PHILOSOPHY
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Cooking is ‘being human’. No other animal on the planet collects, combines, creates, and chemically alters their nourishment. Cooking is far more than simply adding fire, as some anthropologists suggest. Even before the advent of primitive barbecuing, raw foods were 'combined to enhance flavor' and entice others to actually consume less desirable foods. Hence, ‘Herbs and Spice.’
We Spice Road Designers are cooks and chefs and Grandmas and eaters. . . with various backgrounds . . . who genuinely believe that variety is the spice of life!
We believe that well-designed spice and herb blends must be versatile. When regional and indigenous flavors are combined precisely and skillfully, they can be used for animal-based and plant-based food, across many methods of cooking and hundreds of combinations.
We also focus on teaching; free teaching. Our YouTube channel @tastetheworldblends has classes and courses with a focus on food science and solid food production techniques. We know if you understand even a little more about ‘how the chemistry and biology and sociology’ of foods work . . it will change and enhance your experience of ‘consuming calories and promoting the good life’.
METHODOLOGY
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Spice Road Designs are founded on the following principles:
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Food should be pleasurable. The prevailing notion that ‘food is fuel’ is shallow and destructive. (And downright boring.)
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Recipes are fallible. What we eat is enhanced by knowing solid, science-based, production methods. With science we can answer age-old issues like, “Why when I use Aunt Gertrude’s famous biscuit recipe, all I get are rocks!”
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Common food can become unique and exotic. Everyday meats and local vegetables are prepared all over the Earth. But they don’t taste the same. Herbs and spices are the difference.
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Time and money should not be squandered. You do not need to purchase or measure the 20 ingredients required to make international delights.
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Experiencing other cultures enriches our own. The personality of kitchens around the world are defined by the ‘pinch of this and a dash of that.’ It is the subtleties that change boredom to exhilaration.
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Better food makes better people. Kitchen time spent with your son will bind and teach you about cooking and so much more. The BBQ with aunts and uncles is precious. Gilligan's Island on the couch is not.
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Capitalism is okay, greed is not. Providing you with quality and value is the right thing to do. We know we can earn a living without overloading cheap ingredients, using inferior products, or charging for stupid things like handling and guarantees. We win when you win . . . that is fair trade.
SOCIOLOGY
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Betty Crocker and Uncle Ben did the world no favors. For millennia, cultures have been held together by the foods and flavors of the region. Combinations of herb and spice were more than shared knowledge, it became a family’s heritage. Even the place and methods of serving and enjoying foods became ritual, embedded into village and family life. Sitting on the ground and eating with sticks could have been ‘proper etiquette’.
With progress, like the advent of using camels, foods and flavors were no longer limited to what you could find in your backyard. The wide availability of exotic herbs and spices was integrated into local cuisines. Culture and lifestyles were changed. Heirloom recipes became complex and exciting. Holidays and vacations were built around specific foods and combinations of foods. Spices and herbs became a major player in the fabric of nationality and identity.
But box mixes and TV trays are dissolving heritage and worse, murdering every benefit of the ‘Family Table’. Not only do we sacrifice taste, but we lose the 15 minutes when a family can talk, and plan and laugh together. We bemoan the degradation of our children because of electronic devices and social media . . . but we are throwing away the few opportunities where we can really connect.
Drive-thru business models are fast, but the sacrifice is huge. Our taste buds, our nutritional requirements, our waistlines, and our ‘sit-down-at-last’ times are flushed away.
The social science of food should not be ignored. And Spice Road Designers are keenly aware of the need to gather and blend and preserve the ‘cultural and colloquial’ flavor combinations that have made us uniquely human.
