Organic Spices, Making the Switch

After reading a post by The Food Babe, I started thinking about how long I'd had our spice rack and decided it was time to refresh it. That doesn't mean I went right out and replaced all my spices right away. That is kind of a big investment all at once. I learned that spices have a shelf life of about 6-12 months and my spice rack had been around a couple years. Yuck. When I saw this new spice rack at Costco, I couldn't resist and had to buy it! Too good of a deal to pass up and plus it looks nice on the kitchen counter. For around twenty bucks, I at least was starting with fresh spices.

Because we have started to use our Crock Pot more I've had more recipes call for spices I didn't have on hand. Since I would be buying these individually, I decided I would opt for going organic. Spices have benefits far beyond adding flavor to our foods and since we've switched many of our food items to organic over the last few years, it made sense to pay more attention to having quality organic spices on hand. In the past I wasn't in the practice of using a lot of spices - but that is all changing with our commitment to meal planning. See two of our favorite new family meal rotations here and here. I will be adding more organic spices with each trip to the store. The first trip I picked up 3 Simple Truth Organic spices.

When I was at Ralphs on my last grocery shopping trip, the store employee who helped me was very helpful in pointing out the "Simple Truth Organic" tabs that stick out on the shelves to help shoppers identify organic items. They didn't have every spice I needed that day in the organic brand... so I may have to make a trip to one of the other health food stores in my area as I continue making the switch.

Is your family switching to organic? What have you switched so far? If you are already buying organic spices, where do you buy yours?