I went looking for cumin on a Wednesday afternoon and ended up pulling every single jar out of my spice cabinet, lining them up across the counter like some kind of inspection, because I genuinely could not remember the last time I’d looked at more than the front row.
There were more jars back there than I expected, probably close to thirty, and I want to be honest that I did not recognize the origin of at least a third of them.
The Ones I Couldn’t Place
There was a small unlabeled jar of something reddish brown that I sniffed for a solid minute trying to identify. I still don’t know what it is. It smells vaguely like paprika but sharper, and I’ve decided rather than throw it out I’m going to keep guessing at it in small doses until I either figure it out or use it up entirely, whichever comes first.
There was also a jar with handwriting on the label that wasn’t mine, an old fashioned cursive spelling out a spice I use often enough but had clearly relabeled from some original container at some point in the past. I have no memory of doing this. I assume it was me, since it’s my cabinet, but the handwriting looked different enough from how I write now that it gave me a small, strange pause.
The Empty Jar
The strangest find was a jar of dried oregano that, when I picked it up to check the date, felt suspiciously light. I opened it, and it was completely empty, not a single flake left inside, the lid sealed shut as if it had never been opened at all. I have no explanation for this. Either I used every bit of oregano down to nothing and somehow resealed the lid perfectly, which seems unlikely, or the jar came to me already empty and I simply never noticed in however many years it’s been sitting there.
How Old Some of These Actually Were
A few jars had expiration dates printed on the bottom, and the oldest one I found expired eleven years ago, a jar of ground cloves that I use maybe twice a year, mostly around the holidays, and apparently haven’t replaced since sometime in my mid forties. It still smelled like something, faintly, though I have my doubts about how much flavor it would actually contribute to anything at this point.
I did some rough math standing there at the counter and realized some of these spices are older than a couple of the houseplants I’ve bought since, which is a strange thing to measure your kitchen against but there it is.
What I Actually Threw Out
I was more ruthless than I expected to be, in the end. About a third of the jars went in the trash, mostly the ones with no smell left at all, spices that had gone from flavorful to essentially just colored dust. I kept the mystery reddish jar, because I’ve decided the mystery is more interesting than the risk of throwing away something useful. I kept the empty oregano jar too, actually, at least for now, sitting on the counter as a kind of small, unsolved puzzle I look at every few days without making any progress on.
What I Learned About My Own Cooking
Going through the cabinet told me something honest about how I actually cook versus how I think of myself as cooking. I have five different jars related to chili in some form, which tracks, since I make a version of chili more often than almost anything else. I have exactly one jar of a spice I apparently bought for a single recipe years ago and never used again, still nearly full, a small monument to an ambition that didn’t stick.
Cumin, For the Record
I did eventually find the cumin, tucked behind the mystery reddish jar, nearly full and well within any reasonable date range. The whole excavation, which took most of an hour, was technically in service of finding one jar I could have located in about thirty seconds if I’d just dug around a little instead of pulling everything out onto the counter. But I don’t think the hour was wasted. I know my own cabinet now in a way I didn’t before, which feels like a strange, small kind of accomplishment for a Wednesday afternoon.
Reorganizing It, Briefly
I tried to put everything back in some kind of order afterward, alphabetical, which sounded sensible when I started and fell apart almost immediately once I realized half my jars don’t have clearly printed labels and I was relying on my own handwriting or my memory of what each one smelled like. I got through about half the alphabet with real discipline before I started just shoving things back wherever there was room, which is more or less how the cabinet ended up disorganized in the first place.
I don’t think I’m capable of maintaining a perfectly ordered spice cabinet long term, if I’m honest with myself. Some people manage it, I know, with matching jars and labels facing forward in tidy rows. I am apparently not one of those people, no matter how good my intentions are on any given Wednesday afternoon. The cumin is at least in a spot I’ll remember for the next few months, which for me currently counts as a system.