Those wonderful smells...

I love this time of the year. It is cool enough now that if I have the stove going for a few hours it is not going to force the air conditioner on for the entire time. Sure the kitchen feels ok but the rest of the house ends up feeling like a frozen tundra.

Since my back is not up for all the long standing that my beloved baking requires I need to figure out how to get those wonderful smells wofting through the house. The sweet smell of cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, nutmeg and so on filling the house is perhaps one of the greatest comforts I know, it reminds me of the holidays as a kid.

They sell mulling spices at most of the local "craft" shops but they are either much too expensive or they really are not that great. They are someone else's ideas perhaps of what the holidays smelled like, but certainly not mine. So the other day I decided to start experimenting with some spices in a pot of water on the stove until I hit the mix that I was looking for.

In no particular order or even units of measurement I started gabbing and adding spices to the water. Starting with pumpkin pie spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and moving from there adding a pinch of this and that each few hours as the water evaporated. Of course as the pot simmers and the water evaporates the "smell of baking goodies" is carried throughout the house reminding me once again of my grandmothers kitchen at the holidays.

Yesterday I shook it up a little though. I used a bigger saucepan and instead of just using my spices I added the zest of one large orange and then using my pampered Chef Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer I added the slices and skin from a Granny Smith apple as well as an Anjou Pear. By the time dinner rolled around the house smelled like a mix of apple and pumpkin pies being baked. In fact I think I fooled my wife when she got home from work. She seemed to be expecting a Pumpkin pie and when I pulled the cake out, well the look on her face said it all. LOL!

I know it is kind of "geeky" but having those smells throughout the house is very comforting as well it certainly makes the house smell nice. Much better then smelling like you have a toddler and a pre-teen, neither who care about where they take and leave their food. The youngest I can tolerate as he is still learning but the oldest knows much better then that. Nothing like finding a glass full of juice in his room with mold growing on it. Bleech! Not only did I find it in his room it was actually in a drawer on his desk.

Not much on the agenda this morning but this afternoon I need to run to the store to get the rest of the ingredients for some cookies. I need to buy some good chocolate for these so I might have to run to Whole Foods for that. They are one of the few places that sells real chocolate for baking in this area. Everyone else sells milk chocolate or worse that stuff that tastes like wax which of course then makes whatever you are cooking taste like wax.