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Move over Spice Girls — I’ll tell you what we really, really want in our food

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Time to spice up your life

Attention. Special events are approaching. It’s feasts. Foods.

Father’s Day, graduations, vacations, weddings, Juneteenth, July 4, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, maybe grandma’s birthday in between.

Forget your calendar. Consider your stomach. Today it’s a tutorial on your spices.

Pepper. King of spices. Prized during the Middle Ages. Birthplaces were Genoa, Alexandria, Venice which owed them their prosperity. Today pepper encompasses the globe with US, Japan, Korea the biggest consumers. Main producing countries are Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, Sri Lanka.

Black, dried, from flowering vine Piperaceae, its pungency comes from the piperine compound — whatever that is. A home remedy that supposedly helps cure constipation, diarrhea, indigestion and insect bites. However, it cannot help with City Hall.

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Jimmy Kimmel........

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