Smelly House and Other Travails

I got ambitious last night, dear reader(s) and cooked up a storm. A tagine-of-chicken-meslalla-with-homemade-preserved-lemons storm, followed by a ghriba storm. Ghriba is a Moroccan cookie that tastes like sand held together with sugar. I believe the dunes of the Western Sahara were modeled after it. It sure made me long for an oasis.

While I may not be what some might call a "good" cook, I do enjoy cooking and baking and like to try new things. I've made tagines before, as I firmly believe that Moroccan food (if not Moroccan dessert) is the best food on the face of the planet, and I prefer to enjoy it at will, and not only when I go to Morocco or to a Moroccan restaurant, where my enjoyment of the meal is typically assaulted by a belly dancer who insists on audience participation.

This tagine came out OK. Maybe next time I'll add more lemon and leave out the olives, but on the whole, it's pretty good, and I have lunch and dinner for a few days. Score!

The problem is my house. It reeks of tagine of chicken meslalla with homemade preserved lemons. (It doesn't really smell like ghriba, since sugar sand really has no noticeable odor). I was aroused from my dream state multiple times last night by the smell, and in my stupor, was confused and wondered if I were still cooking. Don't get me wrong; it smells good. I mean, who doesn't like the scent of tagine of chicken meslalla with homemade preserved lemons? Don't answer; I don't even want to know. But after one night, the smell should dissipate, right? Well, it hasn't.

I woke up to the smell of dinner; I got ready for work with the smell of dinner all around me; I came home to the smell of dinner. I've had just about enough of smelling dinner. But -- and this is where you come in, dear reader -- I don't know how to get rid of it.

I could open the windows. But then in spring, when people realize they haven't seen me for months, a neighbor will find my body frozen to the floor, my cold, dead fingers pinching my nose closed. It's cold here. So that's out.

I've thought about cooking up some of my holiday potpourri (sooooo nice smelling), but then my house will smell like dinner AND Christmas, and not in that cozy, warm I'm-about-to-eat-with-friends-and-family way, but in that stale, too-many-smells way, often experienced in the homes of women who wear housecoats, roll down their stockings to their ankles and keep unwrapped hard candy in their pockets.

Seriously, beautiful people, I need help here. I feel like I smell like tagine of chicken meslalla with homemade preserved lemons. Help!

On another note, just this very evening, my laptop stopped functioning as a laptop and has come to think of itself only as a desktop. Every time I unplug it, it dies. All I have to say is, WTF?! Dear readers, help on this too, please! The thing is brand new! Alas.

On still another note (this one's an E flat), doesn't the nice forest scene on my blog make you feel relaxed and happy? Yeah? I did that just for you.