Grateful for Salt and Spices

I am grateful for salt and spices. I am grateful for the opportunity to experience deliciousness, so often I may take the experience for granted. My pantry is the culmination of undoubtable history, of the spice wars, markets, roads and routes, exploits, etc. For thousands of years, my species has toiled in the fields, on the road, and in the sea to deliver flavor to food. My salt grinder may nonchalantly stand on my counter, but I know the gravity of its history. I know of the people exploited to dig and transport salt from the mines. I know of the men who killed for their empires in return for salt. The pepper, ginger, garlic, etc. which I call cooking essentials represent the beauties and horrors of humanity, the sheer ingenuity to raise a crop yield, to build supply chains, and yet the brutality to coerce labor or prioritize a market over people. Nevertheless, I am the beneficiary of all this history, the inheritor of the best and worst parts of the past. Whether deserved or not, I have at my fingertips the opportunity to experience deliciousness daily. But there is more. These are not just spices. These are cultures, stories of a people’s history and their ways of life. I will appreciate this deliciousness. To not would seem disrespectful.

I am grateful for salt, spices and the opportunity to experience delicious food.