What smells are you smelling right now?

[renaeden]

Yeah I remember you posted the link to the Wikipedia article about the tallest man in the world. I read that page. It was really interesting.

I have heard of the growth hormone being activated again once the person was already an adult. Have you heard of that?

I think that's when you get acromegaly.  The epiphyses of the long bones are closed in adulthood,
  so the limbs and torso can't get longer.  The growth hormone enlarges the feet, hands, and parts of the
  skull.  Some giants have acromegaly in addition to their great height, but acromegaly can also happen
  to people of average height.  I feel compelled now to include the Wikipedia link. 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly 

Heheh, thanks for that link, I found that interesting along with other pages. Wikipedia does that to me. Did you read about a man called Adam Rainer, who was both a dwarf, then a giant?

["couldbecousin"]

Yeah I remember you posted the link to the Wikipedia article about the tallest man in the world. I read that page. It was really interesting.

I have heard of the growth hormone being activated again once the person was already an adult. Have you heard of that?

I think that's when you get acromegaly.  The epiphyses of the long bones are closed in adulthood,
  so the limbs and torso can't get longer.  The growth hormone enlarges the feet, hands, and parts of the
  skull.  Some giants have acromegaly in addition to their great height, but acromegaly can also happen
  to people of average height.  I feel compelled now to include the Wikipedia link. 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly 

Heheh, thanks for that link, I found that interesting along with other pages. Wikipedia does that to me. Did you read about a man called Adam Rainer, who was both a dwarf, then a giant?

  Yes, I did!  What a bewildering change that must have been.  Physically taxing too, I imagine. 

[Lestat]

Yes, acromegaly is the result of excessive release of growth hormone from the pituitary, when it occurs during adulthood. If it happens before the growth plates of the bones are closed, during childhood you get gigantism as the result, acromegaly once the growth plates are fused and no further elongation of the bones is possible.

Ever watched the james bond movies? IIRC the guy that plays the character 'jaws' has acromegaly, not sure, but possibly some degree of gigantism, its why he looks so heavy-set and 'blocky', or to use the common parlance, built like a brick shithouse.

["couldbecousin"]

Yes, acromegaly is the result of excessive release of growth hormone from the pituitary, when it occurs during adulthood. If it happens before the growth plates of the bones are closed, during childhood you get gigantism as the result, acromegaly once the growth plates are fused and no further elongation of the bones is possible.

Ever watched the james bond movies? IIRC the guy that plays the character 'jaws' has acromegaly, not sure, but possibly some degree of gigantism, its why he looks so heavy-set and 'blocky', or to use the common parlance, built like a brick shithouse.

  Yes, Richard Kiel was 7'1.5" and indeed had acromegaly.  He lived to be 75.  

[Lestat]

A mixture of rollup, e-liquid, some kind of minted flavour, pickled olives and the garlicky smell of white phosphorus. Fucking retort broke, obviously not borosilicate glass, when there was probably a couple of hundred grams of mixed red/white P, and the latter being distilled into a collection vessel. Quite an impressive fireworks display to say the least, it started cracking and the liquid P and vapors started working their way out of the cracks, flaring up, crackling and spitting, since it autoignites at a bit above room temperature. Saved the sidearm which is much thicker, to use as a one-shot sealed tube, fill part with red phosphorus, purge with argon then weld the other end closed and heat it with the torch. I'm still waiting for the thing to stop smoking, though, its been doing it all day more or less.

[odeon]

Nothing. My nose is blocked.

[DirtDawg]

My wife's fabulous plum preserves.

We hit the farmer's market at the right time last summer and my wife put away seven quarts of plum preserves from a local orchard.

The second jar is even better than the first was!

[Queen Victoria]

I've wanted to preserve for the longest time.  It didn't seem worth it with just the 3 of us and the cost of fresh fruit.  Now that there's just 2 of us, I'll stick to the commercial brands.

Although, I just might try an experiment and stick some aromatic herbs in the commercial preserves to see if it changes the taste to closer to home made.

[DirtDawg]

Around here a lot of people "try" to grow apples and peaches. I have looked into this from a business standpoint and decided that it makes more sense to just buy the fruit from an established grower when they are in season and preserve as much as you want when they are fresh.

To just buy all the "farming chemicals"  it takes to make apples pest free and free from fungi and free from the continual viral and bacterial attacks that eventually kill the parent trees, not to mention all the fertilizers (I use that term very widely) that it takes to overcome the alkaline soil here. If I were to try to grow apples here I would have to spend about two hundred dollars per year.

Do you know how many bushels of fresh apples you can buy for a hundred bucks or so when they are in season from an apple grower? The same goes for peaches, plums, berries of most sorts (although blackberries, raspberries and blue berries are trouble free here, but they all require a good bit of area to grow) and pears.

This is why we can when we can.

Just show up at the right time and buy all you want. Then YOUR work starts. Preserving "ain't no small thang!" (Gene Hackman reference)

["couldbecousin"]

My wife's fabulous plum preserves.

We hit the farmer's market at the right time last summer and my wife put away seven quarts of plum preserves from a local orchard.

The second jar is even better than the first was!

  When I was a kid, one of my parents' friends would send us a Christmas gift of a 12-flavor box of
   Trappist preserves.  There was a flavor called Damson plum, among many other delicious kinds. 

[Lestat]

You should try quince 'cheese' (called that but its basically a quince-based jelly like marmalade) would be even nicer with think strips of candied peel from fresh limes and chunks of candied lime thrown in.

Quinces are generally, in our climate, hard and inedible fresh off the plant, but once processed they make a really delicious jelly preserve. Ever smelled one? they have a distinct, unique scent thats absolutely lovely. If I pass a garden escapee plant, I'll rip off a fruit and crush it just for the smell.

Damson preserve is nice too, theres a park locally where I go to harvest fly agaric mushrooms and peppery boletus in season, but there are, I discovered last year, several damson trees and nobody notices. They are sweet, juicy and succulent just ripped right off the bush and each one you can get several pounds/kg of fruit in an hour, or however long it takes you to fill your shopping bags full of the little mini-plums. A little tartness to them but stiill sweet and juicy. Lovely to grab a few as you harvest and just pop them in your mouth fresh off the stalk, suck the skin and pulp and juice off the stone , squeezing the sizes to split it so you can dig the stone out with your tongue and gob it out.

Glad this thread reminded me, because come the late fly agaric season I'll have to go back and grab some, cook up a few big jars of preserve. It makes for a top notch jam sandwich or PB+J sandwiich, layering it between smooth peanut butter slathered thickly as can be on either side, then a thick layer of home-made damson jam in the middle

[Lestat]

A lit rollup. Also going in a moment to be smelling aniseed and faint odour of garlickyness, when I resume my white phosphorus preparation in preparation for my high-temperature electrically controlled molten metal heating bath, so I can finally make myself some violet (Hittorf's type) alpha-metallic phosphorus, and begin with the wood  and metalwork for the periodic table element display collection wall-hanging. Going to be fun. Aside from a very few I can't produce, I'll have to buy one or two. Otherwise, I am going to do it by refining the elements from the natural ores, to give myself a greater challenge and extend the fun of the hunt.

["couldbecousin"]

  Someone in the building is cooking.  Smells like roast pork. 

[Parts]

3 in one oil

[Lestat]

The smell of smoking steel and of hot lathe oil and abrasive grinding wheel bits.  Plus the faint tang of mercaptans from lighting my blowtorch.

And some sort of mentholated fruit vape juice from my e-cig.