One Spice, Two Spice

I wanted to share something a little different with you this week.  It's not quite a recipe, not quite a tutorial, and yet something you can do at home all the same.  We're talking about making your own spice rubs!

Let's go back a month to Valentines Day (yes, I know I'm a little late on the posting here, but bear with me). The Husband and I decided that we were going to set about finding gifts for each other without spending more than $10 and trying to come up with the most creative gift possible.

In searching for gifts to make for men I stumbled onto a list of spice rubs, dug a little deeper, and to my surprise found one list after another after another.  That was it!  The Husband loves to cook and create new dishes and for that reason he does most of the cooking on the weekend.  These would be his spices, ones that are spicier than I would ever try myself, ones I dare not touch, ones that would allow him to experiment to his heart's content.  There were already a number of empty spice bottles sitting around the house waiting to be used and I  had most of the necessary spices but it was a fantastic opportunity to buy some of the more eclectic ones. As luck would have it all spices at the grocery store were buy 2 get 1 free so $10 was well spent!

As previously mentioned, the base spices are all present and accounted for...

These were my supplies.  I originally only had three empty spice bottles and planned to use small tubberware containers for the rest.  It turns out I ended up emptying four more spice bottles in the process and so the tupperware became unnecessary.  The masking tape and sharpies were used to label each with the name of said spice and any directions there may be.

The trusty funnel you can also take a piece of paper towel and wrap it like you did as a kid when you made princess hats to make your own funnel.  That is my preferred method if I don't want spices mixing, I figured for this instance mixing was what we were striving for anyway.

And this is the sort of scene in my kitchen that makes me panic just a bit...  

Labels went on top so he knew what he was using.

There you have it!

 As we've now had the spice rubs for a little over a month I can say that they are being used and so far each one has been a great success!  It probably took me between two and three hours to put all of these together but that was mostly because every time I emptied a jar I immediately wanted to find another rub to create so as to give The Husband the most options.  Eventually I ran out of Paprika among other spices and that put a halt to the process...  If you're looking for a relatively easy and thoughtful gift for anyone this would be a great way to go!

Thanks for reading and happy cooking/making/gift giving?