I am a big fan of cooking from scratch. I'm rather proud of my knife skills (learned through watching chefs on TV so probably still a little rough, but it suits me). And I love shopping at the local farmer's market where I can get locally grown produce and other delicacies. One of my favorite "other" merchants is a spice shop where I can get just about anything dried.
That being said, I recently purchased some items from the Tastefully Simple line which were purported to make dinner preparation a breeze--and they turned out to be right! Their "Onion Onion" flavoring mixed with various other ingredients has really made a tasty addition to our evening meals. So when I ran out I thought I could make my own to "save" time and the effort of seeing who was having a party so I could order more. But, after pricing the dried ingredients at the shop mentioned above it turns out that it is actually cheaper to order it through Tastefully Simple.
Lesson--sometimes you DON'T have to do it yourself!