2023, Food, home, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

The Nose Knows

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Yesterday was a snow day for me as my agency was closed. Husband had a morning Zoom meeting for his Bismarck agency, which he did on his computer at the kitchen table. It didn’t last long, and we made a somewhat treacherous trip to the grocery store before the snow got any deeper. The city plows hadn’t been out and it was very slippery.

I made banana bread when we got back from the store, which filled the house with a wonderful aroma. Smells can be so evocative. The smell of Charteuse brings me back 45 years to memories of warm summer evenings in Moorhead having a drink after dinner with friends. I wouldn’t touch the stuff now with a ten foot pole, but the memories are good ones.

Kyrill has a very powerful sense of smell, and he can tell whenever we have been to the pet store and picked up treats for him without even taking them out of the bag. He mobs us when we walk in the door and tries to get to the bags. He can smell wrapped hard candy in my pants pockets, and tries to put his nose down my pocket to extract them. He may not see the bunnies as he walks past them, but he can smell where their holes are and tries to dig them out. I think it would be very distracting to have such a keen sense of smell.

What smells and tastes are evocative for you? What are your favorite smells to have wafting through your home?

28 thoughts on “The Nose Knows”

  1. I used to get a lot of hand me down clothing from my cousin David. His clothes always had a particular smell, not bad like body odor, maybe just the detergent or something. But I’ve always remembered that.

    There’s also a perfume, I don’t know what it is, but I remember a few girls I’ve known would wear that. Haven’t noticed it in a long time.

    Fresh cut alfalfa is good. One year I gave jars of air to the family as Christmas gifts. I took jars up in the haymow, sucked the air out of them and then capped it quick. 🙂

    I have a niece, and her dad, neither of which can smell. They just don’t have those senses, never have. Consequently, they don’t always eat much because food without a smell is a little different isn’t it?

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    1. When my aunt and uncle left to live in Saudi Arabia for many years, I jarred up some snow and kept it in the freezer before giving it to them. My aunt really got a kick out of that.

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  2. Adhesive smells always bring memories. Armstrong S-89 was for floor tile. Best stuff ever but it was excellent because it contained asbestos. Of course, it’s no longer manufactured. Black color that smelled like asphalt. Typically, we would spread the glue late in the day and it dried overnight. On one project, we tasked an apprentice to spread the adhesive. When we returned to work next morning, the smell was still quite strong. My nose told me that something was wrong. Turns out the guy used a trowel with yuuuge, bigly notches that put down 10 times more glue than required. Not a total disaster but he was a tar baby after having to scrape up all of the glue.
    Many flooring adhesives are creamy color and look alike. One journeyman installer spread the wrong glue in a room. He had taken a bucket from the supply area that contained several types and ignored the label. He insisted that he had used the proper product. And I insisted that I could smell the difference without looking at the labeling. I was right and he was po’d; especially when he was forced to pull up all the material he’d already laid. He didn’t last long. No humility.

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  3. One fairly unpleasant smell that is evocative for me is the outhouse smell at most state and national parks. Only because I’ve camped a lot all across the continent and the smell (ODOR) is always the same.

    I love the smell of most baked goods—C.C. cookies, bread, cinnamon rolls and such. Bacon’s always good for a minor tingling of my taste buds. Coffee used to be, but I drink it every day now and don’t notice it as much as I used to.

    Chris in Owatonna

    **Sort of a BSP** If I haven’t mentioned, my new book, Little Mountain, Big Trouble, is now available on Nook, Kobo, and Apple Books (e-books of course). **End Sort of a BSP**

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  4. For the most part I don’t smell things very well, many foods for instance. But the hundreds of smells that make me sick in various ways, such as floor mastics, I can smell. Perfumes, all of them, give me migraines. Not many smells are pleasant to me. Coffee and bacon are of course. Maybe not smelling foods very much is part of my 50 pound weight loss. Fresh cut hay is evocative and pleasant. The smell of the northern forest, not just any forest, is the small of home.
    When I come home I am surprised by how the apartment smells. Never bad. I keep it very clean, but messy. I am surprised I can smell anything I think is the point.
    I went to Cub this morning and it reeked of disinfectant, the whole store. I got out as quick as I could. I was there to get Covid tests. Now you have to pay for them.
    Clyde

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  5. Freshly cooked bacon smells great. That same odor, lingering a few hours later, not so much.

