At WalMart and most grocery stores check the Hispanic foods section. There was ground cumin for 84 cents for 1 1/2 oz. McCormick's ground cumin was 2.82 for 2 oz.
Herbs and spices are expensive to buy in grocery stores. I discovered that my local natural food store sells herbs and spices in bulk and it's so much cheaper!
To prevent salt from clogging with moisture, I put 1/4 teaspoon of dried parsley leaves into the salt shaker. I then add the salt. It works every time.
Vanilla extract gets expensive if you bake a lot and, with the holidays approaching, there is always that annoying discovery of an empty extract bottle. Never fear, you can easily make a cheap and never-ending bottle of vanilla extract!
Store the flavored sugar in an airtight container. If you refrigerate it will last for several months. The sky is the limit on how you would like to use the completed mixtures :-)
Instead of throwing away your leafy celery tops make your own dry celery flakes to use for flavoring in cooking anything from soups to stuffing to omelets by drying and storing them. half hour to 45 minutes.
If you buy vanilla beans, to make vanilla extract and have some left over, just put a bean or 2 in a quart jar. Fill the jar with sugar put a lid on it and let sit about a week. You will have vanilla sugar for coffee or use it in cake or cookie recipes.
We like to use the sea salt and pepper grinders that are found in the grocery stores, but when I had to measure for a recipe it was awkward. One day I came up with a very workable solution.
