Buying Herbs/spices Online

Do you have a Penzey's in your area...For sure check them out.

I have never bought spices on line. Even saffron. I prefer ethnic stores.

Penzey's makes wonderful spices. They are not cheap but excellent quality.

My friend uses http://www.azurestandard.com/ and it is awesome!!. I plan on ordering from then next month. You have to create an account to see the prices, but it requires almost no personal information to do so. (Unless you buy)

I order from azurestandard.com. I've also ordered from frontier spices and buy all kinds of groceries from amazon.

I am lucky that most herbs I use regularly I can grow.

Don't buy Saffron in bulk, actually I wouldn't advise buying any herbs or spices in bulk because they have such a short shelf life.

I can tell you buying in whole form instead of ground and grinding it yourself will extend shelf life.

I've used San Francisco Herb Co. (west coast) and their sister company, Atlantic Spice Co (east coast), and been fairly happy with everything I've purchased from them. I buy bulk tea, and herbs for sachets/"tub teas" and to make "pregnancy tea." I've ordered the mix from SFHC that has dried carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. to use in soups and stews, the "cheese powder" (it's way cheaper to buy in bulk & then just buy the big bag of whole wheat noodles from Gordon Food Services in order to make whole wheat mac & cheese) and it's all good. I've also ordered and used henna for dying my hair (red) from SFHC.

Edited to add: I've also bought the bulk herb mixes from SFHC (Italian seasoning, etc.) and been happy with those. Cheaper than the store packages, and most contain no salt, which is a plus for us.

links:
http://www.sfherb.com/
http://www.atlanticspice.com/

SFHC & ASC don't carry exactly the same things, but they carry many of the same things, and I think the companies are actually related.