My favorite source for spices

I admit it. I'm a food snob. At the very least, I'm a food snob wanna-be. Sometimes I cook. From scratch, even. I was telling my friend today that I actually went to the trouble of making the bread for the Thanksgiving stuffing. Once. And I made a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin. Once.

But I digress.

I always get my spices at Penzeys. I don't remember how I heard about them, but I've been mail-ordering my spices from them since they were just a mail-order catalog and two stores in Wisconsin. Then they opened a store on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. What a treat it was to go there. I'd open every jar of herb and spice to take a good whiff. And they had hot pepper flakes that were actually HOT. And 3 different types of cinnamon!

Then we moved to a god-forsaken city with no Penzeys, (Los Angeles) and I mourned the loss.

These days we're three hours from at least three Penzeys stores (St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati) and I try to make a point to stop in when we're in the area. I think we went around last March, to the one in Columbus, OH. (Another gymnastics meet. Nothing else in Columbus, you know.) I browsed, John broke a jar of cinnamon (they were really nice about it) and the kids sat in the kids' corner and drew pictures.

Today I got a Penzey's catalog in the mail. Check it out here. Page 13, especially. (Hint: Check out the ART on page 13. Anything look familiar?)