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!

McCormick Spices: My Kind of Flagship Store

This is my kind of flagship store...all spices! 

McCormick & Company opened a beautiful 3,800 square foot "McCormick World of Flavors" retail store on Baltimore's Inner Harbor dedicated to their spices and other McCormick brands like Grill Mates®, Lawry’s®, Zatarain’s® and Old Bay®  

I was a sentimental fool, admiring all of the spice tins of yesteryear. The company did a beautiful job displaying the life of McCormick spices. Remember my vintage spices - the ones that belonged to my grandmother?  Her paprika would fit right in (above).

I am so impressed with the McCormick brand. They are innovative, modern and interactive - as a home cook, what's not to love?  I was instantly a fan of their "Recipe Inspirations" collections. Have you seen them (above)? Each recipe card has the right amount of six spices  to make one recipe. It allows consumers to experiment with new flavors, without having to invest in 6 full jars of spices. Once they fall in love with the flavors, they can buy the jar for their collection. Genius.

I was also very interested in their salt dispensary. You know that I have a salt collection and I wanted to get some of their special flavored salt-by-weight. Sun ripened tomato salt, chipotle sea salt, lime fresco salt - I want them all! I must have gotten distracted because somehow I didn't dispense any for myself.

McCormick and Company was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1889, which made 2014 the company's 125th Anniversary. They designed a darling retro blue and white pepper tin and I managed to get that up to the register.  It is my kind of souvenir.

In addition to the commemorative tin, the company launched an initiative called "The Flavor of Together." It is the process of collecting stories from customers around the world about flavors and family recipes, as well as a $1.25 million donation to the United Way to help feed those in need. You can click the link in this paragraph and read hundreds of stories from around the world. 

This company has vision, and to me that is the spice of life!

Golden Fig's Enhanced Sugar

Every time I reach into my cupboard and pull out one of my beloved Golden Fig enhanced sugars, I ask myself the same two questions:  

• Why don't more companies make sugar blends like these? 
• Why haven't more stores/people discovered Golden Fig, the maker of said sugars?

I initially found Golden Fig when I bought their "Cranberry Spices" mix in a cooking store while on vacation in Minnesota.  I can't find this heavenly blend on their website, but when I call, they usually have it and can mail me a few jars.  The "Cranberry Spices" is a blend of maple powder (see it sounds good already, right?), ground ginger, orange peel powder, thyme (totally the secret ingredient - it adds incredible depth), ground nutmeg, anise and cloves.  The company intends for you to use this spice blend to make a cranberry sauce, which is delicious to be sure.  I want you to sprinkle this heavenly mixture over roasted acorn squash, roasted butternut squash, pureed squash - you get the idea.  It makes all of the harvest vegetables sing.  I joke that I'd sprinkle it in the bathtub if I could - it smells that wonderful.

Anyhoo, because I was such a fan of the "Cranberry Spices," I decided to try some of their enhanced sugars.  I love them all.  They are a culinary indulgence; certainly not necessary for day-to-day living, but very fun to sprinkle with abandon when the mood strikes.

• Making buttered toast? Shake on some "Cinnamon Orange" sugar.
• Shortbread hot out of the oven? Sprinkle it with "Lemon Rosebud" and listen to the girls ooh and ahh
• Non-fat Greek yogurt with berries for breakfast? Douse it with pink "Hibiscus" sugar 
• Baking Christmas rolls?  They will be even better made with "Cardamom Sugar"
• Fruit Salad need a little something? Sprinkle it with "Lavender Ginger" sugar

Honestly, you can't go wrong.  I love my collection of special sugars from the Golden Fig. I reach for them all the time and feel like I am a sweet genius.

West Palm Beach: Green Market Saturday

It looks like I was in Morocco, but lo and behold, this is West Palm Beach!  Just adjacent to the WPB Antique and Flea market on Banyan, was a beautiful open market.

You can shop the West Palm Beach Green Market every Saturday and see beautiful produce, flowers and, yes, spices for sale.  This booth is by Scoche.  A spice and tea blend company with camera-ready displays.  

It was the scented air that drew me over.  The aroma of ground spice and fragrant tea was irresistible.

When I saw these beautiful tea blends (I love being able to see the ingredients), I told the vendor about how I had seen silver dragees (small edible silver balls used in cake decorating) mixed into tea blends to add a holiday sparkle.  It didn't seem like he was going to try it, but I thought I would contribute an idea when I could.  I am going to try this myself in the near future and I'll show you.
(Update: see my beautiful tea here)

If you visit the West Palm Beach Green Market, be sure to seek out Scoche.  Keep walking and breathing until you find yourself in wafts of scented air.  You can't miss it. 

Spice Puzzle

Wouldn't this make a great puzzle?  Last week I got a bee in my bonnet and decided to organize the cupboard next to my stove top.

Halfway through, the array of spices, salts and herbs was so overwhelming it almost looked pretty.  So I grabbed my camera and took this photo to show you.  This is real life - a combination of high hopes, wrong turns and a lot of spice.  

I was looking through my stack of Everyday Food magazines (December issues) to find a one-cookie-dough-many-ways recipe.  What I found was an advertisement by McCormick that said if you have any spices that were packaged in Baltimore, Maryland, they were at least 15 years old.  Yikes!  And the issue I was reading was from the 2006 issue, so add another 6 years to the past its prime calculation.  I had to know if any of my spices were 20 years old.

Yep.  I found 5 bottles from my wedding shower days!  I now know with certainty that I don't use: Allspice, Marjoram, Chervil or Savory.  Ha!  I pitched a few other bottles that seemed old and now I have more room on the behind the door adhesive spice rack for flavorings I do actually use and the rest of the containers are arranged by type in the cupboard. Victory.

Do you have any vintage spices?

Dean and Deluca spices in Georgetown

"Anne, do you want to go in Dean an..."
"Yes!"

It is no big secret that I love to cook. When I saw a Dean & Deluca shop in Georgetown, it instantly moved to the top of my "must visit" list. We had a relaxing day shopping the area and finished with a culinary whirl inside this beautiful store. Long glass cases were filled with the finest meats, salads, cheeses and pastries. Everything was a picture. But what did I choose to represent my trip? A display of their signature spice tins. I have always wanted to have a ridiculously large selection of spices in tins from Dean & Deluca and here they all were before me.

How did the afternoon end? At Dean & Deluca's outdoor gelato bar. I indulged in two beautiful shades of green: pistachio and mint chocolate chip.