Cooking in the Cucina
By Georgia Bistolaridis

Coriander and olive tree, ginger and Sicilian lemon, basil, tomato and sage. Such ingredients we associate most often only with cooking, but have you ever thought of their scenting our kitchens with sprays or benefiting our
skin by way of cleansing, healing and moisturizing? 

The truth is, with Cucina products, your kitchen can smell twice as good the next time you cook, because the products, including fragrant hand creams, washes, kitchen soaps, wands, oils, candles, and sprays, are made with the same deliciously scented ingredients as our favorite Mediterranean dishes.  This invention allows us, if only for a fleeting moment, to indulge in imagining our home as a villa in Tuscany, and ourselves as the master chefs of gourmet cooking.

And as the delightful products complement the sweet smells emanating from simmering pots and pans, they won’t clash with the flavor of your food.  So instead of tasting Bath and Body Works’ Juniper Breeze in your manicotti, you’ll be sure to taste only the dish’s intended ingredients, but remain the victor with the utmost cleanest and moisturized hands.

Together, Cucina’s purifying hand wash and repairing cream are formulated to purify and soothe the skin from the rigors of bad weather and frequent washing, thanks to the benefits of extra virgin olive oil and olive leaf extracts. While the olive oil deep cleans, softens and moisturizes, the olive leaf extracts soothe and help heal minor cuts and burns, injuries that all chefs, renowned or entirely domestic, face daily.  Cucina soaps,
presented in adorable wooden cheese crate boxes, rid impurities with the coriander and olive soap style, dissolve food and grease residues with Sicilian lemon and ginger, and offer extra antibacterial properties in its
sage, basil and tomato formula.

A new addition to the Cucina collection is their scented candles, which deliver the scents of Tuscany to your kitchen or dining room at any time of the day.  Made half with soy wax and half with paraffin, these candles
guarantee to burn 50 hours of blissful aromas into your home and come available in three delectable fragrances.  Coriander and olive tree is green like the fresh, Mediterranean air while ginger and Sicilian lemon is a
light, refreshing and tangy fragrance and basil and tomato is a warm, welcoming scent.  If you seek a sleek alternative to candles though, try Cucina’s fragrant wands, available in the same aromas, with 200 of the
9.25-inch wands in every box.  But don’t worry oil lovers; your home can also be brought to scented life with the availability of Cucina’s perfumed reviver oils.  Finally, indulge in the quick fix of kitchen sprays in the
same magnificent aromas when you don’t have time to even let the little wand burn down.  Only try not to confuse the spray with your olive oil, with their cruet style bottles, they look edible as can be.

So if your kitchen, you, your home, or your friends are in need of a vacation or some sort of revival, give yourself or them the gift of Cucina.  It may not include a day at the beach or a handsome Italian, but it at least
smells as good as the Mediterranean and is packaged as prettily as delectability could ever be.  So slip some Dean Martin or Maria Callas into the cd player, wrap a scarf around your head and indulge in your own Tuscan
fantasy, if anyone else is lucky they’ll get a dinner out of your secret (but not so far) getaway.

Cucina products are available at select Marshall Field’s, Nordstrom and Anthropologie stores.  The prices of their individual products and gift sets range from $6-$70. Cucina products are available at www.ebubbles.com