Cardamom

I made some Japanese curry from scratch tonight for tomorrow night's dinner. I started at around 7 pm and finished up at around 10:30 pm, with about a 20 minute break at 8 pm to put the girls to bed.

That first hour consisted of prep time, including making my own garam masala. Because while I mostly follow the recipe in the above Japanese curry link, I like to use half fresh garam masala and half S&B Oriental Curry Powder.

How can it take an hour to make mix spices together?

Well, first off, it didn't take an hour to mix the spices together. I also peeled and cut my potatoes and carrots, which probably took me about 10 minutes.

Second, the majority of the other 50 minutes went towards breaking open cardamom pods.

After the fact, I thought about searching if there is an easy way to break open cardamom pods.