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Smells of the past still remembered

By Marion Drazil of Smart Business Online

I remember the smells that surrounded me in my childhood, the smells of eggs and bacon cooking for breakfast on a Sunday morning, the biscuits baking in the oven when I came home from school and the clean smell of fresh bed linen that kept me in bed just that little longer simply so I could smell them. How I long for those simpler days without the artificial scents of today that can sometimes be so overpowering that they become unbearable.

All these memories come flooding back when I smell certain odours but for many years they were pushed into the background of my mind as I busily went about raising my family and building a business, doing the things required to go on living......until 5 years ago.

To give you a clearer picture of what happened at the time I will need to explain a little about where we live. The city of Adelaide, South Australia’s capital city is only 25 kilometres from us and in heavy traffic may take 30 minutes traveling time by car. We are also in the foothills of Mount Lofty, our state's highest and one of the world's oldest mountain range, which gives us easy access to the country’s wine and food growing area (generally know as Australia’s salad bowl); around fifteen minutes drive from where we live, so we have the best of both worlds at our doorstep.

About 5 years ago we met a lovely couple who own a country property (the images are of the area) not too far away and they are very self sufficient as far as their fruit and vegetables were concerned and would send down the best smelling carrots, real carrots! (I had forgotten how wonderful they smelled when they first came out of the ground) that you would not scrape but only needed to wash, tomatoes that still had the fresh smell of the vine that they grew on and the most amazing peaches, apricots and pears and apples.

Added to this the little towns of Houghton,Inglewood and Birdwood not too far away had freshly baked real bread (not the Supermarket’s forced bread with artificial raisers) and some of the most amazing home produced cheeses, the German heritage of this area added the smells of the continental meats, freshly cooked and smoked by the butchers in these areas, just so much to see and smell it is impossible to explain, you must be there to truly appreciate it.

Every week since we first met them we receive the most wonderful in-season fruits and vegetables, grown and ripened naturally, without chemicals or forced growth hormones, grown much like the farmers did before them, long before chemical fertilizers came into being, and believe me you can taste and smell the difference, we appreciate all this wonderful food and our new found friends very much.

In return occasionally I will send up some specialty dishes I have prepared (usually from my German background, although I love cooking and eating any type of food) using the fruit and vegetables they had provided. The dishes I make are generally food they are unfamiliar with or may not have tasted, (being third generation Australians) so we all benefit from this wonderful assortment of flavours and odours.

Fortunately, just across the road from this wonderful place a young man by the name of Steve bought the property around this time and decided to develop a berry farm. Well! Need I say any more? Every Christmas we drive up to see Steve and buy around $50 worth of berries of every description... blueberries, loganberries, blackberries, raspberries and some I just can’t remember at the moment. These berries are freshly picked off the bush in front of us and the smell and taste is such that would leave even the most ardent food critic speechless. Pies and cakes (if I don’t eat the berries fresh before they make it to that stage) made from these amazing berries are reminiscent of those my mother used to bake so many years ago and the smell still lingers just thinking about them.

Writing this intel makes me realise that much of what I have written and the smells experienced, many of today’s generation have never and will never understand and know as they live on packaged and fast food. They will never truly know how it feels, tastes and smells to have the first apricot of the season, eat a fresh apple straight from the tree, pick a berry and burst it in your mouth and savour the sweet juices slowly running down the back of your throat.

I recently read that now scientists are able to reproduce chemically every flavour known to us, however, I believe they never quite make the grade as they can't produce the sheer pleasure of the combined senses of sight, smell and taste.

Progress may increase the production of food to feed a hungry world......but at what price???

Marion in her role as a business consultant has been a mentor to over 250 successful small businesses and has in the past 10 years extended her knowledge to Webdesign and the internet. Smart Business Solutions

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Australia's salad bowl sounds enticing and you do an awesome job of describing the delectables they have there. And I think you're right, my kids have never tasted blueberries except as an added flavor in yoghurt. Yet! I will get them some real blueberries if it kills me.

Thank You Nick, and do get your children blueberries and any other fresh berries that may be available, and if they don't take to them the first time around, don't give up, just try, try, and try again, they simply have not experienced the taste. I recall many years ago, making my children runny custard but I could never make it without lumps in it (quite an art form, making smooth custard) until one day, a lovely lady explained how to achieve this height of culinary perfection. So excitedly I made my first smooth custard and my children refused to eat it....why? because they had never seen custard without lumps.
I hope your children thoroughly enjoy the experience!.

A truly nice and enchanting place to live with all the natural fruits and vegetables available.

Absolutely and we are truly thankful and appreciate our country and environment very much.

I love smelling a ripe watermelon when it is cut into. I also love freshly baked bread, cinnamon, vanilla, and the smells of cooking chili and soups.

All I can say is "Yum"

I too remember all those smells from my childhood - the home cooking, the preserves, jam-making, eggs from the chooks down the back, with real yellow yolks,vegetables straight from the garden - not from a super market freezer. I used to ride down to the bakery in Christchurch on my bike before school to buy real fresh bread. I can still remember the smell, and the taste.

We are starting to sound like our parents when they went on about the 'Good Old Days' :) But they were exactly that!

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how hard I try and even though I still use the same recipes the food does not smell or taste the same today, there is something missing and I am guessing it is because they use so many additives, have reduced the fat content of the meat so much that it tastes like cardboard, and generally play around with the food far too much. So sad! The children of today only have the smells and tastes of takeaways and frozen food to remember.

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