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.