What I learned:  This week I loved thinking about recipes, our favorite foods and remembering people in which we have shared those foods.  My favorite quote of this episode is by Laurie Colwin, "No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers."   What a wonderful and delicious thought - that even when we are alone in the kitchen we have our past mother, grandmothers and so on with their little recipes along with us. I love thinking that as we make a favorite recipe of a friend we can think of them and that favorite time we had together and how we can also spread that love even further as we share the same meal with others and share the same recipe with them.  Memories and smells being passed on.  

The other great quote from the podcast: “Food is a universal need, eating is something all human beings do. Because of this, meals have been a symbol throughout the ages of sharing, nurturing and loving one another. Remembering, collecting, recording and passing down the recipes your loved ones have passed to you is a wonderful way to honor and immortalize your family. These traditions from the past are part of who you are as an individual. Not only will these recipes allow you to create meals that are a meaningful experience, but they will also inspire you to create your own versions of dishes, to add your own flavor and style. You will take what your family has given to you and infuse it with your own meaning and power.” (from the article The Power of Food and the importance of Family recipes by Kate Walling)

Then of course learning about smell and memory.  The quote I had from the podcast was 

“Your olfactory bulb runs from your nose to the base of your brain and has direct connections to your amygdala (the area of the brain responsible for processing emotion) and to your hippocampus (an area linked to memory and cognition). Neuroscientists have suggested that this close physical connection between the regions of the brain linked to memory, emotion, and our sense of smell may explain why our brain learns to associate smells with certain emotional memories.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-smells-trigger-memories1/ 

From Scientific American.com - why do smells trigger memories.

Smells can bring us back to certain memories which is why certain foods can do that too and which is the great things about making certain recipes each holiday or birthday as we pass down those smells and memories.