a nose that knows
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2006-05-12: a nose that knows

Our sense of smell is probably our strongest sense – mine is anyway. And that isn’t just because I happen to have what is sometimes referred to as a “super charged, super powered pregnant nose” these days. I have always had a rather stalwart sense of smell…sometimes a good thing, and sometimes a bad one. I think my olfactory sense is so powerful because it is instantly tied to memory and emotion. So as the saying goes, when is it good, it is very, very good…when it is bad, it is horrid.

I can tell you how my parents cottage property smells during just about any season of the year. There is the smell of cool water on hot rocks or wet boards drying in the sun in the summer. The memory of the pungent perfume of wet pine needles and crushed rotting leaves in the fall. I can recall of the fragrance of cold snow and a wood fire burning all day and all night in the winter months. And what normal person doesn’t instantly recognize the smells of spring; melting ice and budding trees…?

My dominant sense of smell comes in handy with cooking. I know when things are done by the smell. This is, by the way, how my mother taught me to cook: “The turkey is done when it smells done” I remember her telling me over the telephone years and years ago when I was in the rather stressfull middle of cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner. I can remember her baking bread or cookies and being upstairs doing the ironing when I was young. She’d turn, take a sniff and tell me to go take whatever was in the oven, out -- it was done. And she was never wrong, amazingly…I don’t think the woman even owns a meat thermometer to this day and her cookies and breads are nicely browned on the bottoms (the way she likes them) and never burnt or undercooked.

Recently I made sticky buns -- banana sticky buns to be exact. And while they were baking I had this instant moment when all I could smell was dough, caramelizing sugar and the heady scent of baking bananas. It was so lovely and so uplifting – the entire apartment smelled like a sweets shop and I couldn’t help but smile. That is probably one of the reasons I love to bake…not only do you get to eat a delicious treat when it’s done and out of the oven, but you also get to enjoy it while it’s baking and it’s scent drifts around you, comforting and stimulating at the same time.