On Smells

My mom would be the first to tell you that I have an unusually good sense of smell. I have to tell you this "gift" was extremely torturous when I was pregnant. Do you know how many different smells there are at Target?
Smells and culture go hand in hand. Everywhere I have traveled has a smell memory for me. Not to criticise Cairo but car exhaust and cigarette smoke will always take me immediately back to walking to the metro.
So you can imagine that I have quite the opinion on smells that come from my Mexican-kitchen-take-over. Some are good like the smell of canela cooking as my MIL prepares arroz con leche, or sweet tamales and others are repulsive like the smell of frijoles that have been sitting on the stove all day. Another unfavorite of mine is burning tortillas on the comal. I have learned tortilas are meant to be cooked before you eat them. Eating a tortilla straight out of the bag should probably be one of the seven deadly sins. (If you are white and this is how you eat them, next time get out a pan, I'm guessing your don't have a comal sitting around, heat it up and then put the tortilla in it, flip over and then enjoy, ahhh much tastier isn't it!) But every once in awhile, while there are 15 other dishes cooking a tortilla gets left to it's doom and the whole house fills with the smell of burnt tortilla. This usually follows a round of window opening and fan turning on even when it's 15 degrees out.
Tamales steaming have a unique Mexican-kitchen-take-over smell as well. It's not a bad smell, just a cultural reminder that this isn't the kitchen of my youth. My husband, who's favorite food aside from sweet and sour Chinese chicken, is tamales, thinks this smell is the smell of Christmas. Not just because Tamales are a Christmas food, but because tamales cooking represent all that is joyful and wonderful in his mouth. Since my MIL has been selling tamales out of our kitchen this smell is fairly constant in our house. I think I've noticed it might just be loosing some of it's Christmasness.
When walking around our neighborhood there is one smell that alerts the trained sniffer to recognize that there are Mexicans living there. This is the smell of Fabuloso, a floor cleaner that probably is the equivalent of Pine sol but with a lavender sent, according to the marketing. Lavender is probably not my first thought but it is purple! When my husband and I were looking at houses to buy we would tell our real estate agent as soon as we walked into each house if there were Mexicans living there. She eventually caught on to it as well and gave us a big bottle of Fabuloso when we finally closed on our house.
One final Mexican-kitchen-take-over smell is that of chili's roasting. This is one kitchen task that was not aided by the invention of the modern indoor kitchen. Roasting chili's can actually be hazardous to your health. Depending on the spiciness of the chili, when the smell becomes air born it can send my son and I to race for the door coughing with our eyes watering. My MIL has learned that cooking chilies indoors especially in the dead of winter is probably not the best plan. She now, even when it is snowing, takes her plug in frying pan out to the patio to cook the chili's. For awhile I didn't understand why we just didn't forgo roasted chili's when it's 15 degrees outside, but as stated in an earlier post, dinner isn't dinner without salsa and salsa isn't salsa without chili's.