REDOLENT ODORS EVOKE NOSTALGIA

Whenever the local brewery cooks their hops, the redolent odor permeates the neighborhood and reminds me of the smell of cooking taro. Taro is the tuber that is harvested from taro patches in Hawaii and Polynesia, and pureed into poi. Poi was once the starchy, vitamin=rich staple food eaten in my native Hawaii, but replaced by rice and breads. Now, however, no luau is complete without a smidgen of poi tourists don’t much care for.
There was a poi factory at the corner of the road that led to my elementary school, and for the nine years I attended there, we enjoyed the smell of cooking taro as we passed by it, and the sight of muscular men and their woman boss rolling barrels of poi to the truck that carried them away.
On cold mornings we like to eat hot oatmeal, the one cereal we have practically all winter for the breakfasts my husband has learned to cook well. I am reminded of my immigrant mother cooking a big pot of oats with evaporated mile for our large family. She called it “mush” she pronounced “ma-shee,” thick and creamy and yummy on rainy mornings.It was good to keep us energized for the entire morning of school work.
Another wonderful aroma is roasted pork, especially kalua pig cooked in a white hot stone-lined pit for a luau. It was the piece de resistance for our neighborhood luaus, and when the mouth-watering smell reached our noses, we knew it was time for the luau to begin. Pit bbq is not quite the same as kalua, but suffices here on the mainland.
And who cannot be tempted by the powerful appeal of popcorn? It is synonymous with going to the movies, and even when not in the theater, its distinctive aroma cannot be ignored.
Bread baking in the oven wafts through out the house and through open windows, the yeasty odor bringing to mind comfort food of buttered bread. Now, as in the past, I like to pass by a bakery fragrant with the smell of baking bread
There are other wonderful smells like bacon frying, fried chicken, steaks grilling, apple pies baking, ripe guavas and sweet cantaloupes, but a non-food that brings to mind the delicious odor of the countryside is linens dried on a an outdoor clothesline.
We did not have a dryer when I was a kid, and had to hang laundry on lines, a tedious task we didn’t much like, but rewarded with the smell of fresh laundry when dry.
Now in hot weather Chico, we like to save on gas by hanging our laundry outside, and oh, when the sheets and pillowslips are put on the bed, it is off to dreamland breathing in the aroma of fresh air and sunshine reminiscent of my childhood.