"I keep nothing past a year - don't care what anyone says."
Mama, are you including whole spices in that? If so, what a waste! Instead of throwing out your whole spices send them to me. I'll happily use them.
Consider this: Spices have been in global trade for centuries. Countries have lived and died over them. Columbus sailed to a new world for them. Family fortunes were founded on them. Why? Precisely because they retain their characteristics for the next best thing to forever. Perfectly good spices have been found in the pyramids and other tombs.
On the overland spice routes it sometimes took two years or more just to move the spice from point A to point B (just how fast do you reckon a camel moves). Nor is this process necessarily speeded up in today's high-speed world.
How long, do you think, has it been since those cardamom pods you bought yesterday were picked? They had to be cleaned and sorted (all by hand, incidentally). Bagged. Send to a distributor in India, who sent them down the line, until they eventually reached a packager in America, who put them in those little jars. Then they sat in his warehouse until the central buyer for the supermarket ordered them. Then they sat in the supermarket's distribution warehouse for God-knows how long. And then they sat at least several weeks on the supermarket shelf until you bought 'em.
Then you got home, and happily added this "fresh" cardamom to a recipe.
The tube of saffron I bought in January says, "best before end 2013." They have to but a use-by date on it, by law. So, no doubt, somebody in Spain arbitrarily said, "six years sounds good."
Now saffron doesn't last long in this household. But if I misplaced the tube, and then found it way in the back of the cupboard come 2014, or 2015 or 2020 do you think, for a single moment, that I wouldn't use it. My God! It's the second most expensive spice in the world, and every tendril is worth it's weight in gold. No way it's being deep-sixed.
This international trade would not have existed if whole spices were as fragile as some people make out. For instance, do you think that peppercorns, or whole nutmegs, or cumin seeds ever go bad? If they did, civilization as we know it would be a vastly different thing.
It's only when spices have been processed---ground, or pulverized, or crushed---that they lose their potency.
What amuses me are the people who keep their powdered spices long past their prime and then "make up for it" by using more than is needed.
