A Food Nerd's Lifelong Dream Come True

If I wasn't a giant nerd before (and I was): I have, today, achieved a minor/enormous life goal.

I put all of my bulk spices into little glass bottles. ALL of them.

(Except the epazote. Sorry, epazote. I only use you, like, once a year when I make black beans.)

I have had my eye out for some rad spice containers for years. I knew I wanted them to be:

- multitudinous
- possessing of character
- basically free

And I was not going to puss out and buy them from Williams-Sonoma or some such. No way.







So last week, while my buddy Blalock was visiting from SF, we dropped into the sketchtastic His House thrift store out on Augusta Highway, on our way to get a late BBQ lunch out in BFE.

Sitting there in the kitchen bric-a-brac section was a Keds shoebox full of these sweet, 1930's-1940's vintage glass spice jars by "Crystal Food Products, Watseka, Ill. 60970" (note the old state abbreviation).



I gathered them up and went up to the surly gentleman running the cash register for a price check.

In my most hushed inner nerd voice, I thought, "Please be five dollars for all of them. Please don't charge me a buck a piece. Please please please pleasepleaselaselappleasepleee..."

"That box there? That'll be three dollars."







3 bucks! Not $3 each. $3 for all 24 of them! Sweet.

Ran them through the Fisher-Paykel (eco-cycle, duh), dried them well and rubbed the funk off of the copper-plated screwtops. Then spent the morning funneling in all of my dried herbs from Mom's garden (after pulverizing them in my mini food processor) as well as the bulk herbs and spices I'd stockpiled recently from Rainbow Grocery in SF.

It took FOREVER.

Not wanting to waste an opportunity to swan dive straight into the nerd zone, I made sticky labels to put on the jars for which I had no correlating spices. I don't stock caraway seed, so now it's a ground clove bottle, and so on.

(Yes, I made the label text a dark olive green in a pretentious font [Gungsuh -- ??] and cut out each and every one from a sheet of Avery 2"x4"s.)







I'll admit, I already had 10 generic glass spice bottles that I pilfered from my Mom's house months ago for my heavy-hitters like fennel seed, coriander, chile flakes and white pepper.

Today I graced these with nerdy, printed labels as well, so that each time I regard them on the shelf or use them in dish, I can praise myself for being so terribly organized.


Total spice organization: it's a long-term dream come true. Like, for the last 12-16 years or so. Now that I've made it happen, I can only imagine the food nerdish shenanigans into which I might descend next.

Til then,
xoxo
tb
P.S. Today I looked up my vintage spice bottles on eBay just to be self-congratulatory, and they go for $21 to $69 for a set of 24. My friends, believe this: I am full to the brim with flea marketer self-satisfaction.