    I am repelled by most artificial scents. Stores redolent of potpourri or scented candles are no go. The whole idea of scented “room fresheners” is beyond my ken. Even things that are supposedly unscented, like sunscreen, make me slightly ill. I don’t suffer migraines from scents but they ruin my mood. And don’t get me started on patchouli. That stuff should be illegal.

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      1. Add me to the anti-patchouli gang. The smell of it actually makes me gag a little bit. I’ve always wondered if patchouli is one of those things like cilantro. If you like it, you like it and if you don’t like it, it’s almost visceral.

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  6. Stale beer.
    Now the back story.
    In the summer of 1967, we were working on a multi-story apartment building in Duluth. It was there on the construction crew that I learned about Colt 45 malt beer. Not a good experience for anyone much less a punk kid. Next day, the task assigned to myself and partner was to muscle carpet upstairs. A beer had been spilled on two of the between floors landings. There was no way up past the past. Gag.

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  7. As funny as it seems (since I’m a vegetarian) the smell of tuna fish salad is brings back great memories from my childhood. My dad didn’t like tuna, so the only time we had it was when he was out of town for work. I still remember sitting down in the summer, to a tomato, quartered almost all the way through, sitting on a leaf of lettuce and filled with fresh tuna salad.

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  8. A couple of days ago I was trying out a new Halloween pan and I used the ginger cookie recipe that I make every year for the holidays. Ginger, cloves, cinnamon – all great smells and the house was adorned with that aroma for hours on end. And the cookies tasted good too!

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  9. Scenic paint used to be milk based (I think). There is no mistaking the smell of ‘dead paint’ we’d call it. Hoo boy, does that reek.

    Brakes sticking, there’s a distinctive smell that will linger. I was going to get seed this spring. Passed a vehicle on the highway that stunk of brake linings burning off. The guys at Meyer Seeds thought it was my truck burning. Nothing felt hot, but that smell persisted through the day. And then nothing. Glad it wasn’t my brakes.

    Skunks of course.

    And chicken manure doesn’t smell until you step in it and bring it inside and it warms up. Then it smells.

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  11. Almond extract is my favorite baking smell. It’s an ingredient in a spritz recipe I use, and it reminds me of Christmas.

    I used to have a simmering potpourri that waslabeled as Cherry Chocolate. I don’tthink it had any real cherry or chocolate ingredients, but, oddly enough, it smelled very authentic. I used it all up and was never able to find the same product again.

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  13. I love the smell of coffee in the morning. I drink one mug every morning and I love it. That’s one of my favorite smells. Anything being baked in the house, especially sweet breads with cinnamon, ginger, and allspice in the them, create wonderful smells. The smell of bread baking makes me hungry.

    I also love the smells in a small barn with horses. Horses just have a wonderful smell. The hay smells good until they use it for a toilet, but once you’ve cleaned it out and spread new straw, and given them hay, it all smells good again. That smell evokes pleasant memories of having horses when I was young.

    I have a favorite body lotion that I get at the Co-op that smells like coconut. I like it a lot and it doesn’t make me sick. I don’t wear any perfumes.

    I’m with those who don’t like artificial room air “fresheners”. They really do make some people sick, and I’m one of them. My coworkers liked to use them at the home I worked in and I kept telling them that those things are unhealthy, and they make me sick. There was even a policy about it and I found it (in all of the those policies!) and I showed it to them, but they didn’t care. They didn’t want to stop using the scent device, believing they were covering up some of the other, less desirable odors. Finally, one of the resident’s family members also complained about it and the supervisor intervened. There was an online training video about it too, so it was finally put away.

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  15. Remembered another – I have a recipe for chai tea from scratch that I got from a former housemate. Has cinnamon stick, whole cloves and cardamom pods… it smells just heavenly. I also love the smell of cardamom in baking bread or cookies.

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