Spices Online

Description

When this award-winning husband-and-wife team discovered that they each had sugar in their family history, they were inspired to trace the globe-spanning story of the sweet substance and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives. The trail ran like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe’s Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar was the substance that drove the bloody slave trade and caused the loss of countless lives but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. With songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Time line, source notes, bibliography, index.

Description

Pumpkin, Spice, Warming

Features

• Single-serving packaging means no mess or wasted pots of coffee; for use with Keurig brewers

Description

SPICE WORLD - DVD Movie

The Spice Girls have plenty of personality, and that helps make up for the lapses in inspiration that keep their feature debut from being a truly good movie and potential cult piece. As with Richard Lester's Hard Day's Night, Spice World is about a few days in the collective life of the all-female British group; and the banter is suggestively representative of how the Girls all speak to one another. But the value of individual scenes is woefully inconsistent, reaching a low point in a dumb sequence when a gaggle of extraterrestrials hit them up for autographs. Fortunately, the film is full of great people, or in some cases good people doing great things: Richard E. Grant, Roger Moore, Alan Cummings, Mark McKinney, and tons of cameos from the likes of Elton John, Elvis Costello, and Bob Hoskins. You don't have to be 11 years old and female to get some enjoyment out of this movie, but it might help. --Tom Keogh

Description

A brilliant, original history of the spice trade—and the appetites that fueled it. It was in search of the fabled Spice Islands and their cloves that Magellan charted the first circumnavigation of the globe. Vasco da Gama sailed the dangerous waters around Africa to India on a quest for Christians—and spices. Columbus sought gold and pepper but found the New World. By the time these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers set sail, the aromas of these savory, seductive seeds and powders had tempted the palates and imaginations of Europe for centuries. Spice: The History of a Temptation is a history of the spice trade told not in the conventional narrative of politics and economics, nor of conquest and colonization, but through the intimate human impulses that inspired and drove it. Here is an exploration of the centuries-old desire for spice in food, in medicine, in magic, in religion, and in sex—and of the allure of forbidden fruit lingering in the scents of cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and clove. We follow spices back through time, through history, myth, archaeology, and literature. We see spices in all their diversity, lauded as love potions and aphrodisiacs, as panaceas and defenses against the plague. We journey from religious rituals in which spices were employed to dispel demons and summon gods to prodigies of gluttony both fantastical and real. We see spices as a luxury for a medieval king’s ostentation, as a mummy’s deodorant, as the last word in haute cuisine. Through examining the temptations of spice we follow in the trails of the spice seekers leading from the deserts of ancient Syria to thrill-seekers on the Internet. We discover how spice became one of the first and most enduring links between Asia and Europe. We see in the pepper we use so casually the relic of a tradition linking us to the appetites of Rome, Elizabethan England, and the pharaohs. And we capture the pleasure of spice not only at the table but in every part of life. Spice is a delight to be savored.From the Hardcover edition.

There was a time, for a handful of peppercorns, you could have someone killed. Throw in a nutmeg or two, you could probably watch. There was a time when grown men sat around and thought of nothing but black pepper. How to get it. How to get more. How to control the entire trade in pepper from point of origin to purchase. In Spice: The History of a Temptation, classics scholar Jack Turner opens up the whole story of pepper and its kind like a ripe melon. He brings the exotic scents of the East deep into the history of Western culture. Everyone knows a little bit of the story, how the desire to control the spice trade drove Western nations deep into the heart of the Age of Discovery, the Portuguese sponsoring Da Gama's push to India; the Spanish underwriting the many attempts of Columbus to get to India another way. The Western madness for spice was just about peaking in this time, and spice would all too soon become--gasp--common, much like the afterthought condiment it is for so many today. Who thinks twice about pepper any longer? And yet, the history is long and glorious, and the window spice throws open on Western culture yields a glorious view. Jack Turner is a skilled tour guide and story teller. He starts his narrative with the 16th century quest for spice, then loops back into three mains sections of text: Palate, Body, and Spirit. Turner has mined classic and Medieval literature for any and every possible mention of spice and demonstrates how fixated the West became from the time of Augustus in Rome through to relatively modern times. He winds his narrative through the way spice was used in the foods of the wealthy (and puts to sleep the nostrum about rotting food), as a medicine, a sex aid, and as an aromatic channel to the gods of the time and place. He ably demonstrates the constant underlying tension surrounding spice--that it was both attractive and repellent, that it represented fabulous wealth and power for some and, for others, an abhorrence of the exotic East that exists to this day. This is not an easy story to tell. But Turner makes it appear effortless. Pull a chair close to the fire, pour a draught of spiced wine, crack open Jack Turner's Spice and you'll read your way into the wee hours of the night. --Schuyler Ingle

Description

The Spice Girls have plenty of personality, and that helps make up for the lapses in inspiration that keep their feature debut from being a truly good movie and potential cult piece. As with Richard Lester's Hard Day's Night, Spice World is about a few days in the collective life of the all-female British group; and the banter is suggestively representative of how the Girls all speak to one another. But the value of individual scenes is woefully inconsistent, reaching a low point in a dumb sequence when a gaggle of extraterrestrials hit them up for autographs. Fortunately, the film is full of great people, or in some cases good people doing great things: Richard E. Grant, Roger Moore, Alan Cummings, Mark McKinney, and tons of cameos from the likes of Elton John, Elvis Costello, and Bob Hoskins. You don't have to be 11 years old and female to get some enjoyment out of this movie, but it might help. --Tom Keogh

Description

This beautiful SPICE 2011 Hanging Wall kitchen and cooking Calendar offers unusual views, intriguing stories and histories of 12 glorious spices and herbs. Garlic, Oregano, Star Anise, Thyme, Fennel, Sassafras, Chile Pepper, Ginger, Rosemary, Tamarind, Arrowroot and Salt. Includes wine, culinary and cuisine pairings.  SPICE The World's Great Flavors is an educational and handy guide for the experienced chef or novice Spice lover.  If you have ever wondered how to use that rack of spices in your kitchen, or if you simply want to expand your Spice and Herb knowledge this is an invaluable kitchen reference.

Features

• Become your favorite Spice Girl
• Create your own remixes
• 1 Player