Gift giving - make it personal

For my birthday this summer I was given a basket of grocery goodies. Fun and exotic spices you do not find on the shelves of the ordinary grocery store or even items that I think to put in my shopping cart.

Nowadays birthday-present shopping is not easy.

People of today are usually able to buy what they want, when they want it and it leaves the present-buyer asking the question "what the **** can I get them??".

My solution is to turn to personal gifts.

Now to the ordinary person - getting a bunch of packaged spices and herbs is not the idea of a fantastic gift.

But this gift was tailored to me!!

I enjoy cooking and experimenting with different ingredients. Occasionally I read recipe books and now I have the challenge (a good one) of introducing new flavours to future dishes.

Here is what was in the birthday basket of grocery goodies:

1. Mathie: also known as Fenugreek is used in pickles, curry powders and pastes. 
2. Mix Massala: is a combination of dried spices. Mine is a mix of Coriander seed, cumin seed, mathie, Souphe (not sure what that is), black cumin, mustard seed, and other spices. 
3. Geera (whole cumin): Apparently cumin is the second most popular spice in the world after black pepper - who would have thought? Cumin in either its whole or ground form is used in many different cuisines around the world.
4. Red Cooking Peppers: the bag says that it is a selection of dried chili peppers - add a little spice to my cooking.
5. Saffron powder (tumeric): Tumeric comes from the ginger family and is a spice commonly used in curries and other South Asian Middle Eastern cuisine.
6. Massori Dhal: also known as Dal is a preparation of pulses (dried lentils, peas or beans) which have been striped of their outer hulls and split. Massori is red lentils.  
7. Whole Cardamon: also a member of the ginger family and also known as Cardamom. There are two types and this one photographed is Elettaria (Elichie). It is used in Indian cuisine - they even use it to flavour coffee and teas.
8. Raw Geera: same as number 3 just ground into a fine powder.
9. Tamarind: is used in desserts and apparently is found in Worcestershire sauce and HP sauce. 
10. Mangril (black cumin): there are two types of seeds that come from different plants and are both given the name black cumin - mine is Nigella (or Nangilla as my packet says) and is more common in the West.

All the above information was taken from Wikipedia. I hope to start cooking something soon. Mostly it will be a big pot of curry - mmm mmm good!!

So the moral of the story: give the gift some thought and go with something personal :)