Spice-o-Rama

Omg, omg, omg, Vons had a giant pile of spices on the half-off rack!  I was very good and only got items I needed, plus saffron.  Half-off saffron, hell yes!  All of the dates were fine, seals good, product not caky.  Sometimes, the manufacturer redesigns the labels or changes the size, so markets clear out the old lot.

Oh, then the lady next to me pointed to another bin of spices behind me of a different brand that was 75% off.  Found all the pumpkin pie spice that wasn't there the time I gave up and mixed my own.  Never mind, I'm good.

And the reason I went rooting through there in the first place, cinnamon for the previous two posts, wasn't as good a deal as the It's Delish brand.  It may be local in California, but they make inexpensive spices, nuts, and candies that are kosher and often kosher for Passover.  You can also order online, but shipping generally negates the advantages of a discount brand.

A couple of days later, I realized I should have bought paprika, so I headed back to the now severely decimated pile of jars, this time with my camera to get these photos.  (My phone's camera stopped working a couple of months ago.)  No paprika, so I bought It's Delish again.  We go through paprika in my family; 8oz will not go bad.  Techie Smurf keeps his next to the stove with the salt and pepper.  What got me mad was that someone in the intervening two days had opened the saffron and vanilla bottles and stolen the spices in them, then put back the empty jars.  Just the two most expensive spices in the world, nothing else.  They knew what they were doing, making off with about $200 of spices out of only ten jars.  People can be gross.