Sherri

I can’t handle smelling food when I’m feeling nauseous or panicky though… partly because I reeeally don’t want to think about food at that time, and partly because any extra smell in the air seems to make me feel all chokey (okay, so that’s not really a word…). Maybe the people who don’t like food smell have weaker stomachs? But I would think if they are intending to eat it they would want to smell it. Helps you to get in the mood for what you’re going to eat.

Sorry if I make no sense… it’s been a long day. Hm, wow… I need to go to bed I think.

Karyl–I agree that when nauseous, food odors are too much. It is mostly people who regularly dislike the smell of food who I have trouble understanding.

One of my favorite personal chef clients was a pregnant Chinese-American woman who could not stand cooking odors because of her morning sickness. Like me, her nausea was not confined to morning–it happened all day every day throughout her pregnancy. So, I would cook and have the vent on and she would hide upstairs, and I would not cook anything with garlic or onions in it. I ended up making stuff with lots of ginger, and bringing her pickled ginger to eat, which settled her stomach. I also got her to eat Indian candied fennel seeds, which also calmed her stomach.

Finally, she was able to sit in the kitchen and keep me company while I cooked. She was very sweet and interesting–she was finishing up her PhD in psychology.

Smells are a big reason why I grow herbs–
If it’s damp when I get home from work, I smell chamomile, when I water the box I smell basil(I agree that Siam is wonderful), when I sit on the deck with my morning coffee I smell sage.

When we are gardening the Weed Slave and I are smelling things allll the time. And, by now, eating the irrepressible tomitillos as well–still planning on sending a tomatillo wreath @ end-of-season.

Yeah, I love herb smells. Just adore them, and that is why I was so bummed to have lost all of my lavender. At the Pataskala house, I had seven or eight thriving lavender plants–here, every last one of them died.