Eat Local Challenge
The Spice Conundrum

I make no bones about not being pure to the Local Challenge. When asked/challenged, I pretty quickly throw out coffee and then olive oil. Because the first is crucial to my sanity and the second is necessary to most of my [or especially] my wife's cooking, they are things that always come to mind. If I think about it, however, I would come up with all sorts a other exceptions. A major challenge to the Eat Local Challenge is spices. After all, most spices come from exotic locations like the Malabar Coast or shall I say, "Malabar Coast"--you know what I mean. Surely, one needs spices to cook...or do they?

Right now we have peppers coming out of the wazoo. Went to Milwaukee and could not resist the bags of small peppers for a dollar, went to Minnesota and could not resist the bags of small peppers for a dollar--and I bought out the entire supply of micro bell peppers at a quarter each. At Madison I bought a godly amount of Hungarian hot wax because I want to duplicate the vinegar peppers at Old Town Serbian, and Farmer Vicki just keeps on piling them on me. There must have been 25 (at least) various peppers in our box this week.

Many of the peppers we are already drying; from there we can make our own spice powders or chile flakes. Other peppers are going into the freezer or into vinegar. Our intention is to create a slightly new palate to cook from. Of course, we have fresh herbs now and many dried herbs (some we have done ourselves, some from Farmer Vicki). I'm not saying we will never stir up a pot of curry again or dabble in international, spice dependent cuisines, nor would we skip nutmeg in a squash puree or cinnamon in an apple pie, or hell, I'm not skipping fresh cracked pepper on my salads, but over time, it will be a lot less of their spices and a lot more of ours.