Let me make this clear: I don't much care for baked beans, but I make them anyway - several times a year.

I'm not particularly crazy about chutney either, but I cook it in great batches every August, and have done so for years.

Some foods you prepare - or at least I do - not so much because of their taste, but because of their othersense appeal.

The baked beans, for instance, are a two-day job. That means that for two whole days, my house smells divine - of bacon and onions and brown sugar and molasses. And beans.

It's a smell I wish I could bottle.

"Wow!" my husband will say when it's time to dish them out. "These look fantastic!"

And then he will glance at my plate.

"You aren't having more than that?" he will ask.

"You're only taking about a tablespoon!"

"That's enough," I say. "I don't really like baked beans."

And what should it matter, I ask? They do little for my taste buds, but everything for my nose.

And then there is the chutney.

And the mustard

pickles. And the jardinière - you know, the tiny onions and carrots and spears of zucchini that you can at the height of the harvest.

Don't care for 'em too much, either - to eat, that is.

"What will we have the chutney with?" the husband will inquire, watching me stir the concoction.

"You might have it with ham," I will say. "Or with sausages. Or with pork chops. Or with scrambled eggs."

"And you?" he will ask.

"Oh, I might have a tiny bit," I will inform him.

"Mostly, I just like to look at it."

This is true. The chutneys, the mustard pickles and the jardinière do way more for my eyes than they do for my appetite. Again, it's that othersense appeal.

I like to line up the jars on the kitchen counter, and let them sit there for days. I like to then place them on the open shelf of the pantry, where they can be admired by all who enter the room.

To heck with opening them, I say. I just like the way they look - so homey and colourful and fitting of a magazine spread.

They're as pretty, oh, as any picture on my walls, or any vase on my tables.

And when it comes to eating ham - or pork or sausages - it matters little whether I add the chutney on my plate.

It's adored by one of my senses - just not the obvious one.