The Colour Collaborative: December: Spice

Image via Pixabay

Red, gold and green, the colours of Christmas and the colours of spice.  The warmth of their colours and flavours are perfect for these chill days.  Whilst the fresh, clean tastes of spring and summer happily stand alone, in winter we look for a little extra, the complex unmatchable flavours and aromas of spices.  The hot colours of orange, yellow and red are dominant, the warmth and depth of spiced food is perfect for cold dark days.

Image via Pixabay

These precious compounds have been revered for five thousand years or more, causing wars, founding trade routes and shaping history.  Coriander, fennel, juniper and cumin were found in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs.  Black pepper, cinnamon, ginger and cloves were around in the Middle Ages.  The unique flavours were so treasured that spices were worth vast sums of money.  Pepper and other spices have been used as currency, and nutmeg, which was for a while used to prevent plague, has at times been worth more than its weight in gold.

Image via Pixabay

When I was twenty-one I spent a while cycling around Morocco.  The parts I enjoyed most were the souks, where everything was for sale, from the delicious Moroccan bread that I've never been able to replicate since, to little silver teapots for mint tea, and richly coloured carpets.  But the most amazing displays were on the many spice stalls.

Image via Pixabay

Powders of every shade of orange, yellow and red piled high in wide bowls.  It makes me think that we under-utilise spices here, buying them in tiny glass jars and little glassine bags.  When I see the drama and colour of a North African spice stall I wonder if I might be missing something.   The health benefits of spices are only now starting to be documented, and I'm convinced that many of them have considerable positive effects on human health.  I often read that it's good to eat a rainbow of foods, somehow in the vivid colours there is magic.  And where better to find these deep, saturated colours than in spices.  This Christmas I'll be using more spices and different spices, and it's something I'll try to keep up in the New Year too.  I could use a little ancient magic.

Image via Pixabay

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

               Annie at Annie Cholewa                            Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

               Sandra at Cherry Heart                               Jennifer at Thistlebear

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.