Herbal spice apothecary with Bevin Clare

Spice apothecary with Bevin Clare
Bevin: I love to travel and I love spices and food and I'm always surprised in the United States where when you go to places that are filled with food, it smells like nothing. And yet you go the rest of the world, you go to markets and it's so sensory. I mean, sometimes there's a little smell of something rotting, but there's always like, Spices and animals and vegetables and flowers and, it's very alive. And I think we've done the same thing to our herbal medicines.
It's often, encapsulated, if it's even slightly sensory, it might be tinctures, but most of it's still capsules and you don't get the real experience of it. And it's one of the beauties of herbal medicine. So I absolutely love spices in that way.
Lana: You're listening to Plant Love Radio episode number 63.
Hello friends. How are you?
What is one of the fastest ways to introduce herbal medicine into your life? In my opinion, it is through the use of spices in your everyday diet. Today I invited a friend of mine, Bevin Clare to join me for this conversation. Bevin just published a new book, Spice apothecary: Blending and using common spices for everyday health." And I'm super excited to dig deeper into this topic.
Bevin is a clinical herbalist nutritionist plant lover, and a professor at the Maryland university of integrative health. As an herbalist, an educator Bevin brings herbs into the lives of many students, clients and practitioners with her national and international presentations.
She holds a master's of science degree in infectious disease from the London school of hygiene and tropical medicine, and has studied herbal medicine around the world blending her knowledge of traditional uses of plants was modern science and contemporary healthcare strategies. Bevin is a board member of the United plan saviors, a group working to protect at risk medicinal plants in North America. And she's a current president of the American Herbalist Guild, where she works to promote clinical herbalism, accessibility, and professionalism.
In today's conversation, we will look at why spices are a perfect medicine; how and why Bevin selected 19 specific spices for her new book and what are the best ways to incorporate spices into your life.
Bevin's publisher is kindly supporting today's episode with a giveaway of the new book. And I will talk about this a little bit later on. For all the resources mentioned in today's episode, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/63. Enjoy.
Good morning, Bevin. How are you doing?
Bevin: Good morning, Lana. I'm well, thank you for having me.
Lana: I am so excited to chat with you. We've met, about 15 years ago, maybe a little bit more. And you've been my inspiration in the world of herbal medicine. Our audience could listen to our very first interview for this podcast that was recorded a few years ago. And you were talking about herbal medicine and how it is a lot like cooking.
Today we are changing the topic slightly, but there is still a huge connection to this, right?
Bevin: Yes
Finding herbal medicine path
Lana: You're celebrating your new book Spice Apothecary blending and using common spaces for everyday health. And before we talk about spices, I wanted to ask you to share a little bit about how you decided to become an herbalist. When was the first time it became clear that herbal medicine is your path?
Bevin: Wow. It's such a hard question to answer, because I think like a lot of things, there's a lot of different little pieces that come together. but I always loved plants as a child and spent my time out in the woods, learning about plants, even though I didn't really have any teachers per se, but I even remember clearly the plants now that I saw as a child and I know their names now, but I didn't then.
So I would just call them one thing or another. And so I grew up with that interest. And when I was in my teen years, I experimented with plants in all sorts of different ways as teens do. But for me, when I realized the impact that plants would have on my body for fun it also brought on this, this recognition that plants and people have these interesting ways of communicating and interfacing. If this one plant can do this, then what about all the other possibilities?
And so it really expanded that for me. so I started dabbling with herbal medicine and learning a little bit about it and did Rosemary Gladstar his correspondence course, like a lot of us do. And, and then I went to Southeast Asia for a couple of years and I ended up being in situations where I got to see what herbal medicine can do in a primary care infectious disease situation when there isn't [00:06:00] hospital or medical care available, which is unusual because of course, herbal medicine is done as an integration into a medical system that exists. So you don't use it in places where somebody needs medical care. In those situations that wasn't an option and places like Myanmar and Cambodia and so on.
So I really get to see what our medicine was capable of. And, and that sent me on that more kind of academic path after that.
Why spices are perfect medicine
Lana: Several years ago you were approached by Storey, the publisher of your new book. How did you decide on the topic? Where did your desire to talk about spices come from?
