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Seasoning is one of the ingredients that must be prepared in cooking the daily menu at home. Selected spices that can provide aroma and delicacy in cooking are the no. 1 alternative in the kitchen.

Hi @plantpoweronhive community friends, most of all I want to greet you, happy and enthusiastic, I can participate again in the week 4 contest with the same theme as the previous weeks, but this time the community provides a very unique theme with vegan shopping special, namely the 4th week of vegan shopping with various types of special edition vegan ingredients. I also want to say thank you to the community and @sirenahippie for bringing me back to participate in this week's challenge.

Traditional Market "Tax Batuphat"

Today I will shop for my kitchen seasoning needs, to one of the biggest traditional markets in Aceh, Indonesia. This market is right on Jalan Medan Banda Aceh, East Batuphat, Muara Satu District, Lhokseumawe City, which is known as the "Batuphat Tax Market". Uniquely, this market will be crowded with sellers and visitors every day from 06.00 to 12.30 WIB. I chose this market because the price of all materials is very cheap and complete. Not infrequently traditional markets located in village areas usually buy materials to be sold in this market. So because today my friend and I were not busy, we decided to go shopping. Early this morning around 9.30 I went to the market with my co-workers to shop for our spices which had started to run out, since shopping last month. Now, I need a special kitchen for dry spices, I usually stock it once a month. Quite a long time, but if stored properly and correctly, the spices will remain fresh like the first time you buy them.

Shopping For Spices

Talking about the kitchen spices that I use most often in every dish, whatever it is, shallots and garlic, these 2 spices are very attached to every dish, whatever it is. So don't be surprised if I stock up so much of both. I bought 1 kg of shallots at a price per kg of IDR. 34,000 and 1 kg of garlic for IDR. 18,000. I don't forget to choose when I buy, because in traditional markets I will be free to choose the good ones according to what we want, so you don't have to worry about finding rotten ingredients.

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Apart from shallots and garlic, I bought several other seasoning ingredients which are very complete for sale here. I bought several spices, namely cardamom, cumin, Bay leaf, cinnamon, star anise, pepper, turmeric, cloves, coriander, dried chilies, nutmeg, candlenut and also ketapang seeds.

Now for this material I buy per type of material for IDR. 2,000 except coriander, dried chili and candlenut I bought IDR. 5000 to get that much. After buying a lot of spices for my kitchen needs, I also stopped at another kiosk to buy some other ingredients.

Tips On How To Store Spices So They Last

After having enough fun shopping for my spice needs, I went straight home and continued to organize all my groceries into the spice storage containers at each place.

Now, as I said above, when storing dry spices like the spices that I bought, they must be stored properly in a closed container and stored in the refrigerator so that they last. Actually, it can also be stored at room temperature, however, the integrity of the material does not last long.

For shallots and garlic I store them in a basket at room temperature, so they don't spoil easily. Now, if you store this material in the fridge, it will easily grow shoots, and it will not last long. Therefore I highly recommend that you use a method like mine to store in a large basket and leave it unclosed. Because the red onion and garlic the drier the better.

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Uses Of Spices

The kitchen spices that I bought are the main needs for cooking in my dishes. In fact, there are still a lot of wet spices or fruit spices used in dishes, but dry spices are the main spices that I need to stock up on. Shallots and garlic are the main components in any dish, but other supporting spices play an important role, especially in traditional Indonesian dishes, a lot of selected spices are used.

Apart from that, the spices I spend on are widely used in dishes such as curry sauce, fruit soup or vegetable soup. Even desserts or cakes. Like cloves, cinnamon and star anise, for example, these three spices are ingredients that really play a role in adding aroma to every dish. While other ingredients such as ketapang seeds, candlenut, cumin and also nutmeg, are types of spices that play a very important role in giving flavor to your cooking dishes.

And finally, I also want to total my shopping expenses today, IDR. 85,000 or the equivalent of $5.43. Very cheap isn't it, shop that much at traditional markets. It's very happy to shop for kitchen needs cheap and complete. So friends, that's vegan shopping for the 4th edition specifically for spices from me, I hope to give you new knowledge in this post of mine. Find the link to enter the 4th edition vegan shopping contest here !!