Who would have thought a journalist would find fulfillment playing around in the kitchen and starting an organic spice company? I never would’ve believed it back in my newspaper days.
I spent 20 years as an editor and columnist at The Baltimore Sun. In my first job in Baltimore, at the old News-American, I’d sometimes smell cinnamon wafting from the harbor—before the McCormick spice company moved to the suburbs—but food wasn’t my beat.
I’d studied religious history. I covered religion and moral and ethical issues. My approach to cooking was: The recipe says 20 minutes on medium heat…I’ll do 10 minutes on high. Of course, I’d burn it.
I was hardly home for dinner anyway, even after I married and became a mom. Too busy on deadline.
Then things changed. My son was turning 10, old enough to stay up and talk after dinner, and I wanted to be home with him. I yearned for those dinners I’d grown up with in lower Alabama, where everyone lingered at the table savoring the good food—and the moment.
Around then I was assigned to edit the food section. I interviewed Julia Child and broke the story that she was donating her kitchen to the Smithsonian. I was inspired by the way she plunged into a new world of French cuisine when she was middle-aged.
It was time, I thought, to start the next chapter of my life.
The week I left the Sun, a friend of a friend moved to Baltimore. Like me, Katie Luber was a working mom at a turning point. She’d had a career as an art historian and wanted something new.
Katie and I were both adventurous cooks (now that I wasn’t in a rush, I learned to give food time to let the flavors develop). We played around in the kitchen, reinventing childhood favorites. And we found ourselves seduced by spices. We fell in love not just with their taste but with their history.
Take cinnamon. In ancient times it was a luxury, shipped by canoe and caravan from Ceylon to the West—so exotic that the Greek historian Herodotus thought it was harvested from the nests of giant birds in the mountains.
Moses used cinnamon to make holy anointing oil (Exodus 30:22-25) and “nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon” make up the garden in the Song of Songs (4:14).
Spices were tithes for the temple (Matthew 23:23), gifts for royalty, preserves for food, medicine for ailments and what the women brought to Jesus’ tomb Easter morning. The search for spices motivated much of the exploration of the New World.
Where would we be if Columbus hadn’t been looking for a shortcut to the spices of India? Even the Puritans brought dill and fennel to church to chew on during long sermons.
One day Katie and I were in my kitchen. My spice cabinet was such a mess, I had to apologize. There was cardamom I hadn’t used in years (it loses flavor in six months) and four jars of fennel seed when I needed a teaspoonful.
“It’s crazy the way we open a spice jar over a steaming pot and expose it to air,” Katie said. “It would make more sense if spices were in smaller packages.”
That was the inspiration for our company, The Seasoned Palate, Inc. We sell organic spices in single-use packets, so they’re always fresh. No more cluttered cabinets, either.
Recently we branched out with two cookbooks, The Spice Kitchen (recipes for everyday family meals) and Spice Dreams (ice creams and other desserts). I’ve come a long way since the days I used to burn dinner!
Did I say things changed when my son turned 10? It’s more like they came together. Who would have thought a journalist would find fulfillment in the world of spices? Someone with a far greater plan for my future than I’d ever imagined.
Try Sarah’s Game Day Chili!
