Romance author Shiloh Walker said, “I’ve got this thing for spicy stuff.  Now, if you give me hot chocolate with chili pepper, a book and a bubble bath, I’m a happy girl.”  I concur!  One of the first things I first registered for after we got engaged was a rotating spice rack that could be refilled.  I like to cook, I like it hot, and I knew I’d use it a ton.  Over time I have become horrified to learn common things like ground pepper are being made with grass clippings full of pesticides and potentially carcinogenic causing chemicals.  So I’ve been trying to go all organic for the past two years beginning with our food, cleaning supplies and now spices.  Herbs and spices only keep for a year so I figured January was a good time to clean and rinse the containers before replacing them with my new organic ones.  I’ve been thinking about how cleaning the spice rack is a microcosm of cleaning my proverbial house.  Things change, people change, and we must adjust with those changes.  If you’ll notice in the picture there is one container that is empty.  It is where the cinnamon should go.  Just about everyone loves cinnamon but me; I cannot stand it because I am allergic.  The smell alone gives me vicious migraines and last year I ate something unknowingly that had cinnamon in it, causing my face to break out so badly I had to get $300 worth of special skin cream from the dermatologist.  I got to wondering, just because something is in your spice rack why should one be obliged to hold on to it — particularly if it hurts you.  I tend to have this idea that I must keep something just because it is somehow already in my life; especially if it has been around for awhile.  But how is it right if it is detrimental?  And so I pitched all the cinnamon down the sink, got a headache, rinsed it in scalding hot water, and am replacing it with an all-spice that I enjoy and will use often.  I am trying to do the same with friends that aren’t really friends, things I do not need to retain to be happy, and bad habits I should not continue.  So it may seem like a trivial thing … cleaning out a spice rack.  But for me it represents the way I am trying to start living my life in 2016.  I want to surround myself with things and people I enjoy.  I want to be a blessing to others and I know that in order to do that I must first start taking care of myself.  What is the saying?  One cannot give from an empty cup.  I want to fill my cup with strength, compassion, wisdom, discipline and joy.  I cannot believe I have had something I cannot stand for so long when I could have been enjoying something else.  Life is too precious to hold on to things that hurt us.  Happiness is definitely the most important spice in the rack.

For as long as I can remember I have been going to eat with my family in downtown Dallas at the original Spaghetti Warehouse.  When I was very little it was practically the only thing there.  My Grandfather owned the drugstore in Ferris and was a pharmacist.  Mama said long before it was a restaurant she would go with her father to that old warehouse when it was McKesson and Robbins pharmaceuticals.  She said they would get dressed up and go into town to buy all kinds of things for the store in addition to medicine, like candy, cosmetics, and Christmas displays.  Perhaps the most notable oddity in the restaurant is an old trolley car where one can eat, hear the creaking of floor boards, and dangle elbows out of rolled down windows.  Dallas has had streetcars beginning with the old mule-drawn system since 1872.  By 1886 they were running on steam and just two years later electric cars came into place, remaining functional all the way until 1956.  Both my parents used them and so we would always request to eat in the trolley.  In the forties at just 10 years old Mama said she would ride by herself barefoot from Oak Cliff to Fair Park where she took art lessons.  I grew up dining in that streetcar and listening to their stories.  Some of my best memories are of eating warm sourdough bread with exquisitely chived butter while my folks would recollect.  There used to be all sorts of outdated equipment around and Daddy would explain what each one was for and how they worked.  He recognized every old oil sign and Mama knew all the French Art Deco pieces.  It was always good food and a great hodgepodge of real, authentic history.  Last night my husband and I decided to go there on a date.  Although the food remains the same, I felt I had lost yet another piece of my family.  They have kept the old hanging Tiffany lamp shades but the rest feels barren and generic.  Mama particularly loved the Chinese Foo Dogs that guarded the arcade entrance.  Now those statues have been haphazardly placed upstairs along with a smattering of signs still remaining and a few other pieces of memorabilia scattered about.  For decades before waiting to be seated we would always stop at the old wooden Indian pictured above.  He has been relegated upstairs now as well, abandoned and forgotten.  Gone are the pieces of old machinery, the now politically incorrect alcohol and cigarette advertisements, and the Joan of Arc poster I loved saying women could contribute to the war effort.  The manager, a fellow history lover, was gracious enough to allow me upstairs where I had only been maybe twice since 1972.  I had never seen the old victrola and he kindly let me take pictures of the few things that had not been stripped and sold.  The carpet was still the same and I recognized the old wooden sign saying “Please Use Spitoon.”  It was so impossibly sad; I could feel the whispers of time gone by all around me.  Every Italian chain I can think of has black and white pictures of people whom I neither recognize nor care about.  In an era of sameness this place stood out.  Coco Chanel said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”  For more than 40 years this place was unique and special.  With the world full of Kardashians, Spaghetti Warehouse was a Lucille Ball:  quirky, timeless and grand.  Personally, I love Lucy.

New Year’s Day; a time of renewal and hope for the year ahead.  I find different customs interesting, particularly regarding New Year’s Day.  A lot seem to center around food, superstition, and prosperity.  Apparently in Ireland it is customary to bang loaves of bread loudly against walls and doors in order to drive out evil spirits from one’s home.  Ironically, it’s potatoes in Peru.  Three are used to determine a person’s fortune for the New Year.  In Spain the first 12 seconds of the New Year are dedicated to consuming 12 grapes — one for each month ahead.  And anyone from the South knows you’d BETTER eat your black eyes!  My Mother once chased after our church van when I was 15 and our youth group was on its way to a ski trip in Colorado.  She literally ran the van down and stood inside it until she physically watched me swallow black eyed peas steaming from a mug she’d brought before we were allowed to leave.  She wasn’t superstitious, mind you, I just had to eat my black eyes on New Year’s Day.  Oh the humiliation.  The lesson I learned from that is don’t ever try to outwit your mother.  Eating them is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity.  There is an old Southern saying, “Peas for pennies, greens for dollars, and cornbread for gold.”  Continuing Mama’s superstition, ahem, “tradition” I cooked black-eyed peas, Jiffy cornbread and (my own revision) spinach for greens.  I came across this blessing whose author is unknown:

On New Year’s Day and the whole year through, I hope the kindness you’ve given to others returns many times to you.  May hope, love, and warmth be in your heart’s possessing, and may the New Year bring you and yours many blessings.

Happy New Year!  2016