The Ultimate 1st Date

Something that stirs all the senses: Food

My life revolves around food, and not in some sick sort of way. I am not obese, but I like to cook and I love to eat, and the ambiance, of a great restaurant. A chef once told me he loves knowing he"is setting up the evening for lovers to make love after they eat his food."

That chef had a bit of an ego, but he was right, nonetheless. A great 1st date should entice the senses. People are at their best when a good atmosphere is invoked with food. Look at all the great movies: Like Water for Chocolate, Babette's Feast, Chocolate... the list goes on and on. We like our food, but we never really say it quite enough: food is an aphrodisiac, and not just oysters. Food and eating, and tasting, and smacking our lips around, and watching our date eat, and enjoy. Think about that. Food being broken down with our canines, incisors, ewww... so enticing... but this is our primal nature. So, for good God's sake, make a 1st date, women, men, who ever is the initiator of the date, it is up to you to make it powerful and use the senses to make memories because the olfactory nerves or what's going to make her/him remember you. A medical study, cited as Herz and Engen, 1996 states: "Only two synapses separates the olfactory nerves from the Hippocampus, which has implicated in memory... indeed this is why odor-evoked memories are unusually emotionally potent."

So, what's effecting your date is not so much what your wearing, she's not tasting and chewing that (or maybe if your lucky she is), she is tasting and smelling the drink and food, and the music is playing, ahhh... yes, the rhythm is going along with the food. She is remembering this while you watch her eyes glint and shine, and her mouth salivate... you are evoking all the senses to come and play... and the great complicated mind is creating a memory with smell, her brain praises you and gleans for more. She is remembering you right now... and this memory will long to make more similar memories. Science is a tricky little thing, because you forget about it, but it is always at the root of why we date in the first place, we are animals with instincts and are made up of chemicals and pheromones that respond to our environment, like a cat hunting its prey.

The New Pheromone Trend in Dating

On a larger scale, there's a new way to find a date, purely through smell. Pheromone parties are being hosted in Los Angeles and bigger cities, getting singles to connect to their dates, purely through smell. Ahh... if the world only was that barbaric still. We'd women be clubbed, and the men, oh, the men, wouldn't be complaining much because they'd still be grunting, not talking. Evolution has provided us with details on why women and men are attracted to pheromones in choosing their mates, study show its because it prevents inbreeding, and choosing a mate who is ovulating. However, we are (hopefully) intellectually able to curb this more animalistic style of just hopping on a person who happens to just be dropping an egg. The parties that are becoming a hit in the cities, derived from a web developer named Judith Prays, who remembered a guy's smell, but not him. Mhmmm... so Prays resorted to a kind of smell whats in the bag kind of thing and found that couples were hitting it off. But mostly couples were hitting it off, because they had a funny, great icebreaker. Two people smelling dirty shirts and underwear? Doesn't get more olfactory binding than that!

Of course this is all based on an article that I just read in the Huffington Post, and have yet to do a laundry smelling party myself. However, as a chef, who is not setting the stage "for people to make love" as my chef friend said, I am more interested in creating the memory of taste and smell that evokes a certain remembrance of time, that you want to go back to. Nostalgia. I have nostalgia for the meals and wine I have partook, and the company that brought me there. It's also not just the food, taste, or smell; the brain also needs another intellectual resource to bind the memory into place. This is how we involved. We need a counterpart, a feeling of intense warmness and safe being, where one in the midst's of smelling dirty laundry or eating Brie with champagne, must feel and remember like it was home, and not dangerous. Comfort food if you will for the senses. This I believe leads to the next date...
What if I got ten bucks?

If you have ten bucks, it's picnic time and the gods will save you with pine and eucalyptus. Many people feel down trodden about the whole picnic, outdoors thing. There's nothing more invigorating than fresh air, and once again, the olfactory nerves will remember the surrounds stronger when a person is in a natural setting, surrounded by natural smells. You want the person to remember you; a picnic with fresh fruit is all you need. Sprinkle a little Sugar on those strawberries before you go, the sugar induces the already natural sweetness in the strawberry juices. Everything, big and small matters. Get creative dating, the world is filled with smells, including, hopefully the most enticing one of all, your own.