Wood-fired!

Wimbledon garlic

There’s something very sweet about baby garlic picked fresh from the garden.

The purple and green always reminds me of Wimbledon (even though we don’t harvest in June).

Add comment October 31st, 2008

Organised Spice

Melissa from The Traveler’s Lunchbox has posted a provocative article on the age-old question of how to store your spices. You only need to read a few of the comments (68 before I had my say) to realise how important this topic is to many people.

Regular readers will understand how close to my heart this subject is. As both a wanton¹ foodie and cook and a woodworker who specialises in cabinets and containers, there aren’t many things I am more passionate about.

It is easy (and uninteresting) to produce a stylish looking way of storing a few spices but as Melissa points out such designs rarely accommodate the practical requirements of the even-slightly serious cook.

First up is the number of spices. The subject of my Combined Passions post is a box containing 50 spices (more pictures here). While I may have cribbed a bit to get to 50, that is because I only used whole spices (with the single exception of Ras el Hanout). If you add in ground spices and spice mixes the number can grow to well beyond 50. Any storage solution must accommodate at least this number.

Second is volume. Dinky little jars and boxes might look good in kitchen design magazines but real cooks buy many spices in large bags. (The difference in freshness and price between supermarket jars and bags of spices from ethnically-specialised food shops is staggering.) Being able to fit 10 black cardamon pods into your spice container is no good if you use more than this quantity each week.

Third is variation. Some spices you have a small amount of - saffron for example. Some spices - such as black limes or dried mango - take up lots of room. Some spices you use a little of and some a lot. Your storage solution should efficiently deal with this variation.

Then there is the freshness issue. Many solutions, including my own wooden cabinets, don’t provide the air-tight seal that is essential to maintaining fresh spices.

There are other considerations such as light, accessibility and of course I don’t mean to totally dismiss style!

So having laid out some requirements you might imagine I am about to give you a solution. Well no I’m not. I haven’t sorted it out myself yet. Melissa’s solution might work for you - or one of the other systems decsribed in the comments to her post. My current solution is more prosaic.

I’m using a few different approaches (I won’t call them solutions). I have a spice cabinet that I made a long time ago (before I had many clues about woodwork) that is based on the 18thC Pennsylvania spice boxes. This is my most enjoyable storage. It’s still a thrill to go to the cabinet, take a drawer over to my pot and scoop out a teaspoon or two of the required spice. This approach copes with varying quantities quite well but fails on keeping the spices fresh. I use it for spices that have their own custom containers such as vanilla pods and saffron threads (a gorgeous tin decorated in Islamic patterns brought back for me from Tehran by a friend). Also for high-turnover spices like cumin that don’t get time to go stale, and whole spices like star anise that tend to hold their flavour.

My main storage though is practical but lacking in romance. I have several plastic storage containers about the size of shoe-boxes. Each of these holds up to a dozen spices in their original plastic bags. The bags stand upright across the width of the container. As they are usually organised by size or history, I used to have to search through each container to find the spice I need. Even I realised that this was sub-optimal so I invested in a Dymo labeller and now only have to scan the ends of the containers to narrow my search. Perhaps I secretly enjoy the bit of hunting and gathering in the process.

Of course there are also the dinky jars on the window sill (the worst place to store spices) - about 40 from a quick count. And then there are all the liquids such as rose and orange water, 5 varieties of soy, oils, vinegars and mustards - I better stop before getting to the pantry cupboard!

It is still a goal in my life to design a spice storage solution that satisfies all these requirements and is sexy to boot. But since I have a small kitchen that could do with many other improvements it may be some time yet. I console myself that you need to keep some goals unfulfilled² so there is something to think about in the shower each morning.

Like Melissa I would love to hear about your solutions.

1. or is that wonton! [↩]
2. my wife laughs out loud at this point [↩]

4 comments October 26th, 2008

Why the chair?

What makes the chair the pre-eminent object in furniture design?

Red Blue Chair c. 1923 by Gerrit Rietveld.

The pinnacle of the great art disciplines, it seems to me, is always where the medium interacts with the human form. Architecture is judged in its relation to human scale and how it interacts with patterns of human behaviour.


The human figure has always been the zenith of drawing, painting and sculpture.

Textiles have their ultimate form when draped on the human body. Ceramics are born of human utility.

So with the chair. Other furniture such as tables, desks and beds are informed by human dimensions but are ultimately simple planes. The chair (with its derivatives like the stool and bench) is the only object that is so intimately intertwined with the human body.

This places demands on the design that don’t exist with other furniture. The relationship is not limited to comfort and good posture. The designer may intend to convey many other feelings and impressions. The chair may be designed to keep the occupant alert or relaxed, to enhance or diminish their status, to be welcoming or dismissive, etc.

In any of these cases however it is necessary to design in the context of understanding the human form. Designing a new chair always requires a full scale (and sturdy) mock-up. There’s no other way to be certain that the finished object will meet the ergonomic goals. Of course the human form varies greatly. When making chairs for a client, the mock-up allows the designer to test their chair against the body of the user. Care must be taken here because what seems to work well on first taking a seat may not be comfortable after sitting for an hour or so.

My first step in designing my ‘Alumni’ chair will be to take some initial dimensions (based on experience and preference) and make a mock-up that will allow me to vary seat height and angle, and the placement and shape of the back and arm rests.

I’ll show some progress towards this in the next chair post.

3 comments October 9th, 2008