spices

I’ve written about how much I like having my broad selection of spices for cooking. We really love our built-in spice rack. It holds forty jars of spices, and we have our overflow as well (thanks in part to the samples we get from the good folks at Penzeys with nearly every order we place). What I’ve noticed, though, is that for the most part I use only a small portion of those spices. On a regular basis I use perhaps twenty percent of what we have.

I once asked the Yahoo! vegetarian group (which I no longer actively follow) if others had a similar experience. As I recall, the list owner, who is really a lovely person but who can be impatient at times, answered with a response only slightly more polite than, “Of course not, you dumb ass!”

But there was another member whose experience was similar to mine. She wrote that she believed keeping a more complete spice collection will encourage her to try new recipes with new flavors. I like that approach, though I haven’t been good about following it. I expect that to be different this year, however. As I wrote, my goal is for more variety in my cooking. And I am off to a good start on that. I just need to keep it going.

So here’s to having a broad spice selection.

avoiding waste

My first January paycheck was slightly smaller than before, due to the expiration of the payroll tax break and higher health insurance premiums. So being prudent and avoiding waste have been more on my mind than usual. I’m happy to say we’ve had some successes in that area so far in the new year.

We don’t usually cook with beef, but we wanted to try the Trisha Yearwood pot roast we saw on Rachael Ray over the holidays. We tried it a week ago Sunday and it was marvelous. Of course we had leftovers. We put those to good use. One day I chopped some up to make taco meat and baked taco shells from tortillas left over from a previous dinner. Every bit as good as a new meal from scratch. Another day I cut up the meat and added it to the leftover chili verde that was in the freezer. I baked the last two tortillas in our tortilla shell molds. That came out very well too.

Another Trisha Yearwood recipe, Chicken Baked in Cornflake Crumbs, called for buttermilk, which we don’t usually use, so the remainder risked going to waste. But I used a bunch of it in the  bread I baked, which was marvelous, and Terry used the rest in one of our breakfast smoothies.

We had take-out Indian on Friday, one of our favorite treats. The leftovers made a great Sunday lunch. (Though I have to admit that our leftover Indian take-out rarely goes to waste.)

I can’t promise we’ll always be this responsible, but we’re off to a good start this year.