It's officially Chai season!  Hooray! 

I recently found a recipe for homemade Chai Masala and of course had to *chai* it.  I'm sorry.  Terrible pun.  Worth it.

I found all of the whole spices in bulk at Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers and also the spice jars that I used.  I'm going to go on a mini-rant here and confess that Vitamin Cottage is one of my happy places.  Does that make me even more of a hippy?  Whatever.  They have such great foods there. :)

We got a coffee/spice grinder as a wedding gift and I was stoked to use it to grind fresh coffee and be all gourmet but kind of forgot that its usefulness went beyond my barista purposes.  I stumbled across this recipe and was excited when I remembered that my coffee grinder was sitting in a cupboard waiting for me to make chai.

This was such a fun recipe to make and John and I will be reaping the benefits of it all winter long – so like until May.  Then iced chai.  Win!  The only struggle I had while making this was the smell.  All of these spices are very potent and I had to take breaks to breathe.  I couldn't smell normally for the rest of the day.  But on a less dramatic note, it was a nice air freshener! :)

* A couple of alterations I made/observations: I used ground nutmeg because I wasn't quite sure how to grate whole nutmegs with a cheese grater... Also they were pretty expensive.  Also, this recipe made me about 2 and a half spice jars (from Vitamin Cottage) which I was not prepared for.  I had to go back and buy more.  But the excess would make exceptional gifts.  If you get Masala Chai for Christmas from me, pretend to be surprised. *

So here is the recipe.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Happy fall!