A Whiff of Roast Beef

Wednesday, the 7th, we had a good trek to the desert with my sister and brother-in-law.  Since it had been nearly a year since our last one, it made it all the more fun.  We celebrate these desert outings with a picnic, going "all out", (meaning: it's so much food you're quite likely not going to be eating another meal that day.)  It was no exception this time.  From a lofty perch on Iron Mountain looking southward towards Picket Post Mountain, we ate turkey and pastrami sandwiches on sourdough, ate fresh salsa with Bill's home grown cherry tomatoes and polished it off with fun sized Halloween candies.  I'd made an apple pie for later, but when we returned home we were much too full to eat pie, so shared it out to eat later in the evening. 

The point was, by four PM Wednesday afternoon, I wasn't hungry.  Should not have been hungry.  Food was probably the last thing I had been thinking about.  But.... passing through the kitchen around that time, I smelled garlic.  Yes:  garlic.  The smell was definitely there.  Not in the sunroom.  Not in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen.  But the the pungent, aromatic smell of garlic was hanging in the kitchen.  As soon as I smelled it, I was assailed by the thought:  roast beef.  I needed a piece of roast beef.  The kind of tender roast beef studded with garlic cloves.  The kind my mother-in-law, Betty, used to make whenever we visited.    How silly!  I'd eaten myself full that noon on a turkey sandwich.  I certainly didn't NEED roast  beef. 

However, the feeling remained.  Every time I'd pass through the house (the kitchen is centrally located, so you have to cross it whenever you go from one end of the house to the other), I'd smell that rich lurking odor of garlic.  I even opened the refrigerator a time or two to make sure there were no peeled garlic cloves sitting inside.  No, there weren't.  I had used several cloves when I made the salsa earlier in the day.  But now the salsa was sitting covered up in the refrigerator.  And still that garlic smell remained with the proviso that it should be studded inside a succulent roast beef, with its warm juices bubbling out into a roaster pan in the oven.  My mouth was watering from the thought.

"Geez, I need some roast beef! " I fumed to Bill.

"Let's have a piece of that apple pie," he offered.  "It's time."

We did.  I warmed it up and it was good apple pie but it didn't do anything to assauge my appetite for that piece of roast beef.  Darned garlic smell!  I went to bed later that night feeling dissatisfied and hungry.  And I shouldn't have been.

Thursday, I decided to do something about it.  I walked up to the post office and stopped in at the grocery store on my way home.  They didn't have any good looking cross rib roasts, but they did have a passable chuck roast, so I bought it and brought it home and put it in a crock pot with lots of garlic and potatoes for some pot roast.  I figured that would take care of the craving. 

It didn't.

At the first bite of the 'okay' pot roast, I knew what I was missing.  "I should have made your mom's garlic roast beef," I told Bill.  "That's what I've been craving.  I thought pot roast would do but it's your mom's roast I'm wanting."

He grinned.  "Yeah, that sure was good.  With those cloves studded in there.  And..." he smiled again, "yesterday was her birthday, you know."

"That's right!  The seventh! Well, did you smell that garlic in the kitchen last night?  It was driving me nuts!"

"I smelled it.  I thought maybe you'd left some out when you made the salsa."

"No, I checked.  But I guess your mother was wanting to remind me of her good garlic roast she used to make.  And since it was her birthday, what better day to do it?"  Tears glistened in our eyes.  It was three years ago in June that Betty died.  "And, of course, your mother knows what store I put in food when it comes to memories.  All of my old memories are tied up with meals.  So of course, she was reminding me of her birthday with the smell of garlic and roast beef!"

Listen:  if my mother-in-law wants to visit us in spirit fashion this way, it's fine with me. I'm just glad nobody in the family spent their days cleaning out septic tanks!