My Spice Sage: Web's Economical Spice Source

My nearly neat spice cabinet, filled with spices from "My Spice Sage"

            (Note: This review is based on my experience as a consumer with the web store mentioned in this article. I neither work for nor have I received any form of compensation for writing this article.) 

            When serving mild-tasting fish, such as cod or tilapia, spices make the difference between your taste buds being gently roused or irrevocably thrilled. Stocking up on supermarket spices is expensive, and often the variety is lacking. I've discovered a source for spices that will help the frugal seafood lover to collect spices and flavor-boosting implements for an array of tastes and occasions. 

My Spice Sage 

            Growing in popularity and visibility, My Spice Sage (www.myspicesage.com), is not only a place to buy spices, but it's also a place to learn about the history and lore, health benefits, and storage requirements for hundreds of spices at the site's "Spice Education 101" page. Besides the spice education, the prices are reasonable because your spices arrive in resealable bags, so the cost of packaging is lower. The products are available in bulk quantities as well, which helps to lower the prices. I purchased a few of their fillable spice bottles, but they weren't as economical as the spices. (Crate and Barrel's "Oval, Clamp-Top" Spice Jars are attractive, cheap, and shipping was free.)

The Spice Blends

            My Spice Sage has a tantalizing collection of spice blends that can set a cook's imagination ablaze. I love their Seafood Seasoning blend, which can turn a tasteless piece of tilapia into layers of tangy, mildly peppery flavor. Their Seafood Seasoning includes celery seed, white pepper, ginger, ground bay leaves, paprika and other seasonings that are generally known as "Chesapeake Bay Seasoning." The blend, according to My Spice Sage, originated in Baltimore. That's another thing I like about this spice source: they include the origin of the spices and spice blends. The number of spice blends available on this site is staggering. For example, there are seasoning blends for barbeque, fried chicken, pizza, burritos, and pies--just to list a few.

Stock-Up Potential

            The potential to stock-up or start your first spice collection is high with this web store. My new kitchen was just completed and I had a dedicated spice drawer. For once, I wanted to have everything I needed on hand. I purchased one- to four-ounce bags of spices, mindful that I didn't want to keep the spices for more than six months (at which point they begin to lose potency). Caterers or restaurant owners, however, can buy bulk spices up to 50 pounds. My Spice Sage applies a discount for amounts over one ounce. In addition, the company lets shoppers choose a free one-ounce spice with every order, and offers an additional four-ounce spice for a minimal order (currently $20.00). The free gifts and offers helped me to fill my spice cabinet faster.

            The My Spice Sage website is among the most cook-friendly sites I've seen, organizing spice offerings by name, type of cuisine, taste and aroma, popularity, and type of food (for matching spices to food). This feature is especially helpful to home cooks who want to create or recreate specific flavors and to season food with confidence. 

Packaged herbs and spices from "My Spice Sage"

Packaging, Shipping, and Delivery

          Here I must be honest with my readers and say that the packaging from My Spice Sage has not always been perfect. I have placed six orders with the company and two of the orders had issues: one order was missing an item and another order arrived with a damaged bag and spilled contents. Each time, the company worked quickly to resolve the problem and replace the missing or damaged spices. Shipping and delivery were never a problem as the items I ordered arrived in three or four days. 

            My Spice Sage appears to be dedicated to serving home cooks and chefs alike. The sheer number of spices and spice blends on the site make shopping fun, educational, and even entertaining (i.e. personal stories and recipes from customers). Having a source that offers economical spices helps cooks to be more creative and to have spices and flavorings at the ready for memorable meals. 

            

Green Beans: The Tolerant Vegetable

Green beans are a worldly vegetable, showing up in the cuisines of diverse cultures and tolerating a range of ingredients. The Smithsonian Magazine’s food blog, Food and Think, showed the vegetable’s versatility in an article highlighting five recipes from various cultures: Southern (American), Greek, Persian, Indian, and Chinese. Ingredients in these green-bean recipes varied from sugar and vinegar to turmeric and saffron to cumin seeds and yogurt to sherry and hot peppers. The ingredient-accommodating character of green beans inspired me recently to experiment with anchovies in my stand-by recipe for green beans, which is simply sautéed and chopped onions, garlic, celery and parsley, butter, grated ginger, and sometimes fresh tomatoes. 