Bevin: There's a whole number of different things that intersect with spices for me. So one of the pieces is the desire for herbal medicine to be a sensory experience. And it's a little bit like food. I mean, I love to travel and I love spices and food and I'm always surprised in the United States where when you go to places that are filled with food, it smells like nothing. And yet you go the rest of the world, you go to markets and it's so sensory. I mean, sometimes there's a little smell of something rotting, but there's always like, Spices and animals and vegetables and flowers and, it's very alive. And I think we've done the same thing to our herbal medicines.
It's often, encapsulated, if it's even slightly sensory, it might be tinctures, but most of it's still capsules and you don't get the real experience of it. And it's one of the beauties of herbal medicine. So I absolutely love spices in that way. I also realized there's such serious sustainability issues with medicinal plants and cost issues too.
So the pandemic has brought out a lot of this is that every time somebody says, Oh, you know, elderberries good for this. That happened at the beginning. All of a sudden the elderberries completely sold out everywhere. And that's not exactly a rare, uncommon, difficult to grow plant. I mean, elder is just really common, so [00:08:00] it doesn't really matter what it is.
It's just, we don't have the supply chain for it and the cost is high and it isn't particularly accessible. All common spices are cultivated on huge scales. and I think the last thing came from, at the university where I work we often will talk with primary care providers about what we do. And a lot of primary care providers are nervous about herbal medicine because of concerns around safety and a lot of misconceptions too, but, but these safety concerns that there isn't adequate data to really be using them. But with spices, There is, you know, we have so much data around their use and it is a little tricky and slippery because some spices are much less safe technically than a lot of the herbal medicines that we use, but we won't talk about that. so it was all of those different things together that really brought me to, to want to work on something with spices.
Lana: Right. And when you're talking about them being a little less safe, very often, it's the question of the dose, right?
Bevin: Yeah. Something like parsley, you know, I mean, if you're pregnant, you should only have so much or yeah, exactly.
History of spice trade
Lana: Awesome. In your book, you said that, spices are a perfect medicine. So it really resonated with me. As you know, I teach classes on the topic of herbal medicine for pharmacy students. And of course, the discussion of spices always sneaks into this.
And I love talking to my students about the spice trade. So would you be able to briefly share with our listeners, how did these amazing substances begin to travel around the world? What were some of the hubs of spice trade and how it affected the geography and migration in general?
Bevin: Yeah, isn't that a fascinating part of this because spices were one of the most valuable things at one point it's hard to imagine when we have cinnamon and vanilla and things like that readily available, but these were not things that people could get easily. So it became a very interesting aspect of economics and also migration.
because many of the spices that we use most commonly come from Southeast Asia and Southern Asia, India, and that area. So they needed to get to Europe and so they would travel through the middle East and that's one of the reasons why the Middle Eastern traders became incredibly wealthy.
It was a spice trade and what's fascinating to me is it became so expensive that European traders could actually, you know, take their own boats or their own caravans and go to directly there to get them. But the traders created such story that it seemed impossible to be able to find these things or to harvest them that they were so difficult and dangerous to source where, you know, in reality cinnamon is just a tree bark, but they didn't know that. so that was interesting. And then I think also the other thing that happened was this was one of the biggest reasons for crossing the Atlantic was to search for new and better spices.
So that was something that we did a lot of. The explorers would leave Europe to actually try to go find new spices in the new world. unfortunately that didn't actually work out very well. The new world has chili peppers, which are amazing, and a few others, but it wasn't anything like the diversity of treasures that you see in, in Asia.
Meeting spices in their native habitats
Lana: You mentioned earlier that you love to travel. Can you talk a little bit about your run-ins was different spices around the world? What have been some of the most special circumstances where you met these plants in their native habitats?
Bevin: Yeah, that's been a really fun aspect of this is getting to meet some of these spices over time. One of the fun ones is my daughter's name is Cassia. The genus that is some of the cinnamons. And a couple of years ago, we were in Zanzibar and we got to go sit with a Cassia tree, and she could meet her inspiration for her name.
And so there's been a lot and some of them are with spices that I didn't talk about in the book. And the book is designed to be like the most common spices that are available, especially in the kind of westernized world. You can go to any grocery store and they're going to have these spices.
