Keep your spices up to date!

[iris lilies]

Yet another friend of ours has moved and left tons snd tons of spices. We picked out a few we would take,but given that several households have off loaded their spice cabinents onto us, we have little room.

[catherine]

Wow. I took spices up to Vermont, but didn't bring them back and now I've had to go to the Indian stores, our natural food store that sells bulk spices, or to Job Lot for inexpensive replacement spices. I tore the kitchen apart yesterday looking for cumin for my lentil soup, and wound up buying it (it was only $1).

[razz]

When I moved into my little house 4 years ago, I wanted to set up proper spice arrangement. DD! told me about an insert for a drawer that I bought. I got some new jars from Dollarama that sit in there perfectly and Bulb Barn will let me refill those little jars provided they are clean. The staff weigh the jars, I fill and then pay the difference in weight. It is working out very well.
When you are traveling between two places it does get more complicated though.

I use the one on the right https://www.kitchensource.com/spice-...drawerinserts/

[catherine]

When I moved into my little house 4 years ago, I wanted to set up proper spice arrangement. DD! told me about an insert for a drawer that I bought. I got some new jars from Dollarama that sit in there perfectly and Bulb Barn will let me refill those little jars provided they are clean. The staff weigh the jars, I fill and then pay the difference in weight. It is working out very well.
When you are traveling between two places it does get more complicated though.

I use the one on the right https://www.kitchensource.com/spice-...drawerinserts/

Nice, razz! When we did some basic remodeling in our kitchen, we changed from a cooktop to a range, so that gave us 6" of space next to the stove. So we put in something like this:

https://www.cabinetparts.com/p/revas...zers-RV432BF3C

Now that we've had a couple of years, DH found he HATES it and I LOVE it. So that means, he keeps spices in the wall cabinet and I continue to keep them in the rack. Talk about organizational mayhem! The only thing I can be sure of is all the "Indian" spices will be in "my" spot and all the "Italian" spices will be in his.

Why he prefers to go digging in the cabinet for the spice he wants rather than seeing them all lined up in alphabetical order is beyond me.

[iris lilies]

Well, ding ding ding thanks to razz! I will take more of my friend’s spices because we dont have many in Hermann. I do not have ANY Indian spaices there, but my friends didnt have anybod those either so they couldnt help me oit woth their offloads. But tones of peppers and fancy salts, yeah, they have those.

[CathyA]

catherine.....things next to my stove get hot. I'm wondering if your spices will get old quicker because of that heat?

[catherine]

catherine.....things next to my stove get hot. I'm wondering if your spices will get old quicker because of that heat?

That's a good point, Cathy. I hadn't thought about that.

I don't us my oven that much, though. Next time I do, I think I'll pull out the rack and see if the containers are warm.

[pinkytoe]

We buy small quantities in bulk and re-use the glass jars they originally came in years ago. I have them on small lazy Susans inside the cabinet as light and heat degrade their quality. Good idea to buy organic when you can (Frontier brand is good) as others are irradiated or so we are told. Not sure of that matters but sounds icky. When we moved, we did compost some of the bizarro ones that had been used once.

[Zoe Girl]

This reminds me of my former in laws. When we visited they had so many spices that were very old, and also duplicates from combining households. I wanted soooo much to clean them out but they didn't want that. One bonus to getting divorced was not having to look forward to cleaning out their home when it came time.

[iris lilies]

Another food item showing up as problematic in the moves of our friends: liquor. Our friend of the recent move probably has two or three dozen bottles of stuff. I told her I would take all vodka. But she doesn’t have Scotch, and she’s moving all of the red wine, So I can’t relieve her of much of the stuff.

We ended up with tons of liquor from other households who have moved and I poured it all down the sink, I just don’t use it and I don’t want it around taking up space. When I told my friend that she was horrified so she will not give me anything that I won’t promise to use, ha ha ha ha. But All of that liquor sitting around her empty house proved too big of a temptation for her handyman who is an alcoholic. So he loaded it up and took it to his home. That didn’t suit her either. She is now on the East Coast, but she got mad at him and told him to bring it back to her empty house.

This is all a lot of drama over crappy used bottles of various liquor ,who cares about that? she already has the good stuff (nice red wine ) with her. not worth arguing over.