Forcing Branches: Improving February by Leaps and Bounds

Be still my heart! I was pushing my cart through the local QFC grocery store when I gasped and stopped. Then I said, "No way; no way, no way." This piqued Dan's interest. What on earth prompted this happy exclamation?

There were live flowering branches for sale! Grocery stores in Michigan don't sell live flowering branches ever, let alone in February. Okay, fine, if I went to a high-end organic store the likelihood of finding a treasure like this might go up, but I rarely do shop that way so I'm back to my original statement: never.

Yet here I was in a QFC (which is part of the Kroger Family of Grocery Stores) and I could buy and force my own forsythia or apple blossom branches! Did I mention that a large bundle was $5. I could hardly contain myself. I took this cart photo and texted my mom immediately. Look what I can have in this new wonderful part of the country!

I brought them home and had a large abstract swath of pink blossoms blooming on my kitchen ledge (lovely!) and tucked a few in my Valentine rose bouquet in the family room. All those years ago Martha talked about forcing branches and I was finally able to do it. Happy days are here again.

Am I going to make a scene about flowers and plants and life in the Pacific Northwest with its longer growing season until November? You bet.

Spice Bar: Buying Spices By Weight Allows for Experimentation

I am always looking for new products in the grocery aisle. I love to cook and I like to try new things. A little something for my salt collection, perhaps? A new flavor of Jell-O. Perfect pot-size spaghetti. I take my time when I'm shopping and have fun dreaming up what I can make.

When I saw this buy-by-weight spice display, I stopped in my tracks. How can this be? Can a spice company really survive if customers started buying by the pinch? 

One of the biggest obstacles in home cooking is having all of the ingredients. I know we often pass on a great looking recipe when it calls for a spice we don't already have in the house. 

While replacing our tried and true favorites can be expensive, experimenting with a whole bottle of Cream of Tarter or Chinese 5 Spice feels somewhere between wasteful and reckless. Why? I'm not sure, but I know that I can't be along in this feeling.

I found this Spice and Tea Bar by Frontier Natural Products Co-op in a Washington QFC grocery store and I bought from it the very first time I saw it. I was going to make a small batch of pickles in my hotel room and I needed only a smidgen of turmeric.  I had resigned myself to buying an entire bottle, but when I saw this display and figured out how to dispense a little into the provided bags, I ended up buying just enough for one recipe: 17 cents worth. It felt like I had conquered a big hurdle. 

I felt what I can only describe as a sense of freedom knowing that I now had a way to experiment with a whole new selection of spices without a big commitment. This is a revolutionary development in cooking as far as I'm concerned. We no longer need to buy an $8.00 bottle of ground cardamom, when the recipe only calls for 1 teaspoon. Head to the store with your list of ingredients and come home with exactly what you need for the recipe. When a recipe becomes a favorite, buying the bottle makes sense. No one liked the curried lamb chops? No biggie. Toss the recipe and move on.

I read a lot of magazines and watch plenty of cooking shows, yet I have never heard anyone mention this new buy-by-weight spice bar concept. Have you? Help me get the word out - this is big!