When Pigs Fly and Rosemary Focaccia

By -

 

When I watch the Great British Bake Off/Baking Show (which, admittedly isn't that often, but when such an occasion occurs, for example, when my housemates or friends watch it) I can practically sniff the ingredients through the screen. I've always been good at picking apart ingredients just through my nose, though no one should ever dare test me on that.

When I walk into a Subway or any deli, I melt. No, it's not the roast beef or meatballs, it's the smell of Italian Herb & Cheese bread. Italian seasoning, with its oregano, basil and thyme; they're all very distinct scents that have always stood out to me, along with baked bread in general, which leads to no surprise that one of my favorite places to exist in is When Pigs Fly. There are so many loaves of bread. So many oils and jams. I could pick apart the herbs in a focaccia, and one particular scent that I can always identify is rosemary. I have at least two people that can fact-check me on this, that have been exposed to these powers.  I'm certainly no prodigy of the nose, like Helen Keller, as Diane Ackerman writes about in A Natural History of the Senses, nor am I a Sophia Grojsman, but I am keen to fragrances.

Ackerman describes aromatic memories, scents that bring us back to a different time, a different place. Stepping into a Subway doesn't necessarily envelop me into the past, though I do have a very clouded memory, so perhaps I had a really wonderful experience in a Subway as a child; my sandwich was extra toasted, etc,. I do opt to eat a Subway when I am with my grandmother, and those are pleasant lunches, so my love for Subway aromas could stem from that.

Regardless, the smell of fresh baked bread is a scent I want to wrap myself in for eternity. When I get a whiff of rosemary and other Italian seasonings I long for some focaccia, or Italian bread in general. Warm fresh baked bread is the way to the soul.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more