With the arrival of a shimmering new year: “I resolve to eat better and cook more interesting meals.” That resolution calls for having folks over for dinner or I’ll be eating interesting leftovers for days. It also calls for tossing old spices since I’ve read that spices lose their flavors within months.
The thing is… Jim built my spice rack for me for our first anniversary, and I bought fancy McCormick spices to fit in it. We couldn’t afford to buy 40-some spices at one time, but each week at the grocery, I would splurge on one. Through the years, I’ve refilled the jars with much cheaper spices, but that’s been awhile.
Some of those spices I’ve never even used. Take Allspice. For decades that jar has sat in first place, first row, unopened. (Of course, the spices were alphabetized.) I really didn’t know what it was for, and it was one of the last ones I bought all those years ago just to fill up the rack. I thought it was a combo spice. But it’s not. It’s the brown dried berry from the pimenta dioica tree that grows in the West Indies and Central America. It got its name because it smells like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
Learning that tidbit sent me down the rabbit hole to reading about many other spices, but I won’t get into that. Except I wondered what courageous souls from all around the world tried grinding some of those seeds or bark or roots to season other foods? Although I tasted dirt and sheep shower as a kid, as an adult, I don’t pick up things growing in the yard or woods and stick them in my mouth.
Back to my resolution. A few days ago, I methodically pulled the spices off the turntable in the cupboard and looked at those dates. These were the half-full plastic jars I used to refill the fancy ones in the spice rack. Cinnamon and chili pepper were fresh-ish. The oldest spice was ‘best if used by’ twelve years ago. I surmised that the ones without expiration dates were not very potent.
I made a list of spices and headed for the store. A grandmother and child in the aisle watched me study the spice shelves and my long list and helped me find the ones I needed. I actually bought new allspice with the hope I’d learn what it was used in. I didn’t replace some of the other spices I never used, and I bought a couple new ones I’d heard about. I bought the tiniest jars I could.
At home, I dumped out old spices, cleaned jars, refilled them, and sneezed a bit as so many aromas filled the kitchen. The spice rack has mostly fancy glass jars, but it also has a few plastic ones with red lids, and the rack has a new look. It’s actually more cheerful now instead of the same-height, formal, black-capped jars lined up.
Now I need some new recipes to try. Can you help me with my 2024 culinary adventure? Have a favorite recipe you care to share? Or want to be a guinea pig and come to dinner?
