Spice Tips and the Spice Set Giveaway

Whether I'm roasting vegetables, grilling meat or fish, cooking a stew, baking chicken, or making a salad, I almost always use spices.  There is no better way to enhance flavors of main ingredients than to add a touch of spices.  I enjoy mixing spices and vowed earlier this year to learn to make my own curry powder.  

The best way to decide which spices you like is to experiment. To get you started, here are 5 tips for using dried spices:

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Spice Set Giveaway

Fresh spices are the best.  Whether you use them frequently or just every once in a while, you want spices to provide smell and taste, not just color.  Have you ever checked the “best by” dates on your spices?  If you wish you could throw out your old spices, but can’t imagine replacing them all at once, here’s your chance to do that without spending a dime.  Or, if you haven’t yet accumulated a nice collection and have to buy them individually when recipes you want to make call for a spice you don’t have, then this giveaway is your chance to accumulate a wonderful collection all at once.  

I’m participating in a spice set giveaway sponsored by CookingPlanit.  This collection offers all-time favorites of mine (cinnamon, cumin and ginger), others that I love (cardamom, bay leaves, and hot pepper in two forms), and spice combinations that I use frequently, such as curry and chili powder. 

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Is Buying Food in Bulk Cheaper?

As in much else in life, the answer to whether it’s cheaper to buy food in bulk is (drumroll)… it depends.

As a general rule, I do find buying from a bulk bin is cheaper than buying pre-packaged food.  And typically, the larger size of the can, box, or bag, the less expensive the packaged food.  Certainly when it comes to herbs and spices, my local grocery sells them in bulk for much less than the bottled versions (of the same and other brands) sold at the chain grocery stores.

It’s also true that if you’re carefully buy only what you need from a bulk bin rather than amount the food company wants to sell you in a package, you're likely to save money and avoid wasting food.

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