A few months back, I watched a chef at my community Wegman’s market sauté anchovies as a flavor base for fresh green beans. This chef also omitted salt from the recipe to avoid an overly salty result. When I sampled the chef’s green beans, my taste buds detected nuttiness and a savory depth that lingered in my mouth.


Food Network Star Rachel Ray has touted the nutty taste of anchovies when they are sautéed in oil. I later Googled “green beans with anchovies” and netted dozens of recipes that included anchovies. I was curious, so I decided to experiment with green beans to determine for myself just how ingredient-tolerant this vegetable can be. Can I add not only anchovies, but also my stand-by ingredients plus a variety of herbs that grow in my garden? So over three weeks I bought $29.00 worth of organic green beans (next year, I'm definitely growing my own) and, I varied my ingredients three times. (Note: I refrained from including a traditional recipe here as I am attempting to show the versatility and tolerance of green beans.)

I had a fistful of fresh herbs from my kitchen garden: young parsley, oregano, and basil (not shown). 

            

                  I sauteed four anchovy fillets on medium heat in two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and gently moved the fillets around the pan with a silicone spatula. The fish dissolved in about two minutes. I had to turn the heat down slightly because of oil spattering.

            When the anchovies broke up and "melted," I added them to the raw green beans. 

           I sauteed and added more chopped onions and celery along with red and green peppers, garlic and grated ginger. 

            I added spring water to just beneath the top layer of green beans. 

                I cooked the beans on medium to medium-low for 30 minutes (adjusting to medium low after they began to boil). I like them soft without any hint of bite, but you can adjust the cooking time if you prefer your green beans to be slightly crunchy. I added the juice of 1/2 lemon, parsley, basil, and oregano. I sprinkled sea salt and white pepper to taste as beans were nearly done. 

          Variations of herbaceous ingredients that I tried include bay leaf, capers, cilantro, cumin, fennel, oregano, thyme, and even mint (not all at once, though). Soy sauce and red pepper are among my go-to ingredients for green beans as well. I like to "push the limits" and season green beans to fit the "theme" of a meal, whether it is Asian, Indian, or Southern. This tolerant and tasty vegetable is and will always be a staple in my kitchen. 

All photos in this article were taken by Alaiyo Kiasi.

Limit Mercury Intake from Fish with Fish4Health App

Fish4Health, C.R. Santerre, Ph.D. Purdue University Pregnant or nursing women or parents with children aged 2-6 can turn to the free Fish4Health iPhone app for information on best choice fish consumption to ensure lowest levels of exposure to mercury and PCBs. App users can access lists of seafood categorized by lowest to highest mercury levels. There’s also a log feature that allows users to track their intake of fish and seafood. This feature can be invaluable in determining if someone pregnant or nursing is within safe limits for mercury intake. A few recipes are thrown in as well.

No iPhone? No worries. Visit the website, www.fish4health.net, and click on your state for local fish consumption advice. There's also a downloadable wallet card with essential information, such as lists of fish to limit or avoid. I’m neither pregnant nor am I nursing, and I don’t have a young child anymore. I do, however, have a son with autism and am concerned about helping him to avoid mercury in his diet. This app is extremely helpful when I go shopping for fish or if my family and I are ordering seafood in restaurants. 

Grill Perfectly with TasteTimer App

Testing Timer for Grilled Salmon with TasteTimer App

TasteTimer Grill, Gormaya.com This 99-cents app is a recent discovery of mine and appears to be just what I need to avoid overcooking salmon. TasteTimer provides cooking times for a long list of seafood preparations: baked, fried, poached, seared, roasted, and grilled. It includes a timer for each preparation and promises perfectly grilled seafood, meats, vegetables, and even fruits.

     I tested the app's timer by grilling three pieces of salmon on the stove. TasteTimer Grill indicates that boneless salmon should be grilled for three minutes per side. I heated my grill pan and started the timer immediately after I placed all three salmon pieces in the pan. An alarm sounded after three minutes, which was my cue to flip over the salmon and reset the timer.

After three more minutes, I let the salmon rest before cutting a piece. Surprisingly, it was cooked through and more moist than salmon I've grilled in the past. I tend to overcook when I grill, so having this app (in time for Labor Day) promises to make my grilling endeavors successful. The app is available only through iTunes, but non-app users can access the company’s amazing food blog at  http://blog.gormaya.com/.

