The day is here! Made my garam masala, and with it, learned a very valuable, humbling lesson. The lesson for today follows: When I decided to do this as a project, I went to a larger brand-name grocery in the area to get all the stuff I'd need for this recipe. Spices, spices, spices.... Costly spices at that. I paid $8.59 for less than 2 ounces of cardamom pods. I thought this was silly at the time, but I had nowhere to go other than there. Herein lies the lesson: Never, never, never, I repeat, buy spices or ethnic ingredients from ANYWHERE but an ethnic store. As I was moseying across town today, I saw an Indian grocery I'd never known was there. I still needed to pick up whole cloves for the garam masala. So, I figured I'd stop in, see what was in there, try and get lucky with a purchase or two. I'd looked at a small 1 oz. container of whole cloves in the big store for over $7! In the Indian grocery I found that the cardamom pods I bought before were here, at a price of $5.99 for 6oz. and the cloves were 3.5oz for $2.99. Lesson WELL learned. Learn from my mistakes, support ethnic grocers.
Onto the project! First, the recipe I'm working from:
Garam Masala - All-around Blend
Note that I've also chosen to include a half stick of cinnamon in my mix, and split the mustard seed in half white, and half black mustards. Feel free to experiment! Garam Masala is a personal blend, not set in stone! =)
Now, onto making our amazing spice blend. =) Prepare all your materials you'll need.
Here you'll see our prepared spices, our pan for toasting in, and our mortar and pestle.
Spices into the pan!
Here's where things start getting good! I used a medium-ish setting to toast these, about a 7 (of 10). Make sure you're stirring or even just swirling them around in the pan regularly, you dont want them to burn.
Here's Austin (my roommate's cat) hunting me while Im toasting the spices. XD He's too cute. You'll see that I've left the turmeric out, be sure to do this, it'll burn way too quickly if its added to the toasting mix.
You should let the spices toast until they start to smell really aromatic. Took me about 6-7 minutes.
Into the mill!
Start a'grinding these beauties. A side note: the cardamom pods I've used here are kind of a pain to shell before toasting, and I've found if you grind them gently in the mill first, they drop the seeds inside really easily. They make your fingers smell awesome too. XD
Getting there!
This is about the point I got to before I added my turmeric. Keep going! I know its labor intensive and a pain, but Oh man! is it worth it. =)
Done!
As you can see, the turmeric gives it a splendid color. You guys cant imagine the amazing smell that this stuff has. Store-bought cant compare at ALL. Use your mix immediately or you can store it in an airtight container for up to 1 month. Ill be using mine for some Chicken Tikka Masala soon. Ill be sure to keep y'all posted! Cook on!
I've finished the walls of the gingerbread house... COMPLETELY. X_x Took quite a while, as you can see. Enjoy the pictures. ^_^ More will come as it's completed. 
So, my gingerbread house is finally taking shape. All of the windows for it are poured. Let me tell you, tedious project. All the other people in my class were saying: "Oh, man! Took me like, 10 minutes to pour my windows." Yeah... mine took me about 3 hours. Of course, i have 15 windows in two distinct styles, with 6 different colors... XD Im pretty darn proud of how these turned out. Today, however, will be the big day of construction and wall decor. Wish me luck! Heres a few photos of the windows. =)
