Her nose knows
Macho Chef
Some people claim they will never understand the female mind. Fortunately, the female mind is only one entry of a long list of topics I will never understand, and I no longer lose any sleep over my ignorance.
Along with the motives and processes of female cognition, my list of incomprehensibles includes the proper spelling of the word “their”, how to tie a tie without staring in a mirror, and the ongoing popularity of Justin Bieber. They are total mysteries. The truth is that the female mind is only one of many aspects of the feminine experience that we XY-ers will never understand
Today I’d like to consider an aspect of the female experience that seems like it ought to make sense, but does not – the feminine sense of smell.
A woman’s sense of smell stinks, and by “stinks”, I mean I don’t get it, and when I don’t get something, that stinks.
Mrs. Chef will walk into the room, pause suddenly as if she has just heard the click-crack sound of a gunman chambering a round in a Glock pistol, and with an urgent tone in her voice she will say, “Do you smell that?”
Spoiler alert – I never smell what she smells. I’m game for trying, but she has girl nose, whereas I have guy nose.
“I hadn’t noticed anything. What do you smell?”
“It’s really strong, I noticed it immediately when I walked in here.”
She sniffs a few more times, steps out of the room and then steps back in. Sniff-sniff. “Yes, definitely something smells. You don’t smell that?”
I look at the dog sniffing at his unmentionables and ask, “Is it a slobbery sort of smell?”
“Slobbery? How can something smell slobbery? That’s just stupid. This smell is like mold mixed with coconut flakes and old nylons. You don’t smell that?”
I refrain from pointing out that moldy coconut flakes wrapped in her nylon socks was as stupid a smell as the distinct aroma of slobbery dog groin.
Then comes stage two of the odor affirmation sequence. The first part is the announcement that she has discovered an odor that only she can can describe or detect. Stage two occurs when she asks for help finding the source of the mystery odor.
“Can you come here, and see if you smell it?”
“Sure, Hon.” And I gamely rise from the couch and stand next to her as I take a deep snoot full of air. “See?” she’ll say as if the look on my face is telling her that I detected the same bizarre smell she did. The reality is the look on my face is just how I look when I take a deep breath.
“Uh … sorry Hon, but I don’t smell it.”
“Oh it’s here,” she will declare. And she’ll start investigating, coming into the room from all the doors, lifting cushions, putting her face inches away from random locations on the floor, triangulating on the mysterious aroma as if she were a wheezing Columbo trying to fool the criminal funk into revealing itself in all its nefarious smelliness.
In a rational world I’d be fine with Mrs. Chef’s sniffing interludes, but she looks at the rest of the family like we are the crazy ones for not waxing in loquacious agreement at the profound set of pipes she has under the hood of her honker. Or she looks at us with suspicion, perhaps thinking that I or one of our sons caused the odor and we just pretend we are unable to smell the awful reek that she must endure.
Her mother is just as bad. Most days, she’ll claim she is unable to smell week old cabbages rotting and attracting fruit flies in the compost bucket because of years of smoking cigarettes. Yet when her daughter claims to smell something, Grammy Chef will leap right on the bandwagon with, “I thought I smelled something this morning too. It smelled like an overheated computer mouse.”
When did she ever smell an overheated computer mouse?
“With sour coconut flakes, mold and dirty socks?”
“Well I don’t know about that. I thought the smell was bubonic plague, maybe rotting timbers in the walls of the house or Zika-infected mosquito innards. Something expensive to fix. It was a very distinct smell, but I don’t know about coconut flakes.”
They will argue about the smell for several minutes, and then suddenly my wife will declare, “Wait. I don’t smell it any more.”
She’ll look my way. “Do you smell it any more?”
Lacking the mental capacity to explain that I never actually smelled anything, much less the myriad descriptive odors they think are poisoning the house, i respond with a highly intellectual, “Uh..ummmmm…”
“Well if you do smell it again, could you let me know?”
“Okay Hon.”
Aromatic Roasted Potatoes
What you need
1.5 pounds of new potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
salt and ground black pepper to taste
What you do
Preheat the oven to 425 F.
Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
Place in a resealable bag the potatoes, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, rosemary, salt and pepper. Inflate the resealable bag with air and toss the ingredients until the spices and oil coat the potatoes evenly.
Spread the spiced potatoes on the prepared cookie sheet.
Bake in the oven until potatoes are golden brown and tender, about 40 minutes, stirring at least once while they bake.
Andrew Birden is the general manager of Northeast Publishing and the founder of Fiddlehead Focus. He can be reached at abirden@bangordailynews.com or (207) 764-4471.
