WHEN THE SENSE OF SMELL LEADS YOU.

It was an early spring morning and the sun had climbed high enough to filter through the open blinds, casting a wakeup nudge as I lie in my bed. Lying there I could smell the tempting aroma of Italian bread being bake a few doors down in the basement of Curiale’s grocery store. If the aroma of Italian bread was not enough, the delicious aroma of coffee perking in the kitchen did. To greet my day hungry was a great way to start.

Mom would give me a quarter and I would run downstairs to the grocery store and select a loaf of bread and the wonderful aroma of Italian cold cuts, which hung and sat in the casement, overpowered you. Once I was back upstairs, I poured a cup of coffee, with milk and in those days sugar, and cut a piece of bread and butter it, and with no formality, dunked the bread, and to this day I can still taste it.

There were, of course, other sources that enticed me to eat. Often I would take a walk over to Grandma’s house and in her large kitchen be treated to the experience of watching a great cook do her thing, and insist I eat while she cooked. The smell of a hunk of cheese or the aroma of a salami twisted my mind, sent gurgling sounds from my mouth and made me want it all, cheese, salami and if possible, grandpa’s homemade wine.

As grandma cruised her kitchen, she would go out into her garden and pick fresh basil, that I would take a piece and hold up to my nose, the smell triggering a fantastic pasta sauce in my mind. Sometimes, I would steal a piece of Italian bread and dip it into the sauce as it brewed on the stove. One day she was making lasagna and always made enough to feed the Italian Army, (they must have been big eaters!). Ricotta would be sitting in a cheese clothe as she drained it, making for a rich, thick lasagna filling and took some, put it in between two slices of bread and gave me a sandwich, the cheese so fresh and tasty!

Of course, I had to get home after that moment of bliss, and when I did, I could smell from the hallway the sweet odor of garlic and onion as it cooked on my mom’s stove. When I opened the door to our apartment, there was mom, in her apron and standing where she always stood, stirring a saucepan or pot, pasta Fagioli, veal scallopini, scampi, or chicken soup, all grabbing me by my taste buds and taking me to another world, all by smell, that should be blind but was instead, a sight to behold. Her wooden spoon in hand, I made a first-glance look to see if she had another use for the wooden spoon before I felt it safe enough to kiss her hello.