Journal entry by Loretta Beyer — March 11, 2021

Food is such a cultural, diverse, and vibrant way in which people and societies grow together and can bond.

What gathering is not 100% enhanced with the addition of food?

I’ve recently been reminiscing on some of my favorite aromas growing up and encourage you to join me.

Homemade bread fresh out of the oven, served warm and dripping in peanut butter and honey. In fact, when trying to “stage” your home to sell it, they recommend leaving that tantalizing essence lingering in your home for the potential buyers to inhale and feel welcome.

Coffee brewed first thing in the morning, steaming with goodwill and hearty bold flavor, preferably to be shared with those whom you love, creating happy memories.

One of the favorite dishes my mom would make for us when we did eat at home was her chicken and dumplings, known to float out of the pan because of their light, fluffy, angelic qualities.

On special occasions, she would make a pan of delectable cinnamon rolls, full of nutmeg and other spices, topped with a generous layer of frosting.

Because of the excessive heat in Africa, we drank gallons of iced tea, freshly squeezed lemonade, and orange juice. We savored the taste and smell of myriad tropical fruits, which even today become a symphony of joy for me whenever I encounter them in this part of the world. There were guava, granadilla, avocados, and cream of tartar beans we sucked right off the beans from the inside of baobab tree pods.

There was field after field of sugarcane. We would stop and purchase some sticks of it, peel back the hard bark to access the tough, fibrous pith inside, suck out its succulent sweetness, and spit out the rest on the ground like a wad of tobacco! “Gundi” is what the Africans called it.

Orange marmalade, lemon curd, custard, bread and rice pudding. There were the very sweet “Cook sisters,” a deep-fried pastry dipped in heavy syrup and the spicy Indian samosas, fried savory pasties, sold on the street by various vendors. The sherry trifle — with multiple layers of cake, pudding, Jell-o, a splash of sherry, if desired, topped with heavy whipped cream, and served in a deep-dish glass bowl — was a famous dessert. There were crumpets, British scones with clotted cream, Kona coffee — a mix of half strong black coffee with hot full-cream milk.

Of course, I must include the peanut butter, tomato, cucumber, or marmite sandwiches which were staples of high tea and school lunches for many years.

When I was back in the States every five years, we would visit my Grandma and Grandpa Dee, who had emigrated from Hungary and homesteaded a farm in Glennie.

There, I watched my grandma spend hours creating the most divine Hungarian pastries and dinners, such as chicken paprikash. And chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles that she rolled and stretched paper-thin over tables to dry before cutting them up and adding them to her signature pot of soup. Fank was a type of Hungarian doughnut she would cut into strips, roll around pieces of a broom handle, and deep-fry, coating the final product with all manner of icing and sugars.

Poppy seed bread was another of my favorites — thick loaves of bread dough, slathered in poppy seed pie filling, rolled up, and served piping hot. I have so many treasured memories from her kitchen during those years.

When I asked Daryl about his memories, being raised of German stock, he came up with a list of sauerkraut, pig hocks, cucumbers drowning in cream and garnished with raw onions, five-bean salad, kielbasa, all traced back to his homeland and heritage.

Other non-culinary fragrances from the past would include the fresh smell of rain after a thunderstorm, tropical flowers like magnolia, honeysuckle, hibiscus, and poinsettia bushes.

So many triggers for all our senses to inhale and that allow us to travel down memory lane.

Mindfulness is an important way to heighten our awareness to all the gifts of God’s memories , from childhood until today. What about the cologne of our favorite grandpa or dad, someone’s perfume, pipe aroma?

When needing a pick-me-up, delve back into some of those treasures and ask God to bring into remembrance some of the olfactory stimuli that bring us such peace and comfort. God gave us five senses and a memory with which to connect life, loved ones, and joy for a reason.

Revel in that fact and never take it for granted!

Psalm 139:14: “I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works; and that my soul, knows right well (KJV).”

This column is published posthumously with permission from the family. Missionary kid Loretta Beyer grew up in Zimbabwe. After graduating college in the U.S. with a degree in music and psychology, she joined her parents in Alpena, because of terrorist warfare in her African home. Over the last 40 years, she has made Alpena her place of ministry.