I remember reading an article about Kylie Kwong (I think it was), with a question like ‘5 things you can’t live without in the kitchen’ and she mentioned that she files her spices in an old recipe box, under the alphabetised tabs … this stuck in my mind as a great idea.

While I have a spice rack, I also have 50 million open packets of spice in my cupboard.

I shared this idea with my sister Merryn a while back, who took it on board to bring order to her spice cupboard, and although she didn’t have a recipe box, she had some Ikea cardboard boxes that were quite nifty for this project.  She has found that it works, however, she has also commented that there are a LOT of spices filed under C … cinnamon, cardamon, coriander, cayenne pepper, chilli, curry powder … when you think about it the list really does go on.

The other week I purchased a lovely Velveeta cheese food* box at the Hamilton tip.  When I brought it home I thought hard about how to use it – in my small inner city house it is no good owning something if it isn’t useful.

In the end I washed it, waxed the outside of it and put all my spices in it (alphabetised of course).  I have A-M on one side, N-Z on the other.  Merryn is right, there are a lot of packets under C.

It is working well.

*Velveeta (cheese food), according to Wikipedia, is the brand name of a processed cheese product having a taste that is identified as a type of American cheese, but with a softer and smoother texture than cheese. As a result, when melted/heated, Velveeta maintains a fully integrated, even, clump-free liquid texture — the opposite of what results when cheese is melted or cooked at high heat.  Sounds delicious?