Thursday, February 21, 2008

Pass the nutmeg

You know how you have that one recipe that calls for some semi-obscure ingredient that you never remember you already own so you always buy more? Like ground cardamom or marjoram or whatever? Well my ingredient is ground nutmeg and I pretty much only use it in my pumpkin-cream cheese roll that I make for Thanksgiving. I always mean to remember I have some for next year, but of course I always forget so I have about 8 damn bottles of the stuff, all of which I couldn't throw out when we moved so I packed them up right next to the 7-year-old bottle of fennel seeds, the McCormick tin of whole cloves that my beloved grandmother gave me to me when she moved to a retirement community (they must be at least 15 years old, since she's been In Heaven with Jesus for 12 years - but there is no way I can toss them), and the jar of celery seed that isn't even open. Waste not, want not right? So every thing I've made recently has gotten a little dash of nutmeg on the way into the oven, pot, microwave. However, I learned the hard way (is there any other?) that you can't mix it with your kids' cinnamon-sugar and try to pass it off as "spice toast." It also doesn't blend well with the aggressively pre-packaged taste of Eggos, our go-to breakfast on the mornings that we are running behind and need something that can be consumed quickly.

If you have any good recipes calling for scads of ground nutmeg, please send 'em my way. And someone please remind me next Fall that I DO NOT NEED any more.

3 comments:

Cindy said...

I use some in apple pie, and I have a polenta recipe that calls for a little. And it toss it in my hot buttered rum mix. And then there's always eggnog. Or you can just use it to sniff once in a while just because it smells so nice.

SteamyKitchen said...

Trish - make some cinnamon buns with nutmeg added! Ok, unhealthy with loads of butter, but hey, it's heavenly. I've got that No Knead Cinnamon Buns recipe up on the blog.

xo, jaden

Anonymous said...

I put a dash in my alfredo sauce.

Stacey