You’re cooking food in an area designed for food preparation, in the place where you live. If they don’t like it, tell them to fuck off and breathe through their pointy white hats. Then buy and eat a durian so they know what real stink is.
I think everyone is entitled to determine for themselves if something stinks. I also think they were rude to tell you it stinks. They need to suck it up. There’s no law that says you are entitled to live a life free from unpleasant odors. I think that’s the price you pay for sharing walls with others. I give a little more bitch-leeway to office cooking, since you don’t actually live there. But in your place of residence, you should be able to cook what you want to cook.
We’re not talking about a toxic cloud here. It’s a fragrance that some people like less than others. Back in my apartment-dweller days, I was much more bothered by my neighbor’s garbage habits (leaving the bag in the hall until they went out to their car the following morning…and the roaches that follow that habit) than I was about their cooking habits.
First of all, cooking burgers on an outside grill isn’t the same as cooking curry in a relatively closed environment, even with the fan on and apple and cinnamon cooking. In fact, if I had to hazard a guess, perhaps people thought the smell of apple and cinnamon didn’t really go with the curry, so they were reacting to both mixed together.
Second, it may be your kitchen in your apartment, but as others have said upthread, your right to cook whatever you want ends with the right of other people not to have what they perceive to be unpleasant smells in their living area. Perhaps you could have found some middle ground and made your curry at a friend’s off-campus apartment.
So I don’t think it’s a cultural issue. I think you just had some tactless people telling you something you didn’t want to hear and forced them to suck it up against their will. Which, to me, is the equivalent of punching them in the face.
In that case, I think you’re probably just living around extremely vocal assholes, but not necessarily culturally-biased assholes. (For some reason, I can’t stop thinking of Spaceballs right now - “I’m surrounded by assholes!”) It’s good that you do try to limit the amount of times you cook curry, and they definitely could have approached it better. But I suspect if they’re that vocal about the scent of curry, they’d probably be equally vocal about anything else they don’t like, regardess of how common it might be.
I don’t know. If your neighbors don’t like the tree you planted in front of your house, you probably force them to suck it up against their will - and I bet you don’t think its the equivalent of punching them in the face.
My neighbors planted a row of evergreens right near the property line. I don’t like evergreens. These are going to block my view and kill my grass (and he is doing that horrible trim them up from the bottom thing, which really means I’m going to have lousy looking grass under those damn trees). But you know what - I’ll suck it up because although its in my view, its on their property. And I won’t consider it the equivalent of them punching me in the face.
Another neighbor took up woodworking in his garage. The squeel of a bandsaw cuts through the neighborhood when he is working in there - even with closed doors and windows. I’d rather not listen to it, but he does it at reasonable hours - its his hobby and he is doing it in his own garage.
One of the worst food smells I encounter on a regular basis is on the other side of the Garage, on Dunster St. The bilge that leaks out of the John Harvard’s dumpsters smells like the rapidly-souring leftovers of their brewing process with a little rotten food leftovers thrown in. Nasty! And I like the viable end-result of their brewing process!
I love Limburger. Hell, I love Époisses de Bourgogne, a cheese so stinky that it was once banned from public transportation in France due to its odor.
But apparently I can just claim “It’s cultural!” now, and everyone else will have to suck it up.
Outstanding.
I don’t know. I’m all for banning any strong-smelling food from the workplace, but this is where the OP lived, and it was an apartment. What about Indian folks, are they just supposed to stop cooking completely? They’re not about to make hamburgers and french fries. And yes, I’ve heard plenty of stuff about how all Indians reek. And I have heard people claim that Indian people should stop cooking their own food when living in an apartment. Bwuh?
FTR, the first time I smelled ground beef frying in a pan, it made me want to throw up. Now, thirteen years later? It makes me hungry. So certainly “American” food can reek, too.
I think it’s quite rude when people walk up to you and tell you something stinks. The OP was making every effort to be nice about it, what more can you do?
And Bricker, of course you should be able to eat that stuff - at home. Don’t bring it into the office, though.
The civilized response is to complain to the facilities management about the lack of proper venting inthe cooking area. The prevalence of “self-contained” hood units in apartment buildings is a big part of the problem. Once upon a time the fans in kitchens and bathrooms vented to an outside wall or out the roof, thus actually removing smoke and bad smells.
Most apartments will eventually do something about it if everyone makes them aware each time it happens.
As an Irish girl, I have to say I also make the occasional curry (very mild coriander curries, but still) and cabbage as well. Cabbage smells turn really sour the next morning, so I’m quite careful to open the windows whenever I cook it.
Better ventilation is good. Courtesy is good. But people also need to meet in the middle.
