Recipe cards for adventurous new cooks

About a year ago I wrote about a company that sells exotic food kits, the idea being that you could try out an exotic cuisine without having to invest in all the wacko ingredients that would then languish in your cabinet. Here's another little company that has taken the same idea and scaled it down to friendlier proportions. World Cuisine Institute (a lofty title for two women friends who started the company) has put together recipe cards for cool dishes like Saudi Arabian Chicken Kabsah, Mexican Mole and Ethiopian Doro Wat, and attached little bags of spices in the quantities you need to do the recipe.

The cards sell for $7 (except for the side dishes, which are $8 because they include the rice or beans) and are available in various retail locations in Colorado or on the World Cuisine Institute website. They have a number of gift sets, so if you know someone who was inspired by Julie and Julia to try to "cook his/her way through" something, you could give him/her the entire set of recipes for $100. (There are also smaller sets of 3 or 4 recipe cards, all about $20.)

UPDATE (November 2010): The World Cuisine Institute appears to have disappeared. It was definitely a home-grown business, and perhaps the women who were running it just couldn't make a go of it.