Sushipedia: Awesome App for iPhone

iStock Photo

Sushipedia, Tokiolabs, LLC Finally, an app for sushi that helps me avoid ordering Toro because it sounds cool but shocks me when it shows up in all its raw glory on the plate. With Sushipedia, I can instead order the “Godzilla Roll,” which sounds scary but contains mostly cooked ingredients. (Ok, so I’m not as adventurous about sushi as I’d like to be. I’m working on it.) This visually appealing app is free and a 99-cents “pro” version is close to being released, according to Sushipedia's website. The free version packs all the information any sushi aficionado needs, with Sushi arranged alphabetically in either English or Japanese. 

     The helpful “Attributes Legend” shows icons for cooked fish, raw fish, spicy flavors, and vegan options next to each potential menu item. Color pictures of every dish help diners to see exactly what they’ll get.  The instant visuals can be invaluable to foodies and sushi novices who want to expand their dining experiences more confidently. App users can browse all sushi listed in the app or search by name, by  ingredients, or by the previously mentioned attributes. 

     If you're craving the freshest sushi of the season, the app shows which fish is freshest at the moment. Finally, if you’re adventurous, just click on the "feeling lucky" button to get a suggestion to try, if you dare.  Perhaps the best feature of Sushipedia is its volume of information about sushi. The descriptions, facts, and history of sushi is an education in the “palm of your hand.” Sushipedia is only available for iPhone, iPad,  and  iTouch at this point but according to one of their Tweets, Tokiolabs has been working on developing a website with Sushipedia content. You can see features of the app at www.sushipedia.org.  


This is the third of five reviews this week: 5 Days, 5 Great Apps for Seafood Lovers (A Review Series). 

5 Days, 5 Great Phone Apps for Seafood Lovers (A Series of Reviews)

Courtesy of iStock Photo

Most of us don't reach for a rod and reel when we want fish for dinner. We go to the supermarket and choose what looks fresh or we select convenient, ready-to-cook frozen fish. Often, there is little information about how the fish we're buying was caught or whether it may contain traces of mercury or other substances. We wouldn't fish in waters known to contain contaminated fish, so too should we take every precaution to buy seafood that's fresh and safest to eat. This is the second day of my 5-day review of helpful phone apps for seafood lovers. Each day this week I am reviewing an app and corresponding websites that provide invaluable information for seafood consumers. 

Day 2: Fish Phone, Blue Ocean Institute—This free phone app has a clean look and a simple fish key with color coding to indicate varying levels of seafood abundance, fishing and farming practices, and environmental impacts. This app helps me to think about fish in terms of toxicity levels through the smaller-is-safer rule. Big, higher-on-the-food-chain fish contain more mercury. Bottom-feeding fish are exposed to more PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), according to the app’s page on health. A red flag on top of a fish key signals seafood found to contain mercury or PCBs. This app is also useful for planning meals.  There are recipes and wine parings suggested for some seafood listed. Few apps of this type offer such diverse features. 


Fish Phone is available on iTunes for iPhone users, but other cell phone users can text “Fish” and the name of a specific fish or other seafood to 30644 to receive a fairly instant response with detailed information about the fish or seafood in question. When I sent a text to 30644 with the words "fish, eel" it took 20 seconds to receive information about the abundance, mercury and PCB levels, and farming practices regarding the American Eel. The Blue Ocean Institute also offers a downloadable seafood guide.

The widget below doesn't look like the app, but you can evaluate the information that Fish Phone provides by typing in the search box. 

5 Days, 5 Great Phone Apps for Seafood Lovers (A Series of Reviews)

Photo Courtesy of Presentation Pro

When you concentrate your flesh-eating on seafood, as I do, you tend to be more practiced than the omnivore at evaluating, selecting, and cooking fish, mollusks, and crustaceans that are freshest, healthiest, and most sustainable. You neither have to download apps nor own a smartphone to select excellent seafood, but having a few apps makes the task easier. I’m much more confident at supermarkets and at restaurants when I can pop out my cell phone and quickly learn which fish are mercury and PCB free or are on the endangered list. I've found five apps and corresponding websites that will help you to become a seafood procuring expert. For the next five days, I'll review one of these apps and embed widgets and/or links to help you evaluate each.


