An ode to Peppermint

I'm not sure I ever appropriately appreciated peppermint back home.  It's certainly a home scent.  We grew mint.  We made peppermint candy.  But I never really kept peppermint around for peppermint's sake.

Enter the city.  The city is a smelly place*.  Apartment buildings are REALLY smelly places.  And cats in a 500 square foot studio are unbearable**.  Some days you have traffic fumes, some days the storm sewers are outgassing.  Some days it's just somebody having a fireplace fire and the wind coming the wrong way.  Sometimes it's your neighbor cooking cabbage.  Sometimes it's that you really should have taken the garbage out earlier and now it's after dark.

Peppermint can help.

As a bonus, peppermint is a serious stress remover.  It'll help you sleep and clear your sinuses***.

People by all kinds of diffusers and things, but if you want to make your house smell nice, there are a couple ways to do it.   Soaking a tissue in a scent oil and vacuuming the tissue up will give you a gentle scent every time you vacuum.

I prefer the nuclear option.

Take a jam jar and pour some peppermint oil in it.  Don't bother measuring it.  That just dirties a measuring spoon.  Boil some water.  Make sure it's a rolling boil (and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't let it microboil -- when that sucker hits the peppermint oil it'll be all over the kitchen.  Atomized peppermint oil hitting you in the eyeball is not something you wish to experience twice).  Pour the water into the peppermint.  Avert your eyes.  Actually, maybe flip those last two. 

And that's enough peppermint to make 500 square feet smell like mint for three days.  

A warning: don't reheat this concoction in the microwave.  I blew the door off mine that way.   That wasn't very relaxing.

Now I'm going to sit back and sniff for a while before I go to sleep.



*So is Ohio.  Somehow manure isn't as bad as broccoli and ethnic cooking, though.

**And they know it.  And use it as a weapon.

***If you want to wake up and clear your sinuses, try cinnamon.  Be warned,  you will experience pain.