But some of my experiences have been funny. I mean, I remember buying a bunch of asofetida which is hing it's just the strongest smell and it's the most nauseating intense smell. And it's used in Indian food in these like tiny, tiny, tiny amounts. But I remember I bought it a little bit to try to play with it.
And when I bought it, they put it in some plastic and then sealed it and then wrapped it and some plastic and then sealed that. And as soon as I brought it into my hotel room I couldn't deal with it. And so more, more plastic, got a glass jar, put it in that. I mean, it didn't matter what I did with it.
And I ended up like wrapping it in a blanket and putting it in the bathroom. I finally just had to get rid of it. the smell of it was so strong. So some of them, you just don't realize how intense they are and when you get to larger amounts,
Selecting 19 plants for Spice apothecary
Lana: Absolutely. Absolutely. So you mentioned that, your book showcased, 19, specific plants, ways to use them medicinally, you also talk about, different daily doses for each plant, then different spice, blends and recipes. you mentioned that they are the most common ones. Can you talk a little bit more why you picked these particular plants?
Bevin: Yeah. So when I started out with this, I was like, Oh, we're going to talk about it all the spices I can find . I mean, obviously there's niche spices in different parts of the world, but I was going to make this as expansive as possible. But then what I really realized is that the thing that makes them so accessible is their commonality and their availability and their low cost because of that. those are also the spices that have been studied the most for the most part. So, I really realized that if this was all about accessibility and utility, right that, what I needed to do was to focus on the ones that people used and were comfortable with and were affordable and accessible.
And so that's how I chose those. I also did look at how much data there was available [00:14:00] for them, because I think that's a place that's really interesting. And there are some spaces that were included that there's not a lot of data on, but for the most part, that's why they were chosen. And if, and some of the spices that you see left out, Like chives or something there's just not any research on chives that I've been able to see. I mean, there's other close relatives, so that makes more sense. but that's kind of how I ended up choosing them. And it's a wild world and there's so much already with those 19.
Lana: Can you give us some examples of what made it into the book?
Bevin: So I tried to have some that everyone would have, I mean, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, really medicinal spices that a lot of people would have, but also include things like mustard, which is a dried mustard commonly available, but not necessarily used as much as it could be. and then there's even herbs like fennel or cumin, which some cultures would be using. A lot of other people wouldn't really know what exactly to do with them, but they're still widely available and very, very common. So a lot of the things that you're going to find, even in your grandmother's spice rack, No matter where your grandmother was from my grandmother was English.
So there was very few spices happening, but still these would have all been spices that she would have had in there. And, and so obviously if you come from a family that cooks Indian or South America, so that you're going to see all different kinds of, of spices on the spice racks, but a lot of them will be in here. Garlic, cumin, things like that are going to be really common.
Plant parts
Lana: So when you look at examples of spices that you described, they come in different shapes and forms, right? So some of them might be flowers and seeds and fruit. Can you talk a little bit more about this, and is it important for someone to know what is the plant part that is used?
Bevin: Yeah, I think that this is an interesting question because when we dose spices, or when we used them in recipes, that's like a quarter teaspoon or a teaspoon or something. And it's really different. One of the pieces I focused on in the book was making the dosing more transparent for spices.
And this has to do with the part of the plant too. So a teaspoon of basil is very different in weight than a teaspoon of dried chili especially if one is cut and sifted or little flakes, like we're used to seeing it versus a powder. And then depending on the part of the plant, if it's a leafy part of the plant, we generally don't use it as a powder.
There are some that are exceptions out there, but for the most part, we would use those more in the cut and sift flakes. And then if it's a seed or a bark or a root then where you're using it more powdered. Also though, sometimes it's not some seeds we use whole like coriander and cumin and fennel to some degree.
So I tried to make some really easy to use charts in the book that showed that. But I think the biggest piece is also the dose. And I think what stops people and even healthcare providers from being able to translate, Oh, this research says that having one gram of cinnamon in your breakfast will help with a postprandial cognitive function.
So after you eat, if you feel a little groggy, it'll help with blood sugar balance or something. So we have that research and they say, okay, so you have to take one gram of cinnamon. People have no idea what is one gram of cinnamon? So then it's easier to go buy a capsule or a product that gives you one gram of cinnamon.
