Love to smell Bread. Baking or just baked. Specifically, a plain, white, highly hydrated bread with crust like plate glass and gaping caverns of chewy crumb. Tomatoes. Ripe, unwashed, freshly pulled off the vine, by and in your hand, en route to your mouth, after a detour to the salt shaker, which you keep on a post in the garden in which you stand, under the hot sun and among the heavy vines, about to be eaten like an apple, that last referring to the tomato, which made its appearance so long ago in this paragraph that we’ve quite forgotten of what we were speaking. Broth. Not the dirty laundry smell of early broth, raw onions, oily fat, and boiling scum. Not even the hearth-and-home smell of middle broth hitting its honest stride after four hours of skimming, with herbs and spices added. I mean the dense, meaty, layered, concentrated, redolent aroma of late, late, late broth simmered overnight and strained and defatted and reduced and clarified to be savored from a highball glass, hot shimmering liquid beef with a splash of vodka and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. Pesto. Basil by the handful, fresh garlic, olive oil, dark toasted nuts, good hard tangy cheese, all those scents liberated, combined, atomized, and flung into the room by the whirring food processor. A food processor is recommended. Pesto made with mortar and pestle has that added smell of effort, sweat, and blisters, that I personally find offputting. I guess if it’s the right comely person working that pestle, while you watch appreciatively with a glass of chilled Prosecco, you could find the sweat sexy, but some uptight SJW will come along and accuse you of exploitation and soon you wish you’d just bought your pesto in a plastic tub from Costco and saved yourself the approbation. Wine. Deep red, room temperature, balloon glass, just poured and swirled. Not, it should never have to be said, a sweet red wine. Meh, intriguing but not emotional to smell Chocolate. That smell means dessert is near, and I like dessert, but I don’t get emotional about it, being more of a ”I’ll share a _____ but only want two bites” person. Unless we are talking about creme brulee or creme caramel. Drat, those should have been in the first list. Bananas. Smell good. Taste okay. Ruins any dish in which incorporated, except ice cream. To this day the smell of Bananas Foster makes me want to vomit, because once it did. Average taco van aka roach coach. A little bit of grill, a little bit of diesel. It’s usually going to be a mediocre meal. You’re going to eat it anyway. Because where there is a roach coach, there by definition is nothing else to eat. A diner, on a secondary road. Smell of weak coffee, hash and grease on the flattop, brown oil in the deep fryer, dirt and jeans, cigarette butts and motor oil. Similar experience coming as #3. Probably. There are glorious exceptions with diners, seldom with roach coaches. Lager or pilsner. Beer is always intriguing, then you get closer and think “crap, its just pilsner (or lager)”, which your subconscious knew from the thin reedy smell, and it emotionally protected you by whispering in your ear ”you’d rather have a spritz”. This happens a lot in France and Italy, where the chances of that beer being an ale, stout, or (non-flavoured, non-hazy, generally non-weirdo) IPA is slim. Hate to smell Durian. Why does every Asian market have this stuff. Most of us don’t eat it. The ones who claim to like it can go live in their own Stinkytown. How can you like the taste of something that smells so bad? Smell is part of taste! Dogs eat stinky cat poop. Be better than a dog. Please. You’re making us look bad. Super sicky sweet stuff. Like cotton candy, inch-thick pink frosting, those volcano things spewing melted milk chocolate, all the other sickness-on-a-stick things you find at the county fair. Espresso shots at most coffee shops in the US, while the ”ooo, light roast, ooo, spe-cial-lity coffee” crowd puts their pale dry rattly beans through espresso machines designed for traditional dark oily roasts, and produce shots so sour that your face looks like your other end is having a rectal exam. On the other hand, I like the smell of espresso shots in France and Italy. Standard hot dogs, boiled. Meaning your basic Oscar Meyer or equivalent weiner. The smell itself isn’t bad, but its the association with the soft, mushy, tasteless, oversalty, sack of meat byproduct that it precedes. Some food with cooked oranges in it. I like fresh oranges. There is something about some ways of cooking oranges that makes me think of the Porcelain Bus. Roasting is ok, stewing is not. Canard a l’orange is ok, having warm sour-sweet acid in my throat is not.

A few days ago I was watching a program about bison — the American buffalo and its near extention. A group of biologists, or government wildlife folks set about rescuing the last two dozen of them and putting them into a corraled space for a few decades. The guide showed one of the remaining fences and pointed out that it used to be a foot or two higher. That was because that huge animal could actually JUMP over the one that was (it appeared) only about 5 or 5.5 ft. high. But, yeah, roxsol, maybe its the wings. ;)

Bananas - but their price hasn 't escalated heavily Oranges - my poor memory can't give me escalating price info - but they 've been slightly under 2 bucks a pound for a couple of years or so (and no refund for skins collected) ole joyfuelled - with almost daily fuelling help from bananas and oranges for breakfast

Fresh sweet marjoram is one of my faves. I had a potted marjoram plant for many years that developed a woody 'trunk' like a bonsai tree, but it was lost to hurricane Helene 😕 There's a lot - here are just a few: Citrus peels - especially lime and tangerine Jasmine - as in Jasmine tea, also bergamot - as in Earl Grey tea Spearmint Tarragon Sauteed onions & garlic Cumin Roasting chicken I also lost my sense of smell to COVID back in January, and I feel like I still haven't regained it fully; tho I can smell plenty of things, others still seem to elude me - like floral scents.