Spices
Gifts from overseas are always exquisite. They are slivers of insight into foreign flavours. They are small packages of nostalgia. My mum recently brought back nuts and colourful bags and scarves and ponchos and tiny uniquely decorated good-luck pin cushion hearts entangled in a cloistered mess from Mexico. Her friend, Judy, who leads treks across Nepal and India (as has my mother), recently brought my mum back this lovely spice ensemble.
I was in my parent's kitchen and under the large windows that look out to the big red barn where the horses graze outside I saw a sparkling silver cookie tin. I took off the lid and underneath was another lid with a perfect little spoon. I picked up the spoon and took off the second lid to gaze at this: tiny little bowls of fresh spices - mace, cardamom pods, cumin seeds, ground curry spices for vegetarian dishes and meat dishes and whole nutmeg pods. Spices brought back from their place of origin always smell and taste so much better than their counterpart bought here (even from the Middle Eastern spice stores in Kensington Market - although the spice store on Augusta with large burlap sacks of licorice root and 12 blend Ethiopian curries). Other countries take their spices seriously - they grind the blends often themselves - while here in Canada we suffer from a taste inferiority complex where the solution to bland is to add salt.
One of the benefits of being the daughter to a traveling mother is the dried good bounty she returns with!