When in reality, if you just know exactly how much that is. So that was one of the translations I really wanted to have in this book is that, you know, this is exactly what one gram of cinnamon looks like, and this is how you're getting it. And then this is a recipe you can actually get that one gram of cinnamon in easily.
Fresh vs dried vs powdered vs cut and sifted
Lana: That's awesome. So you mentioned a minute ago about cut and sifted versus dried versus fresh. Can you talk to us a little bit more about this?
Bevin: Yeah, so fresh for the most part has a lot to do with, just our ability to acquire things fresh. So fresh is different in different parts of the world or even an urban areas turmeric can be something that people can use fresh. Whereas in a lot of places, turmeric is something that's always just a dry powder that you buy.
The most commonly available things that you'd find at any grocery store that are fresh cilantro, parsley, maybe mint, fennel things like that. So, if you can get those leafy things fresh, then that's wonderful to be able to use those. And that's a great way to use it. The dosage is going to be a little bit different because they are, you know, fresh and watery.
And really they're like half vegetable. the dose for all of those fresh herbs is just as much as you can put in your food, you don't really need to stop. but then when we get to those dried, the leafy parts, the cut and sift, right. That, that's what we think of when we think of basil or parsley flakes. ]that's cut and sifted, and that's the reason why cut and sifted is better. Is that it it's there's less surface area. So it keeps it from degrading. And so, you know, ideally if you buy leafy spices that are dried, you want them to be as big as possible, or if you dry things from your garden, it's great to keep them whole until you want to use them.
And then you can crumble them up. But in industry, they have to make it more of a uniform size. So they would crumble it up in that way. and then powders are great for things there aren't going to be palatable, whole, or like they're too crunchy or chunky whole and the cuisine isn't prepared to deal with them, but a lot of spices are sold whole, and then you can use a mortar and pestle to grind them up a little bit. so, or sometimes you'll leave them either even add some of those seeds into hot oil or something and then remove some of them, is also common. But yeah, so part of it has to do with shelf stability. And part of it has to do with palatability, as far as how much chewy stuff you want to eat, your crunchy stuff you want to eat.
Lana: Sure. You mentioned the stability and the shelf life. it kind of brings me back to the previous question where if you're looking at roots or seeds, the stability is going to be a little bit longer, and greater than for example, with leaves .
Bevin: Yeah, absolutely. So I always think of ginger as the indestructible herb or because you can have really old ginger and it's still going to work well as a far as a powder, but really old basil. Yeah, not really.
Lana: Right. Right. Sometime ago I have discovered that if you put ginger into your freezer, the actual, fresh ginger, you can use it for a very, very long time. And the first time that I actually tasted ginger tea with lemon and honey was at your home, here in Boston. So everything kind of comes full circle.
Ko-fi.com/plantloveradio Giveaway
I went to take a quick pause here. In the episode, we talk about Bevin's book Spice Apothecary and you as a listener, have an opportunity to win it in a giveaway brought to you by the Storey publishing, if you live in the United States. To participate in this giveaway, please head over to ko-fi.com/plantloveradio or find the link to the podcast bonuses in the show notes.
Please comment on the giveaway post of the episode you're listening to right now, I will choose a winner before the next episode goes live. The software also allows you to support my work, but you do not have to be a supporter to participate in this raffle. I look forward to your feedback on this episode and your entries. In case you're wondering the winner of the last episode giveaway is Cheryl.
Cheryl, please send a quick, hello email to lana@lanacamiel.com, so we can ship you your price. Now let's get back to the conversation.
Synergy
Lana: in your book, you talked about the synergy between spices and of course the spice blends. And I want to talk a little bit about this, why is this concept important and do some spice blends work better when plants are combined?
Bevin: Hmm. Yeah. And this is a way that spices are a lot like cooking. I often will use the example of pizza as an example of synergy. So if you sat down and you had some, warm bread or dough and you had a little bowl of sauce and then you had some cheese and you just ate them each separately, it might be a perfectly acceptable experience, but it's a really different than making pizza and having pizza. And so you could say that pizza is a synergy between these three things. I mean, there's obviously more going on there, the spices and olive oil and stuff like that. But, but it is greater than the sum of its parts and that's really what synergy is.
And so I think spices are very similar in that way that when you put them together that you get this synergy, like pumpkin pie spice or Apple pie. Spice is something that is a good example of that or chai where you get cinnamon and ginger and clove, and maybe a little peppercorn and vanilla and things like that.