Personally, I love the smell of fresh popcorn, but I stopped making it where I used to work because several people complained very loudly. I hate the smell of coffee, but I was one of very few non-coffee-drinkers in the building, so I just closed my door and made a cup of strong-smelling tea whenever there was a fresh pot of coffee brewing.
I wish they’d been reasonable enough to say they’d put up with my popcorn if I put up with their coffee, but they weren’t and it wasn’t worth the fight.
No, it doesn’t remove the smell – it spreads it out over a larger area. As mentioned above, I absolutely detest the smell of coffee. There’s a roastery just down the street from my store, and when they’re roasting, a three-block area downtown really stinks. I’ve even heard people who like coffee complain about it. I wish they had a self-contained unit so it only stunk up the coffeehouse, which presumably contains people who wouldn’t mind the smell so much.
Maybe that’s the smell I’m describing? It’s definitely yeasty. I never made the connection to John Harvard’s but it is right next door.
By this same token, there could be a number more that liked or didn’t care about the smell. I think it’s quite a leap to think “hey, the hall smells different… I don’t like it… the guy cooking it is a jerk!”
I have been reading this thread with some interest and, in general, my take is that the OP is pretty culturally insensitive, has a big sense of entitlement and is under some impression that the world should change around him to accommodate his wishes. All of that being said, I felt that this post deserved singling out for scorn and mocking.
Seriously. I assume that this is some cute reference to the KKK and that we somehow made the leap from people not liking the way that curry smells to them being white supremacists. What the fuck? Is that really a straight line in your mind? How on earth do you get from there to here? You can’t possibly think this way, can you?
Yeah, that’s why I a) minimized the amount and frequency of cooking of curry, b) opened windows, ventilated during and after, and c) shared food with the curious. And of course, it’s perfectly acceptable to voice one’s opposition to something you find unfamiliar by using words like “stink.”
I think entitlement would have been me just doing what the hell I wanted, taking no effort to minimize the impact on others, cooking whatever the hell I wanted when I wanted. It appears that doing anything except ceasing and desisting is me being under the impression that the world should change around me. :rolleyes:
To recap: there’s not a problem with people not liking curry. You can appreciate or hate it as much as you want. But there should be tolerance for the unfamiliar, and there’s a respectful way to say you don’t like it.
I can accept that cultural biases are not the predominant issue as to why some find the smell unpleasant. But it seems ridiculous to endorse judgmental statements about things that people hold dear to their culture and heritage. It’s similar to someone telling you that country music sucks, or that rap music is stupid, or your accent is annoying. That’s about the best analogy I can draw.
Sorry dude, I am not buying it. The very fact that you knew to take all of these countermeasures tells me that you know that this sort of cooking if high impact in enclosed/shared environments and you chose to do it anyway. Mind you I am not saying that the people that objected were not being douches (they were), just that you knew ahead of time that you were going to be impacting your environment. That’s fine. Own that.
Another thing that I really think needs to be looked at here is this notion of yours that curry is this somehow exotic “unfamiliar” thing. Really? We are well into the 21st century at this point and I think that it would be fair to say that you would have to work pretty hard to find someone that has not run across curry by the time they were in college. And to be honest, this attitude is pretty superior and condescending. Like the poor provincial rubes were just too loutish and plebe to appreciate your world cuisine or something. Give me a break.
At no point was I trying not to impact the environment, but I was certainly mindful of trying to minimize the impact. Your “entitlement” argument would rest on me not giving a toss what that impact would be on others.
A residence hall is not a sealed unit. You’re going to smell stuff, hear stuff, and see stuff that you might not choose to, so you moderate these things - turn on a fan, turn your radio down, put your poster of scantily-clad women behind your door, etc. It doesn’t mean you can’t, or don’t, do those things. It’s your home as well. Entitlement is when people do what the hell they want without thinking about others… blaring a radio, smoking outside next to the building, that kind of stuff.
Sorry, I forgot that you were as familiar as me with the student body at the time. (You did note in the OP that this was many years ago, in the 1990s, right?) When we had our cultural festival in the hall, very few students knew what curry was. Or they had a cursory idea that it was something that Indian and Thai people ate, but had no idea that it was a popular staple in the West Indies. As I mentioned earlier, kids from SoCal and the Bay Area were much more likely to have had the exposure. There’s nothing wrong with not being exposed to different cultural cuisines, but there is something wrong with expressing your unfamiliarity in a rude way (that, at least, you seem to get).