     Day 1: Seafood Watch, Monterey Bay Aquarium—I carried the Seafood Watch pamphlet in my purse for months before buying my iPhone and downloading the app. The Seafood Watch app is free, and although the phone apps are available only for iPhone and Android, you don’t have to have a Smartphone to get the information. You can download PDF versions of the pocket guides based on your location and even order quantities of pocket guides at no cost. When shopping for seafood or eating in a sushi restaurant, I’ve turned to this guide to quickly determine which seafood is “Best Choice,” (plentiful, sustainable) a “Good Alternative,” (environmental impacts being evaluated) and which seafood to “Avoid” (fishing or farm practices harmful to the environment and to habitats). Each category described above is coded green, yellow, and red respectively.


     Type the name of a type of seafood or sushi (i.e. salmon) and you’ll get specific recommendations in each category (usually). This confused me until I realized that “Best Choice” salmon are generally caught wild in Alaska, “Good Alternative” salmon is generally caught wild in Washington and Oregon “north of Cape..” and the salmon to avoid is farmed in the Atlantic ocean.  A glossary is included that explains such terms as “bottom trawling,” “by catch,” and “hook and lining.” It’s necessary, I think, to refer to the glossary (unless you’re a seafaring type) to use the app effectively. The app is available on iTunes and on Android Market. The Seafood Watch widget below this post looks exactly like the app, and you can try it now. 

I welcome your comments about this app. Do you own it? What are your thoughts about it? Check back tomorrow for the next review in this series.

Looking for My Sense of Food Adventure

Microsoft Office Images

With a little more than a week left before school starts again, I hear from Pam, a fellow teacher and pescetarian. We had promised to have lunch together before the summer waned, and Pam kept her promise to call. I realize that my closest friends now are those who are open-minded and somewhat adventurous about food (I’m still finding my sense of food adventure, so I can judge others only so harshly). Among my friends are vegetarians, pescetarians, and raw-foodists, but many are omnivores. All are conscientious about what they eat. 

I pre-selected a restaurant from my wish list: Saigon Noodle House in Crofton, Maryland, a bedroom community equidistant (25 miles) from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The votes and reviews on Urbanspoon indicated an appetizing, exotic experience. I’ve been to few Vietnamese restaurants and looked forward to trying their Pho. 

Upon arriving at the restaurant, I felt hesitant to leave the car and hoped I wasn’t transmitting my doubts to Pam, who was sitting expectantly in the passenger seat. Saigon Noodle House sits between a hardware store and a disorganized thrift shop that was either having a sidewalk sale or was vomiting excess donations. The stores were all part of an aging, drive-up shopping center---the kind that often includes a 7-11, but this one didn’t. “So, you still want to go in?” I asked Pam. She answered positively and enthusiastically, and I was buoyed by her response. "Ok," I thought, "so whatever happens, she agreed to it."

We paused before going in to analyze the menu (yes, analyze—we’re English teachers). The first thing we noticed about the menu was that it’s extensive. We saw that there was a lunch menu, but it was for Monday-Friday diners and we were there on a Saturday. The average entrée for our lunch would be $12.95. We were already out of the car and I reminded myself that I’m working on being adventurous about new restaurants. We opened the doors and our fears were calmed instantly by the neat, clean dining room and the welcoming, homey mood. An aging gentleman approached us with a genuine smile, which creased his face like a paper fan. He welcomed us and handed us the laminated, 10-page menu. The table was outfitted with Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce and other condiments, chopsticks, and scads of napkins. 

Photographed by A. Kiasi

We ordered the fried squid and vegetarian spring rolls for our appetizers. The fried squid was a satisfying surprise with its light, crispy coating, like air-popped corn, surrounding the meaty nuggets of squid. 

Photographed by A. Kiasi

The spring rolls included short rice noodles and chunks of lightly fried tofu. The accompanying peanut dipping sauce added a umami taste to the mild-flavored rolls. 

Photographed by A. Kiasi

We both ordered the clay pot shrimp for our entrees. A clay pot dish sounded so comforting to us that we couldn't resist trying it.

Instead of arriving in clay pots, the entrees showed up in single-serving cooking pots that had come straight from the oven to our table. The shrimp was tender and tasty, but the overall dish, which included broccoli, zig-zag-carrots, and snow peas, was mostly indistinguishable from shrimp stir-fry from a typical Chinese restaurant. 

