Contemplation – Sense of Smell

Welcome to week 5 of Contemplation. Well, we made it through a full month, with many open, self-reflective and, quite frankly, contemplative posts. Thank you to everyone who has joined in so far.

Just a reminder of what this little challenge is all about: each week, I’m sharing my response to one prompt from my Kikki.K A Sentence a Day Journal and inviting you to join me to share your response as well.

So for week 5, it’s a seemingly simply prompt – What can you smell right now?

As I write this response, I am making breakfast. It’s an unusual breakfast (for me). Usually I have vegemite on toast, or if I have time, scrambled eggs on toast.

But recently, my friend and I did a cheese-making course, at a little place near my apartment. We made mozzarella and ricotta and it was fabulous. And we got to take some home.

So I’m making french toast. With ricotta. And maple syrup. Mmmmnnnnn. It smells so good. I’m using some really good sourdough bread, I was a little heavy-handed on the vanilla extract and it’s slowly cooking on the stove right now, the sugar in the egg mixture coating the bread caramelising away.

Back in a sec.

Ok, so now the maple syrup hitting the hot vanilla scented toast releases the sweet syrupy aroma of real Canadian maple syrup. Ok, so I really have to share some photos:

This reminds me of a time when my best friend once came to stay with me after surgery. She was feeling pretty sad and sore, and I asked her if she wanted French Toast and she said yes, so I went about making it and asked her if she wanted tomato sauce (ketchup) and she said no, in a really funny way. When I gave her the plate, she said she wasn’t hungry anymore. I came to realise many months later that what my family called French Toast was quite different to the rest of the world. We would soak our bread in an egg-milk mixture, fry it and put grated cheddar cheese on top. Our family is addicted to tomato sauce so we would squeeze some of that on top and it was a common Sunday night dinner for us. No sugar, no vanilla, no maple syrup or ice cream. I still have it occasionally if I’m feeling lazy. But “proper” French Toast? Yes please! Sign me up.

Oops, sorry Moana, I wonder if you remember that day?

So…. what can you smell right now?

Here are the scents from my fellow contemplators:

Julie Powell – Photographer and Graphic Artist is smelling oatmeal….

XO NIN is smelling potatoes!

Amy at Snapshots, Snippets and Scribbles is happy to be smelling nothing.

Inidna at Snippets of a Panda Life is smelling airports.

x desleyjane

PS ok so I just gave Gidget her breakfast and the smell in my apartment has changed dramatically to something incredibly unappealing 😛