I think you’re projecting. I would not describe these students as “poor,” and curry is hardly highfalutin exotic food where I come from, it’s what poor people (i.e. my stock) eat. Again, 90% of what I eat is pretty much regular American cuisine - I’m not purporting to be some gourmet cook.
I think I’m being charitable by attributing the rudeness to a lack of exposure.
There are two different issues here. One is the perceived cultural insensitivity and/or ignorance of the hallway sniffers, and the other is the etiquite surrounding communal areas and private activities which impact those shared areas.
I agree that often, smells or tastes unfamiliar to us can strike us not as “Yum! Delicious!” but as “Ewww! Disgusting!” because we lack any positive associations or history with the sensory input. But I don’t assume that implies some cultural intolerance, just personal preference.
It’s not even a given that ANY bias is involved; I love to cook with onions and garlic. I love fish. I love streamed broccoli. But the lingering odors of a meal involving such ingredients can be awful if not cleaned up after immediately and well. Like curry, these are strongly scented and even if someone thinks they smell wonderful while cooking, give them a while and the same odors become a “stink”.
As a vegetarian (well, pescavore veggie), meat cooking does NOT smell good or apetizing to me…fortunately, our communal hallway is open to the outside, airs out quickly, and smells from other apartments don’t tend to drift into their neighbors’ abodes.
I had some houseguests once (long-term, family, living rent-free type situation) who cooked meat a lot, and the WORST was the bacon…the smell would permeate the entire 2-story house and linger for days. I finally had to say enough…if you want to cook it, cook it outside on the grill. It was as bad for me as a non-smoker having to tolerate cigar smoking in the house.
The absolute WORSE cooking odor I ever smelled was in a community center where there was a big cook-out and potluck going on. I had to go in to drop something off, and gagged involuntarily twice in the few minutes I was there. When asked by the receptionist if I wanted some, I said (rudely, I know, but it just came out :o) “Oh, God no…smells like roadkill!”
It did…it was some meat being cooked with a combination of sickly sweet, strong spices that, to me, smelled exactly like VERY rotten meat, FAR worse than just meat alone.
I suppose my reaction was a mixture of cultural bias (the dish was obviously some Mexican concoction, given the ethnicity of the participants) and my hyper-sensitive vegetarian nose and preference, but the bottom line was it just literally STANK to me.
Even with a separate kitchen, if someone’s cooking odors are regularly bothering neighbors, some sort of compromise should be found, imo. It’s just plain rude to “stink” up communal areas with odors others using those areas find offensive and have no way of avoiding.
At the same time, it’s unreasonable to have to give up a favorite dish forever in your own home, esp. when you’re using the fan and presumably making every possible effort to minimize the odor sharing. (fan running, door to the hallway closed, windows open, immediate clean-up, etc…)
Perhaps it would be possible to minimize or eliminate the lingering scent of the curry with air freshener or incense, either in your apartment or the hallway or both. Just something that would take the edge off and cover it enough to make it tolerable.
Or maybe you could try and “convert” the complainers by inviting them to join you in some curry (maybe organize a potluck?) and their perception of the “stink” might change from yuck to yum if they liked it. 
Color me boggled. Even Waaaaaaaaay back in the 90s :rolleyes: I have a hard time conceiving of a place where Curry of all things was a new experience. I mean, I was eating Curry in Pontiac MI in the 70s for. I have to assume that your location has changed and that this was like an Amish community or some other deeply isolated location.
I first ever heard of curry from an episode of the British sci-fi show “Red Dwarf”. (I thus initially assumed it was a traditional British food of some kind.) This was sometime in the mid-90’s.
I have never eaten curry, never smelled curry, and never been anywhere where it was served. This is not because I’ve avoided it. There just aren’t any Indian restaurants in the area. That said, I don’t think it would be hard to find a restaurant within an hour’s driving range that served it. I’m tempted to do that just to see what all the fuss (positive and negative) is about.
I live in southern Minnesota. I am not Amish. I think you need to realize that not everyone lives in an urban setting, nor lives an urbane lifestyle.
My mom was cooking with curry back in the 60s and 70s, as well. I couldn’t stand the taste of it, but I think she was doing it wrong, based on photos of what most curry dishes are supposed to look like.
I’ve been eating Mexican food since the 60s, too. And yet I have relatives who’ve never tasted Mexican food. I guess they’re not very adventurous. They’re the ones who eat cooked pickles, which are a turn-off to a lot of people.
Bottom line, I don’t think anyone has the right to ask someone to change their diet, especially when they’re cooking in their own home. As others have said, seemingly “regular” food smells can be a real turn-off to some people. Oh well…life’s not always going to be comfy-cozy. If your neighbors’ cooking is that much of a turn-off, you need to think about moving.