Spicing Life Up!

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you might remember in January I took a Caribbean cruise.  (That's our ship on the right.  The other is the Quantum.  It was huge!)



It was lovely to be away from the cold of the Minnesota.  Since my hubby refuses to take cruises and my sister’s hubby couldn’t get away, I went with my sister!  We had a blast docking on a number of islands: St. Croix, St. Kitts, Dominica, Grenada and St. Thomas.

Our goal was to do some of the more adventurous outings while in our ports of call, but on Grenada, they had a Spice Tour.  It sounded fascinating.  And it was.

Drying

Grenada is a volcanic rainforest island.  On this hilly fertile soil, they grows nutmeg trees.  Lots and lots of nutmeg trees.  Nutmeg was brought onto the island in the mid-1800s.  Our guide told us that the island produced 40% of the world’s supply of nutmeg, but Wikipedia says it is only 20%.  Still that is a lot of nutmeg.  And it is processed mostly by hand.

Nutmeg and mace
along with the fruit

Nutmeg trees are 30 to 60 feet tall.  Although the trees were devastated during the last major hurricane.  As we drove the winding mountainous roads, nutmeg trees were planted all over.  Our guide said that they don’t waste anything from the nutmeg tree and I was impressed with their creativity in using every part of the fruit and nut.

Mace

The fruit looks like an apricot and is used to make soups and jellies.  The nut is composed of two parts.  The reddish-orange covering is mace.  The nut is the nutmeg.  The mace is stripped off the nutmeg seed and is a more delicate flavor.  Once the nut is dried, the nutmeg husk is removed and used as mulch.

Nutmeg isn’t just used in cooking.  It's also used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.  Nutmeg oil/butter can also be used as an industrial lubricant.  Who knew?

Crusher

The whole process of taking off the fruit, peeling off the mace and sorting through the cracked husks and nuts is manual.  Although in the factory, there was a manually run crusher.  After drying in racks for six months, the nuts are crushed where they were dropped from the drying floor above, to the sorting floor below.

Sorting Nutmegs for
quality

According to our guide, the cooperative that controls the island's nutmeg processing and production has decided not to mechanize the process.  They believed that the currently 80 people, mostly women, at the factory we toured would lose their jobs if mechanization occurred.

The guide also said that Granada’s  unemployment rate was approximately 33%. 

Things I learned:

Bags of unshelled
Nutmegs

·       Un-cracked nutmeg is good for 10 years

·       Nutmeg whole is good for 6 years

·       Ground nutmeg is good for 4 years

I love to grate a little bit of nutmeg into spinach and squash.  And of course it is a key ingredient in pumpkin pie. 

What are your favorite recipes that include nutmeg?