Better than Air Freshener

Wow, I'm a terrible blogger--nearly 2 weeks since my last post! But that's okay. Midterms may have temporarily stopped me, but I'm going to get going again. Huzzah! I haven't made anything particularly cool recently, so I won't be sharing a recipe, just something neat I learned from my awesome parents.

A little while ago, my room was smelling really weird. I think something went bad in the fridge (I just threw out a bunch of stuff in the hopes that one of them was the culprit), but I'm not sure. I really hated that my room smelled funky, so I decided to remedy this situation--without using an air freshener. All I did was throw some water, cinnamon, clove, a bay leaf, and some orange peel into my rice cooker (which I haven't named yet! I can't seem to settle on something that'll stick), and set it to cook. Whenever it came close to boiling over, I just set it to "Keep Warm" for a little while.

My room ended up smelling really nice in a relatively brief amount of time! Yay! The cool thing is that a rice cooker is definitely not necessary--a hot pot would work just as well. All you need is to have the spices available and keep an eye on whatever appliance is being used. It probably would have worked better to use a cinnamon stick instead of ground cinnamon, and some vanilla extract for extra goodness, but I have little use for these, so I haven't purchased them.

Anyway, I'm having a lovely time taking a break from cooking for myself in a cramped dorm room! I love spring break.

(P.S. Even though I sound like one of those super cool crazy partiers who LOVE being social and NEVER spend their weekend nights doing laundry and having Big Bang Theory marathons, I'm not actually partying like these people this spring break.)

Spices, the Variety of Life

Yesterday, I purchased several spices at EarthFare. Normally, I'd wait until my next Wal-Mart visit (which won't be anytime soon), but they were selling 77g bottles for ~$1.25, so I went ahead and purchased some. The way I see it, I'll be using these through grad school anyway, so I may as well buy them now. I don't have space on my shelves for spices (too many books and hair products), so I've taken to lining spices and other condiments up on my windowsill. So far, I have:

• Extra virgin olive oil
  
• Sugar
  
• Salt
  
• Ground Black Pepper
  
• Ground Cinnamon
  
• Lemon juice
  
• Ghee
  
• Decaf instant coffee (cafe con leche!)
  
• Ground clove
  
• Nutmeg
  
• Oregano
  
• Mrs. Dash (regular and garlic blends)
  
• Bay leaves
  
• Parsley
  
• Basil
  
• Ground ginger
  
• Cayenne pepper
  
• Rosemary
  

The last six ones are brand new.

I tried to avoid purchasing these for as long as possible—I figured Mrs. Dash would work pretty well for anything that wouldn't be fine with just salt or garlic. But then I kept running into neat recipes that required various basic spices, especially bay, parsley, and basil. I realized that if I want to make a lot of good meals, I should go ahead and just get these. If anything, they'll last me well into grad school, no?

Anyway, I'm very excited about these! I just made some vegetable broth that tasted quite good, and allowed me to finally finish off the few very depressing celery stalks in my fridge that were no longer fit to be eaten raw. I am so excited—there are many recipes I can't wait to try!