All around us, customers were being served steaming bowls of Pho, and I regretted not ordering one for myself. Oh well, next time—and there will be a next time.  Pam and I promised that once school starts, we’ll meet for lunch at the end of each quarter—after grades are submitted. If it were anyone else making this promise, I'd be skeptical, but it's Pam promising, and I know I have at least four confirmed lunch dates with her in the next nine months. 

I would love to hear how you've developed your sense of food adventure or, if you're like me and still pursuing your foodie fearlessness, please comment!

I’ll Show You My Pescetarian Pantry If You'll Show Me Yours

Even if you’re not a professed pescetarian, you likely have in your pantry a can or two of tuna, right? You’ve got rice, dried or canned beans, some form of pasta, no doubt? Perhaps you have canned tomatoes from the San Marzano region of Italy? (I’m not a food snob. Those are simply the best tomatoes to emerge from a can.) If you’re a fellow Southerner, you’ve got grits stashed somewhere in the pantry, because nothing is more versatile with grits than seafood (i.e. shrimp, fish—with or without heads and tails—oysters, etc.)

During my 30 years as a vegetarian and pescetarian, I’ve learned that keeping my pantry supplied with particular staples makes a fast, nutritious weekday meal possible. Keeping a pantry stocked is nothing new, but for those of us who eat differently, it can mean the difference between maintaining a culinary lifestyle or abandoning it. Here are some of my go-to pantry foods:

• Quick-cooking Beans & Legumes: Lentils, split peas, black-eye peas, mung beans, and adzuki beans can cook without pre-soaking and can be done in an hour or less. Lentils, in particular, are easy to cook since they make their own “gravy” right in the pot.

Salmon Burgers: In the cold pantry, there are quick-cooking salmon burgers that go right from freezer to sizzling pan in seconds. The product pictured is from an organic food store that sells only sustainable seafood products. If you can’t locate a sustainable source for salmon burgers, or you’re just not ready to commit to buying sustainable seafood, buy widely available salmon burgers instead.

Flavorful Underpinnings: Before I discovered staples such as packaged vegetable broth, roasted peppers in a jar, and dried Shitake mushrooms, we ate a lot of tofu, beans and brown rice on weeknights. Ten years ago, my son grew to dislike rice so intensely he stopped eating it and still avoids it. His rice aversion helped me to add polenta, quinoa, and other whole grains to my pantry. Now, I vary weeknight dinners, like my outfits, and rarely show up at the table with the same dish. The broth is the base for veggie soups and stews, the coconut milk is the vehicle for rich-tasting curries, and the roasted peppers brighten pasta and stir-fry dishes. Canned and dried chipotle peppers infuse vegetarian sauces with sultry savoriness and heat. Mushrooms, with their fleshy, lusty texture, add complex flavor to meatless dishes. Naturally, aromatics such as onion, garlic, and shallots are ever-present in the pantry.

Pre-cleaned, Sustainable Shellfish: I’ve only recently found eco-friendly and sustainable shellfish close by. In fact, I often forget their availability in my cold pantry because roughly 80 percent of our diet is vegetarian. Having headless, cleaned, shell-on shrimp in the house makes stir-fries a weekday option.

Cheese: We don’t eat cheese much, but I keep Parmigiano Reggiano around for grating over pasta.

Here is a quick meal that I created this week with items from pantry and fridge:

Monday Meatless Rigatoni

Ingredients

16 oz. Rigatoni pasta
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 whole roasted red pepper, roughly chopped
2 medium zucchini, roughly chopped
6 ounces grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
½ teaspoon sweet, smoked paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Directions:

• Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil while pasta is boiling. (Use at least a 10-inch fry pan to accommodate the cooked pasta.)

• Add zucchini to sauté mixture and stir, allowing the zucchini to cook for 2 minutes.

• Stir in chopped red peppers with vegetables

• Drain pasta, save1/2 cup of pasta water and stir into vegetables 

• Add ¼ of pasta to sautéed vegetables; cover pasta with one ounce of the grated Parmigianino Reggiano and stir to distribute cheese

• Repeat until all pasta and cheese has been added to the pan

• Season with salt and pepper to taste, add paprika and stir

• Serve hot, adding a dusting of additional cheese to each plate.

Leave a comment and let me know what's in your pantry!