When we can’t go in person, we can still travel with our tastebuds and our memories….
Travel is a word that sends my spirits and imagination soaring, unless I’m stuck at home without a trip planned for the near future. When I’m longing for travel, but don’t have a fixed departure date for an exciting destination, I turn to my favorite travel souvenirs, the small treasures that remind me instantly of a place, a person, a time, a feeling.
The word souvenir is French for a remembrance or memory. We all enjoy memories of exceptional travel moments and our travel souvenirs give us a physical symbol of our past experience.
Over the years I’ve brought home antique compasses from flea markets in Cuba and London, a hand-carved wooden shovel from a coffee plantation in Nicaragua and a mule’s thrown “shoe” from a trail in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Each has significant personal meaning to me.
But my favorite souvenirs are those that are rooted in the smells, flavors and cuisine of the places I have visited: the salts, spices, oils, vinegars, honey and coffees that I’ve collected from around the world.
Research shows that our sense of smell is the most directly linked to the place in our brains where memories are stored. Yes, we take in scent messages to identify and categorize odors as pleasant, unpleasant, sweet or acrid, but after being received by the brain, the things we smell are also given an emotional coloring, which helps us link the scent to particular memories.
When I’m missing my travel buddies – the clients who over many years and many miles together have now become friends – I reach for my ‘scent souvenirs’: chili flakes from the Amalfi Coast, salt from Slovenia, peppercorns from Morocco, cinnamon from Zanzibar and honey from Vietnam. I inhale and am vividly reminded of each of these places, what I was doing and who I was with.
In the cold winter months when I long to escape to an exotic destination, I combine my scent souvenirs in recipes like Spicy Sweet Honey Chili, a dish as comforting as it is tasty. I mix together the various souvenirs, each embedded with memories of places, people and experiences. The flavor and scent of travel. I set the table, but I’m not dining at home. I’m worlds away in Europe, Southeast Asia and Northern Africa.