The uncanny feeling came on suddenly one morning. I got up out of the bed in the room where I spent my teenage years—and where I have been staying in my parents’ house in between apartments, waiting out the quarantine era—to take a shower. Immediately, I noticed the usually fragrant shampoo and body wash smells were missing. I stuck my nose into a bottle and filled my lungs to the brim with air, two or three times in a row. I came up with nothing.
. In fact, you don’t even need to use essential oils at all. She said that shoe polish, coffee, or spices can work just as well.Should I be huffing shoe polish or oranges? The answer wasn’t clear. So in keeping with my current arrested development at home, I reached out to the dad of one of my best friends, John Glendinning, a biology professor at Barnard who studies our sense of taste, which isour sense of smell.
As it turns out, my parents have a lot of spices. And so a hallowed ritual was born. I pull a chair up to the kitchen island that houses my parents’ spice drawer and settle in. Each time I open the drawer, I take a few seconds to review all of the spices, which are arranged alphabetically, from an adobo blend to za’atar. Then I dig in, taking my time to get through all 40 jars and packets spread across three interior racks.
The sniffs per spice ranges from one to several. Some are more potent, like cumin and pepper. Some are less so, or don’t have much of a smell at all, like marjoram or ground celery seed. I leave the best few—in my opinion, the warmer varieties like cardamom, clove, and nutmeg—for last, like a fine dessert.Beyond the possible medical benefits, my regular spice-sniffing exercise has turned into something more.
elia_bluelle Kerstin_Kolumna Vielleicht was für euch? 2x täglich an all euren Küchegewürzen schnuppern. ☕️🍵🥤🍳
Nice piece. Thankyou.
Where did this author learn to write? You could have written this with half as many words or less and made your point better. Wordiness was a sin in the olden days of writing. It still is.
Sounds very meditative to me!