SHORTS, NOVELS, AND OTHER THINGS
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by my blog! I hope you enjoyed my A-Z choices so far, although some did have a yuck factor. I’m glad there are not more letters in our alphabet since the end of the alphabet has been a bit of a headache. The only choices for a U with …
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It’s hard to find an odor beginning with X, but this particular substance figured large in my graduate career. Xylene, from the Greek word xylos, meaning wood, is an aromatic hydrocarbon. I won’t bore you with the chemical formula, and just because xylene is an aromatic hydrocarbon doesn’t mean it smells good. It just means …
I was going to do wine, but the subject is vast and I suspect many other bloggers will choose this topic. So I am going with this flowering vine which some regard as a weed, because it grows rapidly and can choke out native plants, particularly in the southeastern US. In China and Japan, it’s …
I couldn’t not talk about vanilla, one of the most ubiquitous spices. Its extract can be used in cakes, cookies, pies, cupcakes etc., but also with meat, shellfish and fish. There are many varieties of vanilla, but Mexican, Tahitian, Indonesian and Bourbon (not related to the liquor) are the main ones. Vanilla originated in the …
Okay, so this is another ick for a letter. But other than ugli fruit, with which I am not familiar, I couldn’t come up with something beginning with U of any great significance and with a distinct odor. Urine isn’t something people normally talk about, but physicians look at it for content (red and white …
Not a lot of people like the smell of tar. I could have chosen thyme or tarragon (like anise!) or any number of other herbs, flowers etc., but tar is the first thing that came to mind. To me, it has a sharp clean smell and is related to the sea and sailing, one of …
Betcha no one is going to pick sweat for the S! I actually like the smell of well-earned sweat and particularly that of a man. There is something rather sexy about it. Or maybe I’m weird. Sweating or perspiration or diaphoresis is the production of fluid by two types of glands in the skin of …
Only seven more days to go in this challenge! Thanks to everyone who stopped by. Your comments have been interesting and all the blogs I’ve visited have been instructive, amusing, interesting, informative, novel, thoughtful, colorful…my readers can add more adjectives! 0 0
I’ll bet you didn’t think rain has a smell, but I’ve always smelled something delightful with a fresh rain. There is a word, petrichor, derived from the Greek (petra, meaning rock, + ichor, meaning fluid that flows in the veins of gods), for the scent of rain on dry earth. Now two Australian scientists, in …
Thanks for stopping by! Quince jelly was a staple in both of my grandmother’s homes. I liked its taste, sort of like pear or apple, but only lately have learned about the fruit the jelly is made from. A quince is a highly fragrant fruit, depending on where it is grown and the species, with …
