Well, I made it last as long as I possibly could, but I finally had to admit that my bottle of Ulta Agave Tea foaming hand soap was really and truly empty. It smelled SO good and now it is gone. If you think I should rush right out and get more of it, well, I TRIED and Ulta appears to no longer carry it. (Also, I only buy their foaming hand soap when they have a 3-for-$10 deal because I do not care to spend $6 a bottle for foaming hand soap.)

Photo from ulta.com. Do not be fooled – this is plain old Blue Agave rather than wonderful Agave Tea.

One of the reasons I’m so sad about this soap is that it had the perfect tea scent. You know how much I like to drink tea. Well, lately, I’ve gotten really into things that SMELL like tea.

Bath & Body Works Chamomile & Honey Body Lotion

Photo from bathandbodyworks.com

You may recall that I have a bit of a lotion-hoarding problem (it has not abated even in the many years since that post). The Chamomile & Honey is my latest favorite scent. It’s light and not overpowering. I don’t know if it smells of anything related to chamomile to me, or to bergamot (which the description claims is one of the notes), but it has a nice tea-essence to it that I find both soothing and kind of romantic.

Edited to add: Well BLARGH. This is now out of stock! BOO!

Wick Habit Hand-Poured Soy Wax Candle in Tea House

Photo from etsy.com/shop/WickHabit

We’ve been having a bit of an issue with our garbage disposal (if you need any Hot Tips about how to clean your disposal, I’m your girl; I’ve tried them all) and so I have been burning more candles than usual. My favorite of late is my Tea House candle, which has a soft, sweet, tea-esque scent to it. (Clearly, there’s a reason I don’t write the copy for anything scented. I lack the descriptive ability.) Just strong enough to change the scent profile of my kitchen, not so strong as to overpower.

Therein ends the Tea Scented portion of today’s blog post thankyouverymuch Ulta, for ruining my day and my hand-washing experience. (Although if you have tea-scented things in your life that you love, I would be very interested to hear about them.)

Easy Quinoa Salad from Two Peas & Their Pod

This is before I added the avocado, but believe me, I ADDED that avocado.

I made this delicious quinoa salad for the Fourth of July and it was, per the recipe title, easy. And it was delicious. And is still delicious, two days later. (I may have had some for breakfast.) Caveat: I don’t eat tomatoes, so I replaced them with diced red bell pepper. I know, I know you are probably now rolling your eyes at me in irritation for doing that stereotypical THING that people inevitably do when they reference recipes and not actually FOLLOWING the recipe, but I do not eat tomatoes so it was a must. And I didn’t have any scallions (I’m sorry!!!) and in fact I refuse to buy scallions because recipes usually only call for one or at most three and then I am stuck with a handful of scallions I am never going to use so I used about a half of a red onion, finely diced, instead. And I maybe also omitted the spinach. * cringes as you throw things at me * Other than that, I followed the recipe to its exact specifications and it was glorious. I see that it is well past lunchtime so I may go eat the rest of it now.

I cooked the quinoa for the salad in one of my other favorite kitchen gizmos:

Sistema Microwave Rice Cooker

Photo from amazon.com. I have never once used that paddley scrapery spatula.

I swear I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, but I can’t find any reference to it so maybe I forgot. So I am telling you now (or again. Whatever.). My husband got this rice cooker contraption for me and it is AWESOME. It cooks rice and couscous and quinoa and probably other things but we eat the first three ALL the time. It’s as simple as dumping your grain and some liquid in the thing, putting on the lid, and shoving it in the microwave. And when you’re done, it’s VERY easy to clean and it goes right in the dishwasher. So much better than carefully watching your pot boil and carefully adding your rice/couscous/whatever and standing around and making sure it doesn’t boil over or burn, and then soaking it in the sink for hours because the rice Will. Not. Come. Out. There’s a little chart that tells you how much of the grain you add and how much of the water and how long you cook it. I put it on the fridge for easy reference. But it’s not difficult at all. Some of it is easy to remember and decrease/increase – I think the rice is a one-parts-grain-to-two-parts-water kind of a thing. But for the others, I either use the directions on the box (of quinoa or couscous) or I weigh it out on my kitchen scale. I have experimented (with laziness/carelessness) in terms of how flexible the amounts are, and so far they are very flexible. For instance, if the little chart says 250 g of couscous, and I throw in 275 g instead, it still works out just fine. And you can do add-ins, too – I recently threw in some chopped roasted garlic with my couscous as it was cooking and it turned out perfectly.

I wanted to have FIVE things to recommend to you, but the soap is not available anymore so you get four. And I get that weird twitchy feeling that comes with publishing a list of FOUR items and not FIVE.