Groceries

I can’t stand waste. I am my mother’s daughter. She kept scraps of vegetables in a container in the freezer until she had enough for soup, and sent leftovers in our school lunches, even though it wasn’t cool. (But it was delicious, which taught me that not worrying about what was cool often resulted in … a pretty great lunch.) She cut the brown bits off fruit and made it into salad rather than throw it away because we kids thought it was rotten.

The endcap — a display of products placed at the end of an aisle in a store — is part of a contract between you and your grocer. You promise to look at the merchandise and occasionally buy from the end-of-aisle shelves, and your grocer promises to change the contents frequently, price items clearly, and keep it fully stocked and beautiful.

I first heard about LaCroix from a coworker who grew up outside of Chicago. She waxed poetic about her parents sitting down to sip cold “Pamplemousse”-flavored sparkling water at the end of the day, which sounded so intriguingly chic, another coworker bought a 12-pack of cans so we could try it ourselves. I tried one and wondered if I was missing something. It was fizzy water with a recognizable grapefruit flavor and not a hint of sweetness. What was the big deal?

Summertime is the season to do all kinds of fun food things, like throw a big party, can batches of preserves and pickles, and stock the freezer for the fall. This growing season produces all kinds of opportunities for buying ahead, cooking ahead, and celebrating. But what if there really isn’t room in the budget to buy 40 pounds of pickling cucumbers, as perfect as they look? What if you just can’t foot the bill for a month’s worth of meals?

The Internet and our grandmothers’ recipe boxes are stuffed with quick-fix recipes that go something like this: “Pour a can of cream of mushroom soup over chicken breasts. Bake one hour.” For most of my childhood, that style of dish was one of my favorite things to make. I felt like a real cook, preparing dinner all by myself, yet doing it so quickly and simply. As I get older, I crave the simplicity of those recipes, but without the preservatives and tinny, canned flavor.

If you’ve been having trouble getting your kids (or yourself) to eat more fruit, there might be a new solution for you. Breeders in California have developed a green grape that tastes exactly like cotton candy. These grapes aren’t just a marketing gimmick; instead the grower is trying to rediscover the original flavors of many of the grape varieties sold in grocery stores.

The smartest shoppers really know how to make the most of their trips to the store. It’s a skill, one I’m sure many of us wish we were better at. Smart shoppers know how to stretch their dollar further, avoid buying unnecessary items, and make their store work for them. Want in on some of their secrets? Here are the 10 things smart shoppers always do.

Energy drinks have dominated the specialty beverage market for years. There was an energy drink for everyone, but now the tides might be turning, with the hopes that a relaxation drink will capture consumers’ attention in the same way, but for a different purpose. A new company Tranquini is set to launch a canned beverage aimed at helping consumers relax, stress less, and cope with their busy lifestyles.

We’ll give you one guess what the biggest difference is between the My Plate meal plan, championed by the USDA, and the Raising the Bar on Nutrition plan, put forth by The Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition. Did you guess getting rid of meat? Then you’re exactly right. Being billed as the more economical version of My Plate, the new plan could save as much as $14 per week, which adds up quickly.

This week, NPR posed the question: What happens when those small organic food companies get bought up by larger factory farm competitors? Do consumers still trust them? It’s a valid question, as we hear about brands like Odwalla being owned by Coca-Cola, or as the article points out, Niman Ranch being recently acquired by Perdue — one of the largest chicken producers in the country.

With all the pumpkin spice mania reaching a fever pitch over the past few years, we’d forgotten all about the original food craze: maple bacon. Like they say, out of sight, out of mind. Well, Kellogg’s is trying to bring maple bacon back with their latest limited-edition flavor launch. The salty-sweet Pop-Tarts will hit store shelves in December, along with chocolate caramel and watermelon flavors.

Shopping the holiday sales is a sure-fire way to save money on groceries. It’s also an opportunity to save money on “seasonal” items you use year-round. Some of these may be ingredients that just get marked down for the winter holidays — like baking supplies, holiday beverage supplies, and cold-weather foods at rock-bottom prices — and others may be items that are really hard to find any other time of year.

In the grocery world, Black Friday comes on a Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving is one of the busiest (think: top two) days, industry-wide. Shopping carts and baskets are filled with predictable wares, from crescent rolls to sausage to sage. Everything (from creamed corn to staff) is beefed up in stores the week prior to Thanksgiving.

The holiday season always tempts me a little toward excess. It might be the year-end bonus or all the fun food in the stores or simply a desire to celebrate that sways me toward letting go and splurging a little more than we need to. Over the last couple days I’ve been reminding myself that going “whole hog” this season is not going to help us meet long-term goals. “Eat, drink, and be merry” doesn’t pay for that trip to Scotland.

