I wrote a post the other day about us being unable to acquire Aleppo pepper due to the conflict in Syria. Sadly I’m not announcing peace. But we did find a supplier with a year or two supply of Aleppo, the real stuff. He just has a couple of palettes in his warehouse that he bought and imported before the fighting.

We realized about a year ago that the spice we were buying wasn’t that great. The quality was variable at best. Imagine lots mixed, buyouts of low priced deals, palette sitting around for years waiting for a better price, or somebody to remember them. This is the world of spice traders, and we took what they sold. It’s nothing like the other food we buy.

So we’ve been working hard to find alternative sources to improve our food quality. I think the first item we made this change for was the Hibiscus. The new Hibiscus came in about 6 months ago and it’s just insanely good. It’s organic and much more direct than what we used to buy so it’s much fresher. The color is different, the consistency is different, and the taste is so much better.

I’m struggling a bit with some of these upgrades because I’m getting used to the better stuff at work but don’t have a way to source it for my home kitchen. We’ll have to start selling a Clover pantry soon.

We’re working on upgrading most of our spices, and one of the happy surprises was that we found one of our new suppliers had Aleppo, which we thought was gone. So you’ll find our favorite pepper back on our menu. We’ve been missing you Aleppo.