• Leave a dish of vinegar on the counter overnight, or leave it out while you're cooking (careful of boiling it, though, because then you'll replace the fish smell with vinegar, and that's not really any better)
  
• Simmer a mixture of half-vinegar, half-water on the stove
• Simmer a mixture of lemon and orange rinds on the stove for about half an hour. Throw some cloves in, too, if you have them
• Before you cook fish, core and slice an apple into thin layers. Then submerge the apples and fry them in oil until they turn brown. Then, go ahead and cook your fish.

Honestly, if you can't handle the scent of chocolate chip cookies, how on earth can you handle taking a bus in a big city? Do these activists actually walk around San Francisco? It's not the cleanest-smelling city in the world. Besides, in just about any city the scent of chocolate chip cookies would be an improvement over exhaust, sewer and trash fumes. Perhaps they found the scent to be too appealing and were actually worried that cookie cravings would cause people to hyperventilate in excitement. Or maybe they were worried that their own cravings would make them blow their diets the next time they walked by a bakery.

I don't know how many of you folks out there have noticed that it isn't just the perfume makers who are using those scented ads in magazines. Pepsi did the same when it released its Black Cherry / Vanilla flavored Diet Pepsi Jazz. Scratch and sniff ads have been around for awhile but for dog food? Pedigree tried them at supermarkets and pet stores. Have you walked into a bakery and smelled that warm and comforting aroma of just baked bread? My local bakery has an electronic dispenser that sprays an artificial baking scent into the store every few minutes. Mars has been scenting its M&M World retail stores with a chocolate smell to make the experience more enveloping. Verizon recently did the same in its stores with the release of LG Chocolate phones. Do you remember smellavision from old TV cartoons? Well it's here. ScentAndrea has an 8,000 scent dispensing, flat panel screen monitor available in stores like Kroger's and Wal-mart to help make sales.

Scent is the most powerful of the human senses, and the most primitive. This is something I first learned when I was studying psychology in college. The right scent can trigger deep and long forgotten emotions and bring up feelings of every type. Marketers have known about this for a long time, which is why scent is starting to play a bigger role in many products advertising budgets. The best part about it from the sales perspective is that smell can help nudge you in a certain emotional direction without the person even noticing it. Sort of like a nasal version of Vulcan mind control. To boldly go, where no one has smelled before. Keep your eye's out... Uh, nose, for a lot more scent marketed advertising to come.

At Luxist, Deidre reported that a new scent called the Spirit of Scotland is to go on sale soon. Following in the footsteps of another unusual scent, the Spirit of Scotland is supposed to smell like malt whisky. While people have sample the scent and given it positive reviews, not everyone feels that it actually smells like whisky. Apparently, it has smoky, peaty notes with floral overtones. Honestly, it seems like you wouldn't want to walk around smelling like whisky all day, so it's probably just as well that the perfume is not an exact match for the spirit. Of course, if you already walk around smelling like whisky and are looking for a way to hide that, this could be the perfect product. 

A few months ago, I mentioned that some food producers were testing out a new advertising strategy where they add smells to their packaging , trying to lure customers in with scents that promised how tasty their products would be. Grocery stores also appear to be applying this technique. The flyer pictured here, for example, is one I recently received in the mail from my local supermarket that tried to lure me with its sensory (scent-sory?) appeal.

To experience the smell, the oven door had to be "opened," but I was cautious in my approach because the warning label read "Do not open if you are highly sensitive to fragrances." How strong could this smell be? Keeping the flyer at a distance, just to be safe, I peeled back the label. It actually smelled pretty good and, much to my surprise, not entirely unlike the blueberry muffins it was trying to represent.

One small sample wasn't overwhelming, but I certainly can't imagine a whole store filled with them. Like the perfume samples that infest so many magazines, I can imagine advertisers increasing the strength of their scents until they're overwhelming. Walking through the bakery section and smelling fresh breads is one thing, but once the cereal aisle starts to smell I think the idea will lose a lot of its appeal.

AriZona Beverage Co., which produces a line of popular iced teas, is experimenting with some new advertising techniques. The company already uses bright, eye-catching labels and graphics and is now experimenting with adding scent to its packaging. AriZona is working on embedding the smell of its products inside the cap of its bottles, but other companies are using other technologies to appeal to consumers, like scented inks. The Washington Post reports that the sales industry is frantically trying to come up with new ways to lure shoppers into trying their products, as television ads are shown to be increasingly less effective.