Spice

For a long time, my cooking spices have gnawed at me.  They were a motley bunch of grocery store, international store, and some organic bottled spices.  I even had a spice rack that I filled with small glass jarred spices from World Market.

But, I always wondered, how old are these spices and where do they come from.  Honestly, most of them, even when first bought, felt old, or possibly so, and then, what, it would take me a year or more to wind through the whole bottle, only to purchase another questionable jar.  In the back of my mind, it was more than a gnawing, I was grossed out.  But it was one of those things I let simmer a long time, before actually doing anything about it.

Then one day I googled it and sure enough, like a lot of things that gnaw at me, those spices weren't anything I wanted to be consuming.  Evidently, spices aren't even FDA regulated.  They could be grown anywhere, with anything.  And then even when they are fresh they only have a short shelf life, like 3 or 4 months, after which they become rancid and basically you are eating stale bad food.

Something I should have done years ago:

One thing I will say, the bottles from World Market are cute.  So, I dumped out what was left of their original contents, ran them through the dishwasher, and headed to the local healthy food market to purchase just enough to refill my World Market bottles about 1/3 of the way up with fresh organic spice.

It's one of those little things you do in life (finally!) that can bring you (me!) such inexplicable pleasure.  Why it took me so long, I don't know.  But....it's done!