Those Robber Barons at McCormick

Trying to pick up some nutmeg at the store the other day. Hoping to get Penelope to make this zucchini bread she keeps promising us.

Threw a minor hissy fit about the price of the various jars of nutmeg in the spice aisle, then realized how poor my chances would be of ever procuring nutmeg on my own in the wild, without the benefit of supermarket shelves and clearly marked aisles and distribution networks and so forth. I don't have the faintest clue what the plant even looks like -- it could be cute, green and leafy or forty tall with purple spikes for all I know.

(Chances are, in these straitened circumstances I'd probably end up grating deadly nightshade into whatever I was baking, or just foregoing the spices altogether and letting my wilderness muffins turn out bland. Shame.)

Anyway. After that observation, a few dollars for a token quantity of this mystery spice from a faraway land didn't seem so unreasonable, but this still did:

(See image of "Rubbed Dalmatian Sage" for the princely sum of $5.25)

...Allow me to spit out my sand-and-poison-sumac cupcake with bark chip sprinkles to comment thusly -- What?!

Okay even if there weren't sage already growing three doors down behind my neighbor's house, you'd still never catch me paying these kind of outlandish prices for spices.

Eight and a half bucks per ounce? For that kind of bread, buddy, I'll run over to the fire station and wipe down the poor canine myself.

Rubbed Dalmatian Sage. Right next to the little jar of three -- count 'em; three -- Madagascar Vanilla Beans that are evidently worth $6 apiece. They'll just sell you anything these days, won't they?