When you put all those together, it's just, it really gives it life. And what's interesting is that this synergy we're talking about from a taste and kind of experiential perspective, but it's also on a biochemical health perspective. So a lot of these things are become more biochemically active and bioavailable when you combine them.
And when you combine them also with food, especially with, with fats and lipids and heat and things like that. So it is really different than just taking a bunch of spices when you cook them the way that they are often traditionally cooked. Indian food is the best example of that because, when people make Indian food, you start often with a little bit of ghee or something and then saute these spices.
And that brings out the aromatics, melds, the spices together, and then also makes those spices more bioavailable for medicinal purposes. So synergy is a pretty awesome thing.
Spice blends and geography
Lana: So in your book, you spent time talking about these different blends coming from different, geographical regions. So how is it that our mind can recognize that this combination of plants means Indian food, and this combination of plants reminds me of Mediterranean food. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Bevin: Yeah, that's a really interesting thing. And, and some of it does have to do with what you would expect, which is the plants that are native to that area. that originated there, but some of it doesn't at all. And, you know, we talked about chili pepper in the book and how chili peppers are a new world plant and that, before there was global trade, there was no chili pepper in Thai food or any of these spicy cuisines. And so that starts to get really interesting when you look at that, because people are constantly adapting things from other cultures into their food and into their spice profiles.
But we do have this kind of concept of what is, going to taste somewhat like Chinese as far as spices and what is going to taste, more central American or Mexican or, or so on. what's fascinating to me is that there's a huge amount of overlap in them. So there are some things that are just distinctly, one place or another.
But when you think about like cumin and garlic, And the prominence of those in Mexican food. And then you think about cumin and garlic and the prominence of those in Indian food. And yet they're really different, because of the other things that are added, whether it's chilies or where they both have chilies to cumin, garlic, and chilies, but then you start getting turmeric and coriander and some of these other things in Indian food and in Mexican food, you start getting some of the smoked chilies and lime and things like that.
So we do have this sense. I think not everybody has a sense. You have to have eaten some of these different cuisines. And, that's a real truth, right there is that you have to experience some of this and your palette actually has to adjust and adapt to some of these flavors and get used to them.
And if we don't do it, when we're young them, it could be a little harder to do it as we get older.
Lana: I'm a good example of this. you mentioned that your grandmother came from, England. because of my roots and my knowledge of spices, I was familiar with salt, pepper, and cinnamon when I was growing up. So I really haven't tasted anything spicy till I was 16 or 17. but you can get used to new tastes and new flavors and really appreciate them. So that's a good reminder.
you also said that some plants make it into these different blends. Do you think that part of it is because they are common or part of it because maybe we appreciate them or we get other benefits, like health benefits from them.
Bevin: Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. I don't know why garlic is, is common everywhere. It is relatively easy to grow, but it's also not even that transportable. garlic, we usually use in this fresh form. So it's a little bit more of a hassle than a lot of other spices, but it is profoundly medicinal.
And, and so I'm not sure if humans have kind of adopted garlic all over because it's so delicious or because it's so medicinal or because it lends itself so well to different things. And, and then why other things haven't really been adopted all over the world and in turmeric is a great example where now the world is crazy about turmeric for medicine . And I think a lot of people have it in their spice cabinet, but beyond using it in like a prepared Curry blend, I would say most people don't grab that turmeric jar and actually use it that much. So it would be interesting to know, you know, why some of these things are so common and why in other places that they're not, especially when things are just absent.
It's fascinating to look at the juxtaposition between countries that are right next to each other and they're like, or dislike for spicy foods. So, you have Mexico, which there's just so much spicy and, and intensely flavored, intensely spiced cuisine. And then you go to countries like Cuba and Costa Rica which are all just like right there. And, it's salt pepper, and maybe some cinnamon, you know, and there's none of, none of that. To me, that cultural differences is really very, very interesting.
Medicinal applications and research surprises
Lana: It is, it is. So in your book, you spent quite a bit of time talking about common medicinal users and you listed as a number of different conditions from immune protection to healthy bones skin and joints to focus and mental health and so on . Were there any spice uses and research that you were surprised by, or perhaps our listeners could be surprised by?
