[Sca-cooks] Grains of Paradise

[Lilinah]

Well, after i sent my message to the list i kept poking around on the 
web. A number of on-line spice vendors list themselves as still 
having Grains of Paradise.

However, the World Spice Merchants' web site says they have none and 
there's a note on the page about the lack:
from their webpage on grains of paradise
[http://www.worldspice.com/product_pages/spice_pages/0115grains_of_paradise.htm]
>  Increased demand for these pungent little seeds, geopolitical
>  upheaval in central Africa and a limited supply of quality product
>  has caused quite a bottleneck. As such, we haven't seen them in the
>  store for some time. We will continue in our efforts to find a
>  consistent source so please check this page for updates on our
>  progress. We leave this page up for information and reference.
>  Thanks for your understanding and wish us good luck on the hunt.

In response, a friend of mine posted:
>  heck, I was blaming the grains of paradise shortage on Samuel Adams,
>  since I think they're the ones putting it into their beer.

So, i wonder... maybe Sam Adams is buying a large amount of a limited 
quantity, meaning that some merchants aren't getting any.

But in any case, Sumatra doesn't seem to enter the picture, although 
it seems to me that GoP could probably be grown there. There are both 
warm moist tropical areas and somewhat drier areas, such as where my 
ex-husband is from around Lake Samosir in the province of North 
Sumatra. When we visited his village in July, it looked a lot like 
much of California at that time of year, somewhat dry, golden hills, 
quite unlike Jakarta, where we'd been living, which has two seasons, 
rainy (rains a few times a week) and rainier (rains heavily every day 
once or twice)

I s'pect the original poster just got some place names confused.

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita