The spice must flow

Years ago - maybe fifteen or more - I used to drink Tazo Chai Tea latte. It comes in a concentrate that you mix with milk over ice. The concentrate is expensive, and goes bad a week or so after you open it, so if you don't drink it every day you wind up throwing money away.

I've been drinking iced coffee at work throughout the summer. I freeze cooled coffee in an ice cube tray  and set aside some leftover coffee in the refrigerator at the end of the day. In the morning I'll fill my thermos with the frozen coffee cubes, add some of the refrigerated coffee, top off with milk, and shake vigorously. Sometimes I used to add hazelnut syrup for sweetness and flavor. But a few weeks ago I had the idea to look up a recipe for mixing chai spice at home.

It turned out to be pretty easy and obvious: ground allspice, ground cloves, ground ginger, ground cinnamon. (I skipped the ground cardamon, which I do not have, but which appears to be fundamental for authentic chai.) I added the ingredients to an empty and washed bottle from white pepper, which retained some pepper flavor without being overwhelming. (Black pepper is also an ingredient in authentic Masala chai.) I have now been adding this to my iced coffee, along with a few grains of Demerara sugar, which I've had for a few years and have mainly used for sprinkling on the whipped cream on the Irish coffees I drink once or twice a year. The result is nearly identical to the chai tea latte I used to drink.

The spice blend reminds me of apple pie spice. I've added it to iced tea. It would be great in apple cider, and would be delicious on pumpkin pie, and...

OH MY GOD I'VE JUST MIXED A BATCH OF PUMPKIN SPICE

So, yeah. For the past few weeks, I've basically been making and using my own pumpkin spice, that ubiquitous stable of Autumn. And I don't regret it one bit.

Mulled wine

I'm thinking of making mulled wine during one of my Christmas visits. Big ol' box of wine, some spices, a pot, low heat, a ladle, some glasses, a fireplace, some cats...

I drink mostly boxed wine these days. I drink only rarely, usually just before a blood donation, so I need something which will keep for a long time after opening. Wine in a box is protected from light and oxygen, so it will not turn to vinegar in the eight weeks between blood donations - or even over the course of sixteen, twenty-four, thirty-two, or more weeks.

But boxed wine does change over time. It improves. Upon first sampling a box, the wine usually tastes shallow, very one-note. Over time - eight weeks, minimum - the once-tapped wine begins to develop complexity, and begins to resemble the more expensive Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon that my friends and I used to enjoy so much. I can't explain how, unless some air is getting into the collapsing inner bag and is causing a slow oxidation. Whatever, the wine tastes good - and gets better over time.

It is possible that the last time I had anything resembling mulled wine - boxed wine poured into a mug with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and a few other spices added, all stuck in a microwave for forty-five seconds or so - was the morning that my grandmother died, after I came back from seeing her body at the hospital. Ten years? That's a long time between mugs of wine.