This week we look at cardamom, the queen of spices and her history. There's a lot to unpack here and the way that cardamom has evolved as a commodity and the way it's sold today is pretty representative of a lot of problems with our food systems in general but there's an optimistic end in sight. There are lots of good ways of getting better quality cardamom and we look at how some people are changing these industries, which often suffer from left overs of their colonial roots.
As always, feel free to reach out with any notes, corrections, ideas for episodes or anything else by email: planetpantrypod@gmail.com or on instagram @planetpantrypod and also check out the patreon where I post extra content and attempt to build a community around pantry staples on our accompanying discord server.
Some sources and useful links (Let me know if you want to know where I got a specific piece of information)
Diaspora Co. (Get some spices!) https://www.diasporaco.com/
https://www.diasporaco.com/blogs/journal/a-bittersweet-cardamom-harvest?_pos=2&_sid=85aa75233&_ss=r
https://www.heifer.org/blog/rooted-in-racism-cardamom.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/197621/annual-grocery-store-sales-in-the-us-since-1992/
http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/ayurveda/Ayu_Principles.asp?GL=
https://theayurvedaexperience.com/blogs/tae/cardamom-benefits-uses-side-effects
https://anothermusicinadifferentkitchen.com/massaman-curry-paste/
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a9cfbc9e11f04a79885521bc559c9815
https://wholespice.com/blog/tag/white-cardamom/
https://books.google.com/books?id=G9x-8pK3K64C&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ja7WAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA216#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=5WY08iuJyawC&pg=PA41#v=onepage&q&f=false