Celebrating Two Years

Two years ago this January, this blog was born! The word, aromatum, from the phrase "Navigatio ad loca aromatum" (which I found in this book), seemed to fit perfectly with my desire to see the world according to scent. The phrase means: navigate to the places where the spices are. Despite being a travel directive, often on these pages I am merely seeing the world from my apartment. I still marvel at the power of language to teach us, the power of scent to trigger memories and evoke emotion.

Creatures of the Night

Last night I had a dream I was harvesting matches from a tree. Each branch's terminal bud was a match, red tipped and smooth with a slight roughness. Climbing the tree, pockets full of matches, I would snap one and then another, collecting them like berries. But I was sweating, my heart racing, because one slip and I could set the entire tree aflame. 

My life feels like this.

Starting 2015, I have felt the weight of what lies ahead, trying to be as careful about each step that I make, trying to take into consideration each "match" that I gather, so I can use it later, or trade it, or whatever, and not burn it up. It's an exhausting business, and I should probably start meditating.

Nigella Seeds

A balmy Boston Christmas this year tricked the trees into blossoming and the daffodils into pushing their way up through the dirt. Not their moment to shine, but still I had to pause and study their strange beauty.

New plans afoot

Greetings from snowy Somerville! I have been quiet here on the Aromatum front lately due to a current project I'm excited to tell you about. Since returning from Asia this past summer, I've been working on creating a business. A spice business to be more precise, set to launch next summer in 2015. The mission of the business is to source sustainably grown and fairly traded spices to offer an alternative to the majority of commodity spices on the market today.

Sweet Fenugreek

Lately I've been excited about spices that seem extraterrestrial. Unearthly flavors so strange and wonderful that they must have descended from outer space or attached themselves to the feet of the ESA space probe from the dark shadowy shores of a comet. ("Comet dust" as new culinary ingredient has not yet reached FDA approval.)

On Sunlight & Spices

I bought a daylight lamp for the first time. I bask in it's artificial light every morning, still in my groggy, grumpy state when it's best if I don't interact with humans. I've been using it for two weeks now and I have to say, it's making me feel a little better about heading into the dark tunnel of New England winter. Weirdly, I feel more like a species of plant than a person under the light—I feel it entering through the pores of my skin (even though it acts functionally through the eyes) creating some kind of useful sugar that feeds my heart.

 from an airplane over Pennsylvania last week

I remember interviewing a famous photographer when I was in high school for a school newspaper. His name was Galen Rowell and he died tragically in 2002 (the same year I graduated high school) so the fact that I got to meet and talk with him sits even more crystalline in my mind. When I asked him what was most important to him in his photography, he paused and just said:

"Everything is light."

The Pickled Apple

Mark & I found this sign while apple picking in Connecticut yesterday. I think it was meant to encourage pickers to explore more of the orchard, but I saw it as a quiet, more figurative reminder.

Home & Away

Home.

On Monday I went foraging with a friend. We picked these berries, called autumn olives, which are tart and sweet. They come from a plant called Elaeagnus umbellata. We picked them from a tree in a parking lot in a suburb of Boston.

Away.

I find it tricky to be in the moment, to be totally present. My mind is caught on a dream about the future, or about some past event, how it's effected me. I could be anywhere, just not here.

Thyme & Peach Tart

If there were a song for thyme, I think it'd be this one; a comforting, familiar tune. And if it were a color, I think it'd be the soft green of where the sky's blues meet sunset's yellows, a watercolor-like mixture of light that is surprising and subtle, sometimes hard to see. Just so, I find thyme's flavor hard to pull out when it's blended with other ingredients; it's there and then gone, not delicate so much as just laying low, maybe sitting in the corner ready to tell you a great joke if you just lean a little closer.

This Summer Clove

The end of summer has a piercing quality to it—a nip in the air in the morning, a pang of wistfulness for all the long days and porch evenings now dwindling quickly down a spiral staircase towards New England's base season: winter.

I could say I suffer from this malaise, but I actually favor autumn and winter to summer here in Boston, and besides, most spices are best featured in the warming foods popular to these seasons.

BUT.