When I Step Over Your Threshold

[jamiemaw]

Every home has a distinctive smell, an aroma as distinctive as a fingerprint: your odiferous DNA if you like.

Much of that smell is food generated, perhaps leavened with the spin cycle from the washing machine, and at this time of the year, some herbs or lavender.

What would your friends and neighbours smell if they visited right now?

Edited July 25, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[Ling]

Right now my house smells like peanut butter cookies, but if you stop by in the evening, I usually have a pie or a cake in the oven. If you want to be specific, I think the sweet scents of brown sugar, chocolate and butter come through pretty well.

Nothing smells better than a pan of brownies baking.

Edited July 24, 2005 by Ling (log)

[Siren]

Interesting question but it would depend on the night.

Most nights would bring the smell of garlic sauteeing or vanilla coffee.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Sauteeing Vidalia onions which are grown not far from here ... seasonal, of course, but delightful!

[pamjsa]

Peaches. It's summer, after all, and this is Texas.

[Marlene]

Garlic. Almost always. There are very few things I cook (besides baking) that don't have garlic in them.

[tejon]

Garlic here as well, plus ginger. Though at the moment the house smells like oatmeal cookies

[jpdchef]

bacon bacon bacon.

[maggiethecat]

Cigarettes, puff pastry and Shalimar.

[jamiemaw]

Cigarettes, puff pastry and Shalimar.

←

Outstanding.

Tonight our house smelt of the pulled pork barbecue that we threw into the red sauce for cowboy lasagne (Tuesday night), and the sea, ozone and fresh laundry.

[Andy Lynes]

Wet dog, curry and re-heated moussaka. (Yuk!)

[jackal10]

Cigarettes, puff pastry and Shalimar.

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Perfect! Can I come? I love the Guerlain scents especially Shalimar and Mitsouko.

Here smells of woodsmoke, lavender, baking bread and coffee as background

Edited July 25, 2005 by jackal10 (log)

[binkyboots]

right now...

butteries baking (not entirely as I'd hope they would turn out, but nevermind), blackcurrant jelly boiling, coffee and dog.

[BonVivant]

why garlic. always! :)

[hathor]

Last night: elderberry jam in 2 versions: one with honey, one with sugar

basil because I was making a large vat of pesto

really stinky French cheeses

how is that for olofactory (sp??) confusion?

this morning: coffee

simmering veal for vitello tonnato

[su-lin]

Garlic or onions frying...mixed with laundry air drying (currently using a lavender and chamomile detergent!)...mixed with Cif (was cleaning the bathroom).

[Carrot Top]

Cigarettes, puff pastry and Shalimar.

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Well, really. . .it will never matter to me at all anymore what my house smells like, for what could top this!

Incredible. What a distillation of the essence of intelligent, seductive femininity is held in those five words.

And now, I have to say, "Pork Roast"? It makes me feel so plebian, you know. . .rather clunky and worn, dressed in potato sack cloth or the like.

Heh heh.

Great lines, maggie. I don't even care if you made it up or not. Great, either way.

P.S. Sigh. Not that I think you made it up. . .it is just that the words so seem to define a reality that would follow them, rather than the other way around. And now I had better stop jabbering, myself.

Edited July 25, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[racheld]

Cigarettes, puff pastry and Shalimar.

←

So we all quote Maggie, and remember, remember. My childhood and young adult memories of how our home smelled was almost exactly those. Ladies wore just a whiff of perfume, and it went without saying, they almost all smoked. There was about the dress and the image of the time a fragrance of nylon and perfume and the vaguest whiff of cigarette smoke, along with Coty face powder and maybe a little spraynet. Hugging your Mother or an aunt was as close as you were gonna get to those perfectly-made-up images on the movie screen, and they filled in quite nicely in that capacity.

And today, I cannot be near a smoker without choking up and having to leave the area. I got my fill of hairspray in the every-morning gauntlet run past about six sets of dorm rooms, all with open doors, the fumes and fog of Kents and Kools wafting out on a strong tide of Spraynet and Intimate perfume.

But the softness of that feminine fragrance, mixed with the scent of a cobbler a-bubble in the oven, or a pan of warm honeyed biscuits, or even a skillet holding the necessaries: Onion, bell pepper, garlic, sauteing for whatever main dish was on for that night. Those are the smells of home, and I find that they frequently make up the scents of my own home....something good cooking or simmering or baking; an afterthought of the lemony cleaner I used to wipe down the cabinet doors; good coffee perking; vanilla in almost all desserts; the actual twist of lemon which poofs over every glass of iced tea; something frying up crisp and juicy just as Hubby drives into the driveway. He comes in, inhaling deeply, saying, "I smelled fried chicken clear out into the yard. If those AirWick people could bottle that, they'd be millionaires."

And I love Shalimar, always have. But my last little fan-top glass bottle lay broken in the bathtub, leaking its treasures into the shards of glass, victim to a Mallard hen which made her way down the chimney one day while I was at work. I almost cried over that wonderful, expensive waste, and would have just run a bath and settled into it, if not for the glass and the duck poop. But that's another story.

[jamiemaw]

Thank you. That teared me up faster than a gauntlet of Kents and Spraynet.

My fiancée makes a convincing case for cooking in Shalimar and nothing else.

I still get to fry the bacon though.

Edited July 26, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[racheld]

Thank you. That teared me up faster than a gauntlet of Kents and Spraynet.

My fiancee makes a convincing case for cooking in Shalimar and nothing else.

I still get to fry the bacon though.

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Dare we ask if he likes his peas cooked in perfume, or is it like the tale of Marilyn Monroe's being asked about her preferred sleeping ensemble; she'd coyly murmur, "Chanel #5."

[devlin]

Usually, refreshing sourdough starter. Very subtle, beautiful. I often take a big breath and sigh, "God, that's gorgeous," and my husband doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about. I'm the only one who can smell it. Invariably, though, the first thing he says when he's home is, "Wow, something smells good."

Laundry, clean floors, and whatever's cooking or baking. Lots of good clean smell and baking and cooking. I love the smell of my house.

[jamiemaw]

Thank you. That teared me up faster than a gauntlet of Kents and Spraynet.

My fiancee makes a convincing case for cooking in Shalimar and nothing else.

I still get to fry the bacon though.

←

Dare we ask if he likes his peas cooked in perfume, or is it like the tale of Marilyn Monroe's being asked about her preferred sleeping ensemble; she'd coyly murmur, "Chanel #5."

←

She extols the latter virtue. Occasionally, for a change of pace, she cooks in Shalimar and pearls.

Everything just seems to taste a little better that way.

Edited July 26, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[sabiha]

my house smells of indian style meatballs right now

[jetsie]

Peaches, toast, peanut butter, baby soap, air conditioning: little kids in the summer.

[Daddy-A]

Coffee, toast/peanut butter & basil.

And sunscreen.

A.