Whats that on your face ?

There is a large organ strapped to your face that kind of  gets taken for granted these day, some are big and wide, others small and toity, pointy or blunt - but  what ever your distinguishing  feature is, by comparison it  leads a simple life (unless you are a wine maker of course), pretty laid back relaxing and along for the ride

Your nose lets you smell things in the first instance and it's a big part of why you are able to taste things.  Freshly baked cookies coming out of the oven, Sunday roast being carved at the table with minted peas, fresh bread and then food that is past it best.  Before refrigeration the smell of food would have been the most important way to tell if it was spoiled or fresh, edible or inedible, of course now we are in the safe hands of the corporate food producers who deliver us our homogenised, sterilised and patursied and plasticized food substance portions that effectively removes the need for us to use the septum (nose) as much.

Your nose has a secret weapon, the  olfactory epithelium, this  contains special receptors that are sensitive to odor molecules that travel through the air.  These receptors are very small - there are at least 10 million of them in the nose sending signals to our brain that interprets signals  recognizing any one of about 10,000 different smells that will also untimely define your taste in what you like and dislike

Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavours. It’s the odro molecules rom food that give us most of our taste sensation - this is way you have very little sense of taste when you have the flu.

Cure Kids Red Nose Day is coming back on 19 November this year and it is a great cause,  putting  some focus on a great charity (to raise money for life-threatening childhood illnesses affecting Kiwi kids), this could be the perfect excuse to bring your nose out of retirement and put it to a good use !

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies for Serous nose realignment

Serves 30

Ingredients

125g butter

1 cup brown sugar

¾ cup caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 egg

1½ cups self raising flour

½ cup Cocoa powder

¾ Chocolate Chips

Method

Preheat oven to 160ºC.

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.

Mix in vanilla essence and egg.

Stir in flour and Cocoa and  Dark Chocolate Chips.

Place teaspoons of mixture on greased baking tray and bake in moderate oven for 10-15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, stand back and inhale