Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Spicy Spices


Is that not the most sexiest thing you've ever seen in your entire life? Okay, if not your entire life than at least the last few days? Holy effin crap do I love spices. And who do I love to buy spices from? Oh, well I'm glad you asked. That would be World Spice. And no, I'm not getting paid to advertise for them. Unless they want to pay me. Then I'll totally talk about you guys all the time. Seriously.

The reason I love World Spice so much (other than they're in Seattle, I miss home!) is that you can order spices by the ounce. There's not many places you can order every one of their spices by the ounce. Another reason is they don't gouge you on shipping costs. How many times have you been Über-stoked to buy something online only to find out the shipping costs are twice the price of the product? Not so with this place. If you only order like an ounce or two they'll just toss it in a padded envelope and charge you like a buck. It's friggin' awesome. For 15 oz. of 9 different spices, some cream of tartar and two spice mixes they charged me only $31...total! That's shipping, handling, the spices, everything!

If I were to buy equal amounts of these spices in the grocery stores I'd pay three to four times that amount. The other day alone I wanted some whole cloves to make that red wine granita from Apple Pie, Patis & Pâté. I was even shopping at the commissary where everything is dirt cheap, and for .92 oz. of whole cloves it was $4. Holy crap. That's almost $70 per pound! I paid $1.50 for an ounce. That's right, $1.50 for a whole ounce of cloves.

As if I needed another reason to toot Word Spices horn, guess how old those spices are you have in your cupboard? I'm assuming that like most people you have mainly McCormick spices. If so, go here: McCormick Spice Check Challenge. You think you're going to be shocked at how old your spices are? You have no idea how appalled you're going to be. I'm not kidding. I was livid when I went to this website. I'd just restocked an entire kitchen with spices after moving to CA and found out how old they really were. If I hadn't opened them already I would've taken them all back to the store. I had oregano that was 11 years old. I had just bought it that day! And they say you're supposed to throw your spices out every 6 months because they go stale? Yeah friggin' right. What's the point when they're already over a decade old?

Never again with the grocery store spices people. Never. Again.

4 comments:

Shaheen said...

Ugg I can't believe they have such old stuff in the markets. Just the other day I almost picked up a lemon pepper seasoning, only to find that it's a month away from expiry!

Sweet Bird said...

Coco: I agree. I checked all of the spices I'd bought that day(over 25 bottles)and not a single one was newer than 1998. I was disgusted. Since then, I just order as I need. Obviously I have loyalty to WS, but I hope everyone has a spice merchant they can get quality spices through. Otherwise it's like you're adding dust to your food,

Kristin @ Going Country said...

Penzey's is my equivalent to your World Spices. The MiL and I have a serious problem with ordering too much from them. Their catalog is just too tempting. Epazote? Sure, throw that in there! Mastic? I'm not sure what that is, so let's get it! It's ridiculous. On the other hand, we always have every single spice we could ever need, which is kind of nice.

Anonymous said...

I usually buy my spices at the local Indian grocers and it's really cheap but I have to buy lots of it at a time.
Thanks for the link to world spice. Looks like a quality shop right there.