Common Scents...

My dearest son, whom I love with all my heart, went to the lake with me the other day. He brought his back pack with him, which I really didn't think much of at the time. He loves to collect shells and rocks, etc., which is as far as I thought his "collecting" skills reached. But NO. It wasn't until this evening when I walked in the house from getting my mail, that I smelled it. It was foul. It was nauseating. It was unimaginably awful. And what was it?? I searched high and low, looked through everything in the kitchen, thinking that maybe my potatoes went off or I had dropped an old piece of meat somewhere and it was rotting. But the smell seemed to be coming from my son's room. So, I went it and started searching. I finally tracked the smell to his back pack. I opened it up and, much to my horror, found a nice little dead FISH. Yes, a fish. A FISH! Glassy-eyed and dead. In my son's backpack. Ugh! And it was there long enough to turn our little apartment into a fish hatchery gone wrong. Now, I don't keep Glade or any other such chemical potpourri in my home because I don't think it's much better than the smell of whatever you're trying to cover up. But, today I was sorry.

I quickly and efficiently discarded the dead fish and opened every door and window. But that wasn't helping. So I went into my kitchen (where I spend most of my time.) and looked through my cupboard. I threw a pot of water on the stove to boil and began to add whatever I could find to it. I threw in cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, star anise and anise seed. We fled the house as if it were on fire, and came back an hour later.

Much to our surprise, when we walked in, the house smelled like a pie was baking. There was the underlying fish smell, but mostly it smelled like pie. And we didn't mask it with chemicals. We just simmered some everyday spices and it was great. So I wonder, why do we insist in buying all these "products" when we could really simplify our lives? I'm not saying we should live in the woods and go barefoot. I love the modern conveniences. It's just the basic things that I think we could do ourselves. I blame the marketing myopia for pushing products that over simplify our lives. It's just more money to spend on something our children could swallow. The warning on the bottles is enough to make you never buy it. Now, make it your self and the worst that could happen is a mouth full of spice. So, I have resolved to do more things like that on my own. I'm sure there are a bunch of different scent combinations one could come up with using just basic food and spice items.

And speaking of things I want to do on my own, I plan to make some syrups for soda pop. I will just buy sparkling water and add my own flavoring. I was at the grocery store the other day and I saw their big push on "Throw Back Pepsi." I picked one up to see what all the hype was about and it said "made with all natural sugar." "As opposed to what?", should be the question. But nowadays they use high fructose corn syrup in pop. Sugar is much healthier. And making your own syrup has it's perks...You can control the flavor and sweetness. And at least you don't have to go to bio-chem to figure out what's in it! Not to bash corn syrup TOO much. I do use it for pecan pie and divinity. But I don't really want it in my pop.

So, I guess if I could, I would like my life on a small farm so I could mix the modern conveniences with the more rural lifestyle. For now though, we will enjoy our apartment as much as we can. And much more now that it doesn't smell like a dead fish!