triviageek

Once upon a time ... no let me preface this by saying I collect recipes and when I do actually cook, I tend to lose weight. Hehe. Yeah, really. Maybe I'm just a bad cook?

Anyway, I collect recipes, mostly in the form of recipe books. And once upon a time I got sick and tired of never having the right spices called for, by the particular recipe I was attempting.

You see when I first moved out of my parents home and into an apartment shared with roommates, I invested in only 3 spices -- Garlic salt, Italian seasoning, and Pumpkin pie spice. Those three worked just fine for years! The latter two are blends of spices often used in combination and of course garlic salt goes well with almost everything. :)

Eventually the day came when I got tired of never having the right spice for a recipe. So feeling at the time rather flush with money, I headed for the supermarket and bought one of every spice they had. In fact, as I recall I hit about 3 different supermarkets, since each carried only some of the various forms (whole versus ground, for example) of the spices. I wound up, after spending about $70. at the time (it would be at least double that now), with a rather large collection and finally I had everything. Or so I thought.

It turns out some of my recipe books were vegetarian ones and THEY often asked for a couple of even more exotic ones -- Spike and Asafoetida. They were not to be found in any local supermarket. I eventually resorted to a health food/herb shop which did have them in stock. Finally my collection was complete. Whichever spice the recipe demanded, I had it!

Somewhere along the way I became something of an expert - if not on the spices themselves, at least an expert on which spices supermarkets normally supply.

So you can imagine my surprise when another blogger began posting recipes calling for Poison Sumac. I mean can you imagine what would happen to your 'innards reacting to that substance? You might as well try eating poison ivy!   NOT!!!!   Don't do it. I think a rather quick but painful death would result.

Riverbend's politics are dubious at best. She said her age is 24 so she's never lived under any government except Saddam Hussain's tyranny. For her that situation must seem normal and she certainly seems to hate the Americans and the Iraq provisional government. Has she ever had a kind or appreciative word to say in her blog about the current efforts in her country?

Now she's started a second blog with recipes. Hey I collect recipes, so I began reading it. Then she started listing Sumac as an ingredient? I know Sumac is NOT AVAILABLE in USA supermarkets!

Please, people, don't try to duplicate her recipes with "locally available ingredients"! Sumac growing in the USA is poisonous. In her part of the world it might be a customary ingredient, but here it's definitely not, for good reason. Either try to find the "spice" she's mentioning, or substitute powdered lemon rind or lemon juice. The life you save could be your own!