Bevin: Yeah. There's one thing that stands out that I was really surprised by, and it was a study on cumin and it looks at, the effect of cumin on weight loss. It was comparable to Orlistat 120 in this human study that they did. I like cumin, but it's not what I think of as, as overly medicinal.
I mean, it's great for preventing gas and bloating and things like that. But, but beyond that, it's not remarkable a lot of the time, other than its flavor. But I remember when I saw this study, if the researchers that had got in touch with me and said, we're going to compare cumin and Orlistat 120 and see how these things impact BMI, I would have been like at it, that's a terrible idea, but it actually was really interesting.
So that was one that surprised me a lot. in general, a lot of the spice researchers. It's surprising and just how efficacious it is at times in certain conditions that it's looked at and, how often food like doses are used. I mean, sifting through the research is a little laborious because at times the doses that they're using, some concentrated constituents but actually for a lot of the spices, it's very much the food like dose. It's not just a tiny bit, but it is something you, if you pay attention, you can easily add that much into your food.
Lana: Can you talk a little bit more about this, I'll give you an example. I took a class, on food as medicine talking about how, if you consume turmeric with milk or, somehow integrated into your diet in a significantly larger doses, you will start seeing a lot more benefit.
And I remember trying to, whisk some tumeric into a glass of coconut milk . I couldn't taste turmeric for like months and months and months after experimenting with this, the dose was so strong and the taste and the flavor was so overpowering.
Doses - food vs medicinal
So I wanted to ask you to talk a bit more about this food dosing versus medicinal dosing and how can someone really think about it and effectively incorporate these spices?
Bevin: Well, this, this can be tricky for some of the spices. Some of them are easy. I mean, cinnamon with the medicinal dose being one to two grams, that's easy. That's like a heavy sprinkle on all sorts of different kinds of foods, but when you're talking about something like turmeric that people aren't necessarily used to, it can be a lot harder.
Recipes with spices
So that was a goal of the book is to come up with recipes where you get kind of substantial medicinal doses. And so the recipes that are in the book aren't necessarily bland recipes, they're therapeutic recipes. the idea of really getting a lot. So turmeric is a great example because in this I have what I call like a synergy fudge and that's taking large amounts of turmeric and adding it to high quality, dark chocolate with a little coconut oil, and some black pepper and the black pepper makes the curcuminoids more bioavailable. So does the fat and the heat when you put all of that together. and so that's kind of like a fudge and there's very little to no sugar and it's just from the dark chocolate. And I've found that because it's so strong tasting with the chocolate you can actually get a substantial dose in that type of fudge.
So for each spice, I kind of tried to look at how can we get a larger dose with some of these and make it palatable and make it more accessible. And what is a clear strategy forward with some of this? So that's been a real goal in the book is to come up with blends that make things tasty and useful, and then come up with recipes to make it something that you can easily do.
Lana: If any of my colleagues are listening to this, now they know the source of the dark chocolate with turmeric and cinnamon and black pepper that from time to time, I bring for them to taste or my students to explore. So definitely it's not known as Bevin's chocolate, but this is where the original recipe came from.
And you have a lot of other things that might be savory. So whether it is hummus that has a lot of different spices or other places where you incorporate spices to great extent. And the recipes look absolutely yummy. So thank you for including them.
Bevin: Well, and they're all tested too, because one of the things I've done at the university over the years is I've given the graduate students a disgusting tasting formula often, not even spices, but actually therapeutic herbs that don't taste good at all.
And then we've tried all these different ways. To take them and what works the best, how can you actually get enough of this in your dosing without putting it in a bunch of chocolate pudding or something? you know, really the savory ways that are possible to do this. And, and so there's some real winners. And so a lot of that was just translated into spices, which is even tastier. So you can find a lot of that in the book.
Lana: That's awesome. Thank you.
Resources for spices
Are there some resources that you typically recommend when you're looking for high quality spices?
Bevin: So at first, I would look at what you can afford. I wouldn't try to buy fancy organic things or, or anything like that. A lot of times your local kind of quote, ethnic markets that are going to have that are going to serve, especially an Indian , South Asian population are going to have a lot of these different spices in bulk. And because they're actually purchased a lot and used a lot, you're going to find that these are folks that eat these spices all the time. They don't want to buy them if they don't taste good. So that's a great way to get them.
