Spices

Everyone is eating in more. Not only that, but everyone is probably trying to stretch their food dollars as far as they possibly can. In my opinion, the best way to do stretch the foods that you have been putting aside is to have a lot of beans, rice and taters, and have as little meat as you can get away with.

This kind of eating is common in the rest of the world. When I was working in Thailand and China, I ate with the folks that I knew there at local restaurants. Since I was always the only gwailo or farang at any of these restaurants, I knew that it was how the real folk ate. There was not to much meat at any of these restaurants. What meat there was was usually chicken or pork. But the food was always great. They usually spiced it perfectly.

So plan on keeping a store of spices with you. You can usually get the best spices at the local ethnic markets. Mexican food stores are usually the best. They have a gazillion types of peppers for less than a buck a package and their spices are low priced and cheaply packaged. Spending the money that the corporate stores want for spices is silly. Occasionally there is a spice that you have to buy at the big stores, but do it grudgingly.

I am trying to find a way to store spices. I am thinking that vacuum packaging them and maybe even putting in an oxygen scavenger pack would greatly extend their shelf lives. If anyone has some knowledge about this, I would appreciate it.