Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

I've had a lot to celebrate lately, in both my professional life as a perfumer and President of the Natural Perfumers Guild, and my personal life. After 2.5 years of grueling work, I'm able to take some time off, party more, enjoy life and just have fun. One of these events was taking my 88 year-old mother to a favorite Slow Food restaurant of mine, Michael's Genuine Food and Drink in Miami's Design District. It's practically a neighborhood place for me, being just a short drive from my house. We had reservations for a little before noon, as I knew the place gets slammed with guests and I wanted to get her settled into her seat before the place filled. When we got to the Design District, Art Basel crowds filled the streets as the galleries were open and excitement was in the air. It was very festive and a lot of fun! Michael's is set back in a treed courtyard, with the choice of indoor or outdoor seating. We choose indoor, even though the weather was nice bec

STOP THE FDA GLOBALIZATION ACT OF 2008 If it weren't for our sense of smell, would would not be able to discern the food we put in our mouths. Our sense of smell makes it possible for us to taste our food. Our tastebuds help us sense salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. When purchasing tomatoes or melons at the store, we use our nose to detect which ones are the ripest with the probable best taste. No scent? No taste. When agribusiness giants gobble up family farms, or development paves over yet another field of beans with concrete, we, the people, become more separated from the crops that smell and taste good. Every small scale farm that goes under puts another nail in the coffin of free enterprise providing fresh, tasty, nutritious food on our table or fragrant, beautiful ingredients for our natural perfumes. Taking your children out to a local farm to pick a pumpkin becomes more of an impossibility when urban sprawl means a 40-mile drive each way. I call it the Cheez-Wiz factor