the rest of us)? and 3) what perfume are you wearing today? I will pick the next person to receive the box via a random number generator. I will announce that person in this spot and contact them via email. The box is going to rickyrebarco.

Winners, please read this part closely: When you’re ready to pass the box onto someone else, please get in touch with me. Please include 2 things in your email: the full list of samples and your sampling notes (what you’ve discovered, what you’ve liked/disliked, any observations you care to include).

To check the progress of our boxes, please click on the Traveling Sample Box tag.

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As we discovered, shipping regulations on stringent in the UK, so we now have a separate box. If you live in the UK and would like to participate, here is how you can do it. And whether you’re participating or not, please read Laura’s perfume descriptions below.

How does it work: To enter, please post a comment answer these questions: 1) are you in the UK, and if you’re a winner, can I share your email address with Laura? ; 2) do you agree to pass the box onto someone else within two weeks or so (add a couple of your own samples and share your sampling notes with the rest of us)? and 3) what perfume are you wearing today? I will pick the next person to receive the box via a random number generator. I will announce that person in this spot and contact them via email. The box is going to Roger.

Winners, please read this part closely: When you’re ready to pass the box onto someone else, please get in touch with me. Please include 2 things in your email: the full list of samples and your sampling notes (what you’ve discovered, what you’ve liked/disliked, any observations you care to include).

To check the progress of our boxes, please click on the Traveling Sample Box tag.

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Belgians seem to be as surprised as anyone else that their small country could produce a seismic shift in fashion, starting with the success of the original Antwerp Six in 1986. This explains the title of a new exhibition at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, The Belgians: An Unexpected Fashion Story (on display till September 13). But as I walked through the exposition in tribute to the Belgian fashion scene, I wondered if it really should be so unexpected. After all, Belgium is a politically complex case, balanced precariously and unsteadily between Flemish and Wallonian interests. It has a rich, if sometimes combustive, blend of cultures, influences, and languages. In moments of crisis and stalemate, the inspiration and yearning for change take on different forms–consider the blossoming of the avant-garde movement at the turn of the 20th century.

Belgian fashion is anything if not avant-garde. It makes a powerful statement, it casts conventions aside, it makes you look at things in a new way. It can be an experience that is both disconcerting and inspiring, and living in Belgium I have come to see it as an essential part of local culture. Fashion is taken seriously here, although not in the sense of social expectations of looking a certain way that exists in Paris or New York. It’s an idea. It’s an art form. You can wear it, if you want, or you can simply admire it. Which is what I usually do when I head to Rue Antoine Dansaert, a dynamic part of Brussels and a place for fashion pilgrimage. Young and established designers have their boutiques there, and although I rarely buy anything, I go to the stores for a dose of beauty–or a jolt–and I treat them like museums.

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