Nostalgic smells.

[gcvmom]

I'm cooking my mom's spaghetti sauce recipe for dinner tonight (she got it from my Italian grandfather's second wife about 40 years ago). It's amazing how a smell can transport you back in time.

This recipe was something I always looked forward to eating. One of the few comfort foods I remember as a kid. She made it about once a month, and it simmered on the stove all day, filling the house with the most wonderful aroma.

I'm sure my kids won't appreciate it! I'll be happy if they just TRY it!

 

[Lothlorien]

Hope you all enjoyed your spaghetti!
This is what brings me back...
The smell of steak or hamburgers on a charcoal grill
Aquanet
The smell of tar on the beach (they used to use tar on the pilings for the boardwark.

 

[gcvmom]

Oh yeah! I remember the smell of a charcoal grill!!! And my dad used to put hickory chips on the coals... mmmmm!

I remember stepping on tar at the beach Had to use lighter fluid to get it off!

Aquanet, not so much. My mom wasn't much of a fancy hair-do gal.

 

[KTMom91]

I definitely read the title wrong...

 

[gcvmom]

Okay, maybe you need to dig out those glasses of YOURS... what on earth did you THINK you read???

 

[KTMom91]

I saw the words...but what I understood was along the lines of "stinks." Like it was a bad memory. So I was not expecting spaghetti sauce.

 

[gcvmom]

 

[jal]

Spaghetti sauce-YES! My mom's homemade. I make it too. 9+ hours simmering on the stove - LOVE the smell! Others...my grandparents Aero Stream travel RV...unique, but comforting. My mom's homemade pizza - to this day the best. Smells of home, new cars and the lake air at my parents new home. Also, the one I miss is of my difficult child as a baby, but now I'll take the fresh as can be smell, after a hot shower.

 

[Mattsmom277]

I was out the other day and when I came home, S/O had dinner on. Standing outside about to open the door, I got a whiff. I opened the door and knew right away what he was cooking. I was transported to my grandmothers house, and my aunt/uncles house, during my childhood. I would go each Sunday after church to visit. My grandmother was cared for by my favorite aunt. They lived in a main floor of a house (apartment). My other aunt/uncle lived on the top floor of the house. I would go in and follow my nose. If the smell was direct in front of me, off to see gram first. If it was wafting down the stairs, I'd climb to the top to my aunt/uncle. I knew how to find Sunday dinner .

So the other night, I felt so close to them, it was like Sunday dinner visits that I miss so much. I was teary taking off my boots when I came in because I had a hard past few weeks missing my aunt who passed several years ago. It was anniversary of her passing and her birthday and I felt lonlier for her than I had in a long time. Smelling dinner cooking was uncannily like getting a longed for warm loving hug from her.

It was a simple roast beef cooking in a roast pan alongside chunks of onion, potatoes and carrots and turnips in the pan with it. Nothing else smells like that combination. And anytime I smell it unexpectedly I am taken way back.

It's a beautiful thing

 

[GoingNorth]

The smell of a beef brisket cooking slowly with onions, carrots, potatoes, turnips, garlic and celery.

I make a killer jewish style brisket but rarely do so since I am just cooking for me and don't have the freezer space to store leftovers (my freezer is full of frozen raw dog food)

 

[GoingNorth]

Another: the smell of onions and mushrooms sauteing in a heavy skillet, especially if they are sauteing in chicken fat.

 

[Suz]

Waking up to the smell of my grandma's handmade sticky buns baking in the oven.

Perfection.

Suz

 

[Lothlorien]

Waking up to the smell of my grandma's handmade sticky buns baking in the oven.

Perfection.

Suz

*drooool*

 

[Lothlorien]

Growing up, I lived several houses from a huge Italian provision store that was also a bakery. The sweet/sour smell of the yeast permeated the air all morning and into the early afternoon. Whenever I go to my parents' house, that smell always brings me back to the days when I played outside with my friends.

 

[donna723]

For me, it's apples! When I was a kid, every fall the ladies in our church would all spend a whole Saturday in the church kitchen making apple butter to sell ... you could smell it blocks away! Turned the whole neighborhood on! My grandmother would make it too and the smell would linger in their house for days.

And the smell of spring flowers always brings me back to my grandparents big old house too. They had a huge park-like yard and a big vegetable garden, and between the yard and the garden my grandfather had planted a 20 ft. wide strip of Easter lilies! Smelled heavenly! And lilacs! Every time I smell lilacs, I'm right back in the house I lived in as a kid with the big, overgrown lilac bush right outside our kitchen window. If it was warm enough to open the windows when it bloomed, the whole house smelled like lilacs!

 

[muttmeister]

Well, this will probably sound weird but I grew up on a farm and one of my favorite smells is newly plowed earth in the spring. Whenever I'm driving along and smell that smell I feel like I'm home again.

 

[Lothlorien]

Well, this will probably sound weird but I grew up on a farm and one of my favorite smells is newly plowed earth in the spring. Whenever I'm driving along and smell that smell I feel like I'm home again.

Not weird at all.

We spent summers on an Amish farm in PA. The smell of cow manure always brings me back to those days! LOL...

 

[AnnieO]

My favorite perfume, Vanilla Fields, yanks me straight back to my first wedding. And back to this past November for some reason.

A certain jasmine scent, to high school.

Patchouli, to early college.

Fresh grapefruit - Grandma's, sitting in front of her soap operas on a lazy summer afternoon.

Chile rellenos... To the visits we made to Grandma and Grandpa before they passed away, but after we moved northeast.

Snow - yes, snow! - to when I was a kid.

Wet dog - to the day I got my first dog at 9 years old.

 

[hearts and roses]

Oh I really love this thread!

When I walk into an apartment building in NYC, it smells just like the old tenement building my grandparents lived in - brings me right back!

A summer rain after really hot temps - I remember racing popsicle sticks in the road rivlets in the torrential rains!

When we open our pool every spring and put all the shock in it, if I close my eyes, my mom will be over by the filter of our family pool as a kid.

Peppered steak cooking reminds me of my dad, it was his specialty.

The smell of anise reminds me of my gramma; same thing with spiced gumdrops!

The smell on the inside of my old purse - I'm 5 again and sneaking change out of my mom's purse for the ice cream man. Hahaha.