One Thousand Scents

Monday, January 22, 2007

Eat It Up

What is the deal with soap? It's all I've wanted to write about recently.

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A company called Method makes some fairly terrific cleaning products. They have a seasonal line with three scents in it, and it seems you can buy them at any time of the year through their website, but in the real world they're available only at Christmastime. There are three scents, and though one of them, Frosted Cranberry, did nothing for me, the other two are nothing short of wonderful. There isn't a shower gel, but there are hand soaps in all three scents, and they all come in a beautifully minimalist frosted teardrop-shaped bottle.

The second of the scents is Spiced Pear and it's very spicy and very peary: it calls to mind the top note of Higher Dior. Delicious! The scent is surprisingly tenacious for an inexpensive soap.

The third, my favourite, is Peppermint Vanilla, and it's perfectly balanced: fresh, chilly peppermint and soft, warm vanilla. It's so good it's almost edible, like those old ads for Neutrogena soap that said it was so pure you could eat it (though i think I wouldn't want to put either product in my mouth). Peppermint Vanilla smells exactly like those soft creamy mints that you're not supposed to eat because they have hydrogenated fats in them and will kill you (but since I just put a recipe for fettuccine all'Alfredo on my other blog, who am I to talk?). The lasting power is not as good as the Spiced Pear, but this is a hand soap we're talking about, not a perfume.

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I got them at Shoppers Drug Mart around Christmas, which is also where I got the three new three-in-one shower gels/bath foams/shampoos in their Sweet Treats line. They all smell like desserts, logically enough: Vanilla Brown Sugar Cupcake, Cinnamon Apple Pie, and Chocolate Cappuccino Cheesecake.

You don't need me to describe them to you, do you? They're not some complex Guerlain formula with a hundred and sixty-seven ingredients; they're exactly what they promise to be. The vanilla one isn't bakery enough; it's mostly just vanilla with a bit of a molasses edge to it. The most accurate is the cinnamon apple pie, which is very pleasurable, but my favourite is the chocolate cappuccino, a warm, dark, rich, fudgy scent. (The funny thing is that I'm not even that fond of chocolate; I hardly ever eat it and I never, ever crave it, though sometimes I can't resist a bar of Toblerone. But I really like the smell of chocolate, which is why I have so many chocolate-scented shower gels and fragrances.)

If you live in Canada, you should check out these cheap pleasures. If you live near Canada, it's worth crossing the border for them. If you don't, well, find someone who can mail you a few. They come in 250-mL bottles for $6.99 (but regularly go on sale) and also a three-pack of 100-mL bottles, one of each, for $9.99. Go for it.

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Okay, enough about soap. Next up: the most recent Yves Rocher. Promise.

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