What, we sell the average supermarket in little glass jars is an incredibly expensive way to buy them. the quality is often good too, but it is pricey in these smaller things. So online purveyors that you're often needed to get a larger amount, but you can look at places like Penzey's spices or a Mountain Rose Herbs, Frontier has Simply Organic, so you can look at any of the herb spice companies out there, and sometimes you can even get like collections of, different spices. and I really like a lot of Pensy spices personally, and my house. I use a lot of the, different spice blends that they make, because I find that they're really easy if I just want to throw something in, I don't necessarily have to take out like eight or 10 different things and blend them together.
And then I make my own spice blends out of those. So yeah, you want to look at something good quality. And if you live in an area where there is a Penzey's around. Then you can actually go in and smell things, which is fun. They have little jars, at least they did pre COVID. So who knows now they do, but it was possible.
Cleaning up your spice rack
Lana: Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. mentioned that small jars versus larger amount of spices, any good recommendations for someone who is planning to try out things for the first time?
Bevin: Yeah, so you probably want to get a small amount, but really what is a great thing to do is to team up with a group of friends and to kind of overhaul your spice cabinets, especially if you're somebody who hasn't really used a lot of spices, but I remember going through my grandmother's spice cabinets .
I think that some of the spices have been in there for 50 years, easily, maybe longer. And so this could be a nice gift because [00:36:00] larger bags can be affordable to see if you have four or five friends who want to go in on buying, you know, a dozen spices, you all identify that you need to toss and refresh and then start a new trying to use.
So if you're just trying to taste something and experiment with it, a smaller amount might be better to start off with, but it is less expensive to buy a larger amounts, especially if you can split it.
Lana: And how often would you recommend renewing ingredients of your spice racks? How often should you go through that process?
Bevin: I think that it's more of a question of learning what a vital spice tastes and looks like. I'm old enough at this point that I have things that I think I just bought, but I've been there for, you know, seven years or something. And, and they're still good, you know, there's these things that really aren't that new, but I opened them up. I taste them and I smell them. And so just like you could open up your refrigerator or look in your fruit basket and decide whether something is actually still good or not. you can do the same thing with your spices if you get used to it, but you need to get a decent baseline.
So if you start by looking at the basil that you've had for three years, Or five years or something that it might be better to, refresh that. but a lot of your roots and seeds and things like that are probably going to stay good for a long time.
How to find Bevin
Lana: Awesome. So Bevin, we're coming to an end of this conversation and I have two more questions for you. So one of them is how can someone learn more about you or continue learning from you? perhaps you can also tell us where the book is sold . And then my last question is, can you share with us an idea or two that you would like to leave us with?
Bevin: So you can find the book anywhere you like to buy books it's available, at your local independent bookstore or Amazon or anything like that. So you can also go to my website, bevinclare.com and there's information on talks that I'm giving there and more information on the book and where you can buy it as well as a free download if you preorder it. or if you order it in the early days, that's also fine.
You can also check out the American Herbalist Guild, where I'm the current president and the Maryland university of integrative health, where I'm on the faculty of the masters of science and clinical herbal medicine program. So those are some of the places to find me as far as a couple things to leave you with.
Finishing thoughts
I think the biggest one is just filling your life with spices is a great strategy. You can't really go wrong. So there are some combinations that work better than others, but for the most part, more is better when it comes to spices, but also just get started. And kids can really like spices.
There's no reason that babies and children shouldn't have flavorful food. We, tend to in some cultures give babies the most bland food. And, actually if a baby comes from a parent who consumed spices during their pregnancy, or who breastfed them while they were consuming spices that baby is looking for flavor in their food because they get those flavors. So, use spices, liberally, and don't be afraid to add more. You don't need to measure too carefully All spices are good spices.
Lana: This was wonderful. Bevin, thank you so much!
Bevin: Thanks, Lana.
Lana: Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation with Bevin Clare. For all the bonuses, giveaway and resources mentioned in this episode, please head over to the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/63.
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The music you hear in the introduction was written by a neighbor of mine, David Scholl, and his cold, something about Cat my deepest gratitude to Bill Gilligan for this opportunity to thanks again for being here today.
I really appreciate you till the next time. Thank you for loving plants and planting love.