That’s not totally disingenuous. If you’re cooking for yourself rather than eating out or buying ready made things and you plan to do that a lot of it, some outlay on things that gets used across multiple recipes over long periods (can be years with spices) is reasonable to expect and also not to cost in recipe estimates. What reasonable to expect someone to have in their pantry already is very subjective so what to me seems fair to assume won’t seem so reasonable to others, but there are assumptions you can make. You wouldn’t for example criticise a recipe for failing to incorporate the cost of a pan if it tells you to pan fry something or a spoon to stir it or the cost of the water out of the tap. Most of those examples are equipment but I think there’s an extent to which you can write recipes with similar givens for ingredients as well, otherwise it becomes untenable to estimate costs. You don’t typically have to use the same spices as recommended by a recipe either. For some it’s essential but for many it’s just what you like or what you have so, don’t buy 80 quid of spices for one recipe, but if you can figure out which are most important for that recipe and which you also really like the taste of, buy just those and use them in this and many other recipes going forward. You gradually add to your collection because it takes a long time to get through and eventually you get to a point where you have most of the spices referenced in a given recipe or decent substitutes.