Coffee-Cup Spice

I love how a little spice makes a cup of coffee that much sweeter and mellower, but without the "fake" flavor of artifically-flavored coffee blends or creamers. Those always have a strange chemical taste, I think. So I mix up my own "coffee-cup spice." Cinnamon by itself is delicious in coffee. Just sprinkle some on top of the coffee grounds before brewing (about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp for a 10-cup pot of coffee). I put together a spice blend, cinnamon-based, that is great in coffee or as a spice for coffee cake or muffins. To use it in baking, add up the amounts of spice you'd usually use in the recipe and use the same measurement of this spice blend.

I store it in an old jar from any one of the spices used in the blend. If you do this, don't even wash the jar first; whatever's left in the jar will just mix in.

Depending on the size of your jar, you can adjust the quantity of each, as long as you keep in mind that some are measured in TBL and some in tsp.

TBL:  cinnamon
tsp:  nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, ginger

Place in the jar, cover tightly and shake until well blended.

Ranch Salad Dressing Mix

My Southwestern Chili Mac recipe calls for a teaspoon of ranch salad dressing mix. That's not the kind of thing I keep in the house, but I didn't have to run to the store to make that dinner! It's really easy to make this mix and keep it at home.

In an 8-ounce or larger jar (I used an old bottle from parsley flakes), combine:

1/2 cup dry buttermilk powder
1 TBL dried parsley flakes
1 tsp dill weed
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp dried chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp pepper

Put the lid on and shake well to mix. Store in the refrigerator.

1 tablespoon = 1 packet of mix.

I love to keep seasoning mixes around, and this way I can control the seasonings. I used extra garlic powder and pepper since that's the way we like it. It's much more frugal to mix up a seasoning blend than to keep buying a new one, especially when I have many spices around to play with!

Recipe source

Spices: Rack 'Em Up!

I don't have a spice rack in my kitchen. For one thing, there's no counter space to put one (though I have considered a wall-mounted one, and that's not out of the question.)

For now, I've got them in dollar-store baskets in the cabinets.

I tied index cards to the baskets so I can see at a glance what spices are in which basket. That saves a lot of time when I'm gathering stuff up to cook. I don't even have them all in the same cabinet, but I think I'm going to rework that so that they're all together. (As long as I don't move my husband's coffee, no one around here cares where I put stuff in the kitchen).

I do have a couple of big containers (parsley, oregano, basil and cinnamon) on other shelves because they're too large for those baskets.

It's not the prettiest solution, but it works for now. Where do you keep your spices?

Spice It Up

I was flipping through a back issue of Real Simple (which should more appropriately be titled Real Expensive) when I came to an article about how someone reorganized her kitchen. Since I'm working with a 10 X 11-foot space myself, I'm always interested in articles like that.

One of the "trouble areas" was the homeowner's spice pantry. If I had a separate little cabinet just for spices, no one would be touching it. There's never enough room for spices. But it was clear that either magazine editors or kitchen designers are not cooks, because it was mentioned that the homeowner had 23 spices. Evidently, 23 was too much.

Are they kidding me? That's not the half of what I have in my kitchen, in various baskets. In fact, I counted them all, and I've got 49 spices (not including a couple of jars of homemade spice mixes like Pumpkin Pie Mix, Taco Mix and Italian Mix.) Wait, make that 50--I forgot to count the box of Bell's Poultry Seasoning that's sitting on my kitchen windowsill.

I imagine that anyone who reads this blog also enjoys cooking. How many spices do you have? Would 23 be too much?