It's weird in my dreams that I'm able to create people whom I've never met. They have their own voices, their own faces, their own bodies and whatnot.

I do this all the time. As for the food thing, if I'm reading about food, or see a reference to it or something, and starting thinking about it, my mouth will start to water and I swear I can almost taste that particular food, (even though its not there). Doesn't work the same way with smells though. (I can't smell)

I can't recreate the taste but only remember, like Chesh had said, that it's good, sweet, sour, fishy etc.. Same goes for smells. I know that a fart generally smells bad (except mine which smell of roses) but I can't imagine and 'smell' it in that moment. (Though sometimes if I squeeze really hard I can recreate certain smells).

But smelling something really brings back other memories, such as doing something, being somewhere etc.. I read that smell is the most evocative sense, so no surprise. Also, music is very evocative for me, which I assume is normal.

Another thing which is vaguely related to this is the question of the child that is born without any senses. No sight, hearing, tough, smell or taste. Would the child have any thoughts? The ability to think?
I believe it was Kant who posed the question and studied it, though could be mistaken. I remember reading about it in another book (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance) so, yeah..

EDIT It was Hume.

I can't recreate the taste but only remember, like Chesh had said, that it's good, sweet, sour, fishy etc.. Same goes for smells. I know that a fart generally smells bad (except mine which smell of roses) but I can't imagine and 'smell' it in that moment. (Though sometimes if I squeeze really hard I can recreate certain smells).

But smelling something really brings back other memories, such as doing something, being somewhere etc.. I read that smell is the most evocative sense, so no surprise. Also, music is very evocative for me, which I assume is normal.

Another thing which is vaguely related to this is the question of the child that is born without any senses. No sight, hearing, tough, smell or taste. Would the child have any thoughts? The ability to think?
I believe it was Kant who posed the question and studied it, though could be mistaken. I remember reading about it in another book (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance) so, yeah..

EDIT It was Hume.

I was about to correct that lol. Hume was an empiricist all the way while Kant believed  in the existance of pure rational thoughts.
Its interesting to notice that Hume also believed that every impression from any of the senses, gave us simple ideas of things, and he possed the problem of whether we could create simple ideas out of other simple ideas or not.... which relating to this topic would be like: can we recreate the smell (or taste) of something that we haven't directly perceived in our minds only by trying to combine what we remember of the smell (or taste) of other stuff??

I can mentally play songs, like an MP3 player in my mind. As long as it's a nice and quiet environment, I can do it quite easily. There was this one weird thing though... My mom owns this greek food restaurant... I picked up a juice and felt the detailed things on the glass... And I predicted what it would taste like... The taste was exactly the same.