Priceless Paintings from W7

I use a lot of vanilla in my cooking. I use it to flavour cakes and muffins, Pannacotta, Fruit Tumblers, Pudding, Ice Cream, Creme Brullee or Pudim Flan, or to make vanilla-flavoured sugar for use with summer fruits and berries. Its not unusual that I should use two to four vanilla pods on a single weekend.

Even without the Madagascar vanilla crisis, I have always found the price for vanilla quite steep. Subject to its quality and origin, a single pod typically sells for £2…2.50 here in the UK supermarkets, and bargains are rare.

I had pretty much wasted two pods on a large portion of strawberry ice cream last week – wasted, because the strawberries had no aroma to speak of, and neither did the resulting ice cream. It wasn’t the vanilla’s fault, but it got me going. I am no cheapskate, but wasting over £5 of good vanilla on this unhappy ice cream annoyed me, and finally got me going on line.

Et voila! I have just taken delivery from Vanilla Mart, who sold me 20 premium pods (18-21 cm, thick and moist, smells wonderful) for a grand total of £8.50, P&P included. Ordered in the evening of day one, shipped on day two, received on day three.

The fool is me again, of course.

When something looks expensive and feels expensive, it probably is expensive. Supermarkets thrive from making the impression of providing a bargain, but an alert common sense is still required. I admit partial failure, and am glad that I have now overcome the Vanilla rip-off.

Food and Drink, Thoughts food, rip-off, spices