Secrets of Saffron

by Pat Willard

Saffron is evocative enough to elicit the most sensuous descriptions. Over thousands of years it has perfumed the halls of Crete's palaces, made Cleopatra more alluring and drive crusaders and German peasants to their deaths. While many once foreign spices like cinnamon, mace and ginger no longer spur adventurers to the ends of the earth, saffrom remains tantalizingly exotic. Resistant to modern technology, the fragile blossoms must still be gathered by hand from the ancient fields of Iran, Greece, Italy, southern France and Spain. Secrets of Saffron is the story of this extravagant rover.