I love nutmeg.

For a long time, nutmeg simply met pumpkin pie, which is a good thing. But then I discovered fresh nutmeg, and feel in love.

If you have a container of ground nutmeg in your spice rack, and have no idea when you got it, then you have absolutely no idea what nutmeg truly is, and you have no idea what you have been missing.

All spices should be replaced once a year, as once they are exposed to air, they lose their flavor. Makes me wonder why most spices are sold in such large containers, since few people can go through that much spice in a year. But if you care about food it is worth your while to replace our spices every year. Unsurprisingly, I replace mine around this time of the year, right before the Christmas baking frenzy.

But back to nutmeg.

You should be able to find whole nutmegs in most any grocery store now, and although a box grater is fine, I cannot recommend highly enough a Microplane grater. The spice grater is perfect for nutmeg, although the zester grater works just as well.

Once you grate nutmeg, you’ll notice it’s fabulous smell.

The other thing you’ll eventually notice is that a nutmeg looks slightly different when it is fresh grated than after it’s been sitting in the jar for awhile. That visual difference I think gives you an idea of how much flavor is lost when it is pre-ground.

So what is nutmeg good in? First and foremost, pumpkin pie. But I also like to add a little to my apple pie, and it’s fabulous in bread pudding, and even better in the whiskey sauce that goes with the bread pudding. I also have a recipe for nutmeg cookies that everyone loves–think of sugar cookies with a little extra something.

But this week, of course, nutmeg will be staring in pumpkin pie.

Mmmmmmm!

For obvious reasons, (like the fact that we had six visitors Saturday before the party) I haven’t started my Christmas baking. So tonight I made dough for cookies that needed to be refrigerated. That’s be rugelach, sugar cookies, and a new cookie–sour cream nutmeg cookie. I’ve also branched out and decided to try fresh nutmeg this year. Even bought myself a new Microplane grater. (Finer grating size than the one I already have.)

We’ll see how they turn out.

As far as the fine grater and the nutmeg, I have to say that it wasn’t really very difficult to grate the nutmeg–added maybe a minute onto the prep time. So as with the Microplane zester/grater I got, I definitely recommend this one. I’ll let you know whether grating nutmeg is really that much better.