Like many households, we do more baking during the holidays than at any other time of year. And, of course, I use those old family recipes that require making things from scratch instead of taking the easy way out.

Prepackaged cookie dough is very attractive during the holiday rush, and, as it turns out, may be less expensive than making that dough yourself, particularly if you count your own labor in that price.

But I always make my own, no matter what the cost. And vanilla extract does not come cheap. One good-sized bottle of vanilla will last us a few years so I got a good dose of sticker shock when I went to buy a new bottle.

As it turns out, vanilla beans are hard to come by. According to vanilla.com, vanilla is the only edible fruit produced by the orchid family, and it takes 18 months to three years from planting for a vine to produce orchids. The orchids then must be pollinated by hand to produce the beans. And then the beans must hang on the vine for nine months before harvesting.

No wonder vanilla is a little pricey.

The first bottle I picked up in Whole Foods went for $13.99. It was Tahitian. The bottle from Mexico went for $10, and you could get one from Madagascar for $9.99. Madagascar, it turns out is the most common source, and friends tell me if I'll just go to the nearest giant discount store I can get a "huge" bottle for less than $10.

Stop & Shop, meanwhile, offers one ounce of McCormick's for $4.29, but the store also had a four-ounce "organic" brand, Rondelle's for $8.99. At Kings, you could get two ounces on a brand called Spice Hunter for $4.99. It was on sale and is normally $5.99.

King's also had a four-ounce bottle of Nielsen-Massey's Madagascar vanilla on sale for $7.99, down from $9.99, making vanilla one of the staples that King's is not charging more for than its competitors.

Stop & Shop was the only store with "imitation" vanilla on sale for $1.29, but research shows that the chemicals used in it are not good for you, and it should be avoided.

Flour is far easier on the pocketbook than almost any other ingredient you can buy, and King's was running a big sale last week, offering three five-pound bags of Pillsbury for $5, two five-pound bags of Gold Medal for $4, and one bag of Heche's for $2.49 instead of the normal $3.49. But you can get Heche's on sale at Stop & Shop for $1.99.

Whole Foods had a bag of all-purpose flour for $2.99, and organic flour for $4.69.  There is not a wide selection flours, but there is a wide selection of sugars at Whole Foods so if you need something special, check there.

Stop & Shop had cookie mixes on sale, something I'll consider if my holiday schedule gets thrown off, but only after checking to make sure the mixes aren't using imitation vanilla.