Herbs an Spices

Common Spice Rack

I must admit to feeling out of my depth sometimes when it comes to herbs and spices.  If pressed I can name a fair number of these flavor enhancers but would find it more difficult to be able to tell you what they do and how to use them.  I, like many people, used to see those trees of spice jars sitting on counters and home stores and kind of assume that I needed each and every one of them.  I say used to because I have recently had reason to rethink this paradigm.  I co-habitat the kitchen with my lovely wife and so not all of the decor and organizational decisions are unilaterally mine to make.  A recent discussion topic was a vintage milk glass spice rack.  I believe these to be what is left of a largish set of Griffiths Laboratories spices from the 40s/50s.

Our set has no labels, are missing a couple of bottles and are empty but they appeal to certain individual tastes so they will remain in the kitchen but in the interest of maintaining a functional kitchen, we will be refilling them to make them useful. As far as functional spice storage goes, the bottles aren't bad.  The opaque glass protects against breakdown from exposure to light and doesn't react with the spices themselves.  Most of the bottles also have the shaker insert which will work well for powdered products but may cause issues with the larger herbs and spices.  The small size is also good because it will help keep the spices at hand from becoming stale.  The idea there is that the quicker I run out and have to replenish, the less likely it is that the amount on hand goes flat.  So this brings me to the big paradigm shift.  What spices do I want to keep in them?

In what I believe to be a logical course of action, I first try to name the spices that I have actually used recently.  At the same time I am trying to think about how a spice rack close at hand to the preparation area will get used and for what.  We use Cinnamon a lot and have a dedicated Cinnamon and Sugar filled shaker for easy cinnamon toast in the morning.  We have supersize GFS containers of Cinnamon and Ground Nutmeg (see comment on container sizes above) that we need to work through and so these will take some space.  To digress briefly, it is said you can wake up stale spices with heat for one last grunted hurdle but you still can't beat fresh.  I've used some Ground Cloves recently as well so this would take another slot.  I grew some Basil in the garden this year but it has all been turned into pesto at this point and basil doesn't keep well dried.  Dried Oregano would get the nod but I may need to use a jar without a shaker and am concerned that in this case the jar may not be big enough for the amount used on a regular basis.  I could make some flavored salts but haven't experimented to much with that yet.  I'll probably shift the powdered ginger over even though I use it rarely.  And that is it, the end of the rope.  My current plan is to label the refilled bottles and leave the rest open for expansion as my repertoire of flavors increase.  So what spices would you keep if you had the option?