Your Spice Cabinet Is Probably Too Comfortable

It’s 3-something in the morning and apparently I’m thinking about your spice cabinet.

Stay with me.

There’s nothing wrong with garlic powder. Or onion powder. Or paprika. I use them too. They’ve gotten us through plenty of dinners and I’m not here to disrespect anybody’s cabinet.

But… what else is in there?

That question is basically how Source & Savor keeps getting me in trouble.

I’ll start looking for one ingredient, find another one I’ve never tried, start reading about where that comes from, figure out what people traditionally do with it, and now somehow there are six things on the way to my house.

This is research. Obviously.

But that curiosity is becoming one of my favorite parts of building Source & Savor.

I don’t want to fill the shop with things just because they’re unusual or because nobody can pronounce them. That’s not interesting to me.

I want things that are GOOD.

Things with a story. Things that make something you’ve cooked a hundred times taste a little different. Things that make you open the jar again just to smell it because wait…what IS that?

And sometimes the interesting thing isn’t even new.

Maybe you’ve had black pepper your entire life—but you’ve never compared one peppercorn to another.

Maybe you’ve eaten sumac without realizing what gave the dish that tang.

Maybe there’s a seasoning you’ve walked past 50 times because you had absolutely no idea what you’d do with it.

That’s the fun part.

You don’t need 47 new spices. You don’t need to become a culinary historian by Friday.

Try one thing you’ve never tried before.

Smell it. Taste it. Read about it. Put it somewhere it supposedly doesn’t belong.

If it’s terrible, well…now we know. 😂

If it’s good?

Now we’ve got something.

That’s pretty much what’s happening behind the scenes over here. Lots of tasting. Lots of notes. A few immediate yeses. A few absolutely nots. And quite a few “Okayyyy…there’s something here.”

Everything won’t make the cut.

That’s intentional.

I don’t want Source & Savor to be a pantry full of random interesting things.

I want it to be a pantry full of interesting things worth eating.

So keep the garlic powder.

We’re just gonna introduce it to some new friends.

— RI

Source something. Savor everything.