[Zana]

I usually have more than 70 to 100 jars of spices and herbs at any one time in my kitchen....that includes multiple salts - sea salts, smoked salts, garlic salt; multiple types of garlic powder (I dry different varieties and make up my own blends); multiple types of basil (grow my own), mint(grow my own), fennel, sesame seeds, ginger (grow my own); various peppers - whole or ground; various curry leaves for blending my own blends; and many middle eastern or far eastern or other ethnic spices/herbs. And I have a dedicated coffee grinder just for spices/herbs...so I can make up my own blends.

So playing with the fennel to find out what you like it with can become a bit of a game. Over the years I've made note of dishes I've had on my travels and have gone out of my way to purchase cookbooks from those locales where I really got into the food. Experiment. Test out ideas....even strange ones. Believe me some that sound really strange can turn out amazingly well in the end. (I just did that in the past few weeks using strawberry/raspberry/cranberry/apple/cinnamon fruit herbal tea blend to make a marinade for a pork loin. It was to die for!)

Although I have different salts in my kitchen, it is used very sparingly and sometimes not at all on a daily basis. I prefer to flavour my food with something other than high salt / high fat that seems to be the "norm" for N. American convenience cooking.