I walked into a university classroom about five minutes early for a public lecture. I found a seat in the back and plunked down into a creaky armchair. The room was nearly full of students, many of whom had removed their shoes and were wiggling their toes into the well-worn speckled blue carpet. I kept my sneakers on.
Twenty years of students' feet on a blue carpet smells like caramel made with goat milk
The overhead fluorescent lights gave me a headache so I closed my eyes and took some deep breaths to relax. The air carried a distinctly sweet aroma, similar to a candy shop, but not quite that heavy with sugar. It was also layered with funk.
It brought to mind a time when I lived on a remote part of the the Big Island of Hawaii. I had goats, and I drank goat milk. I often had more milk than I knew what to do with. So I traded it for fish or fruit. One afternoon I was craving something sweet so I decided to make caramel candy with goat milk. It’s easy enough over a burner. But it’s not something I would ever make again. The gaminess of goat milk utterly clashes with cooked sugar, rendering the candy pretty much inedible, unless you’re out in the middle of nowhere with a raging sweet tooth, which I was. After eating a few pieces of the goat milk caramel the sugar high kicked in, and I polished off the whole pan.
But at the end of the lecture, I could still smell all those years of sweaty teenage feet in the carpet.
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I’m curious about the “gaminess” aspect of goat milk. I remember having goat milk some time in my childhood, and not liking it, but don’t remember why.
The funny thing is, I really like goat cheese.
I do notice a difference in both the flavor and odor of “regular” cow milk (any fat percentage) vs. organic or lactose-reduced or -free. Somehow the latter taste and smell fresher.
As you have pointed out in your blog, (which I love by the way) the senses of taste and smell and connected. The other day my roomate bought a giant pack of McDonald’s nuggets. Not having one in a number of years, I took a bite and tasted immediate ammonia. I wasn’t sure if this was a manifestation of seeing the process by which the nuggets are made uniform, (http://gizmodo.com/5654066/chicken-nuggets-are-made-from-this-pink-chicken-goop) or if I was actually tasting the ammonia. Do things ever taste the way that you simply expect them to taste?
I love the blog, it’s so interesting and reinforcing that we are what we eat!
Interesting that you mention ammonia because that is exactly what is being used in the meat processing plants to keep down bacteria. It also is the smell of fish that is going bad. With so much “covering up” these days – the fact that you were able to discern that points you towards having a highly evolved sensitive nature (or else that accidental ammonia spill in your local McDonalds didn’t cause enough vigilance.)