Alex the anosmic

“Can you smell something burning?” Does that sound familiar Sam? Normally though, when the topic is first touched upon, people start by asking: “What do you smell/taste?” or something along these lines. Yes that’s right, I do not possess the sense of smell, I am anosmic:
Anosmia (/ænˈɒzmiə/) is the inability to perceive odour or a lack of functioning olfaction. (Wikipedia, 2015)
For as long as I can remember I have never had a “nose” and I can’t say that I have ever missed it. You might wonder what it is I can taste while eating and how I manage to cook. As some might have already guessed, I am limited to the five different taste buds found on a human tongue; salt, sour, sweet, bitter and umami (I leave that last one to your own research, dear reader). Cooking, seasoning? I dare say I have roughly the same idea of how much of any herb, spice etc. to put in a dish as any other experienced cook. For anything only detectable via one’s beak, I have to rely on my observation of other people’s reaction.
So there you have it, technically yes, I am disabled but compared to lacking any of the other senses, I think it is the lesser evil.
Smell you later!
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What is food to me?

More than once I felt the need to explain what feels so natural and seems so obvious to me. To put it simply, it is the substance we run on! It is able to make us healthy, occasionally it might make us ill or if it comes to the worst it could even kill us. Food does wield an undeniable influence on our existence which is why, wherever possible, I don’t want food to be able to ‘lie’ to me. A meal should be honest, you should be able to tell what it contains of and it should be fresh or at least in a condition in which it is meant to be eaten (pickles just crossed my mind).