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p.s. she makes for a beautiful summery avocado toast (or fancy egg toast)(or is divine simply all buttered up)(but she can go sweet too with a tart berry jam) :)
Otherwise known as Earth’s most expensive spice (trading between $5-10 per gram comparable to gold at $60-80), it’s extracted from the saffron crocus, part of the Iris family. The flower blooms once a year over a period of three weeks in the fall, with peak harvesting happening at sunrise, when the flower opens exposing just three crimson threads (i.e. stigmas)(i.e. what we know as our precious saffron threads).
Harvesting must happen quickly (and by hand), before the flower wilts and goes dormant until the next summer. But it’s this very high labor and low yield situation (for it takes about 70,000 saffron crocus flowers to yield just one pound of saffron threads!) that makes saffron so pricy.
That said, its not its price tag which makes saffron so interesting a spice (nor, perhaps surprisingly, its bright hue), but its recently widely studied antidepressant effects (said to equal SSRIs) and its effects as a stimulant-like substance for ADHD (said to be equal, though very different, to modern day stimulants- earning the internet nickname of nature’s Ritalin).
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