During the winter, citrus becomes a staple in my kitchen: tangerines in the lunch box, lemon in tea, and lime in everything from chicken tortilla soup to sugar cookies. Just a little squeeze brightens up the heaviest dishes of the season — not to mention, my holiday mood. But there’s one part we often forget about, or get rid of altogether — the peel — which has just as much to give as the rest of the fruit.

In a lawsuit that could set a bad precedent for the Trader Joe’s store brand, Pepperidge Farm has sued the private label chain for trademark infringement, claiming that the TJ’s crispy cookies are a knock off of the brand’s famous Milano cookies. While this might not seem like such a big deal — Trader Joe’s could probably change the shape of their chocolate-filled sandwich cookie pretty easily — it could spell trouble down the line.

Tea time is a special thing. It can be how you welcome guests When it comes to giving tea-time gifts, the latter is the way to go! Indulge their tea-time love with gifts that’ll enhance the experience. From a snuggly mug to the prettiest teapot, here are 10 gifts to give them a “me-time” tea time! FORLIFE Stump Teapot with SLS Lid and Infuser, $27 from Amazon: The perfect little teapot for one. Short and stout, with a handle and spout. Just tip it over and pour it out!

I feel that knowing how to avoid winding up with the dud gift at a White Elephant Gift Swap is a valuable life skill. Ben Casselman over at FiveThirtyEight explains it to those of us who don’t have an advanced degree in game theory.

Even though it’s more cost-effective than eating out, cooking at home can still be expensive. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to save money at the grocery store, farmers market, and warehouse club. Here are some of the best tips we learned this year for shopping smarter every day. A food budget is powerful: It might be the most important part of smart shopping, and it can even get you out of debt.

When it comes to grocery staples, it’s important to be an informed shopper. That’s why we taste test all the things that make it onto your shopping list, week after week. Here are the results from our most popular taste tests of 2015. The best orange juice: We tested the best pulp-free juice that didn’t come from a concentrate. The best peanut butter: Creamy only for this test, since it can be used for both sandwiches and baking.

I’ll never forget the results of the derecho that hit the Midwest a few summers ago. With the winds came power outages that drew neighbors out into their yards (time to grill that stuff from the freezer!) and grocery store folks into depression. Cartloads upon cartloads of artisan cheese, meat, and dairy products were piled into the trash, and if anyone in the area had electricity to store or cook the foods, it would have made for the finest dumpster diving in the land.

Steal some tips, tricks, and hacks from a fellow Whole30 completer.

One of my weekly rituals is a visit to my local Indian grocery store. I am lucky enough to live in a city that has a strip mall pretty much dedicated to ethnic-style stores, so I can do a lot of my shopping all in one place. I have a couple of stores that I visit regularly to pick up items that I cannot find, or are too expensive, at my regular supermarket. The Indian grocery store is on the top of my list, and these are the items I buy there fairly often.

The bulk foods section, with its various bins of flours and grains, nuts and seeds, sugars and spices, is the very opposite of the brightly packaged, mass-produced foods of the center aisles. There’s something charmingly retro about the array of tiny textures on display — and it can be sexy, too! When Amelie sticks her hand in a bin of lentils at the corner market, a tingling effect takes over. (Don’t say you don’t want to do the same!

There’s a reason that Whole Foods has been given the nickname “whole paycheck.” While the grocery stores have a great selection, that variety often comes at a premium. But there’s one area where we’ve found Whole Foods just can’t be beat — the bulk bin aisle. If you haven’t made this a priority during your trip to Whole Foods, here’s why you should start.

My parents owned and operated a Korean grocery store (for over 35 years) so I pretty much had my pick at anything I wanted when I visited. I was literally a kid in a candy store and loved it — although it was shrimp chips, not candy, that I was after. I won’t tell you how many bags of these chips my brother, sister, and I devoured when we were kids. When I was younger I hated the smells of the store — of the fish, kimchi, and garlic.

Pretty much no matter where you live in the U.S., I can almost guarantee you’ll be able to find Mexican food items in your local grocery store. Or, in some cases, “Mexican” food items. If you’re lucky, your neck of the woods will have some kind of Mexican market — whether it’s a little bodega or a commercial chain. The trick is knowing what to look for.

Years ago, when I was a recipe tester in a busy test kitchen, one of my responsibilities was doing the weekly grocery shopping. I had to compile the grocery list, figure out which stores to go to, and come back with everything on the list. And let me tell you — when you have a stack of 20 recipes, that’s not an easy task! Luckily, I discovered Google Sheets.

Does your grocery store have a nutritionist on staff? The answer may very well be yes. As shoppers are becoming increasingly interested in improving their diets, more and more supermarkets are hiring in-store registered dietitians to help educate customers, answer nutrition-related questions, and even provide one-on-one consultations. They are the resident experts on all the good-for-you foods in the supermarket.

My micro resolution for the year was to be a better grocery shopper. Now that my husband and I are both working away from home all day long — for the first time in 17 years — we’re trying to be more diligent about planning meals. And it’s hard! But we’ve done pretty well, and hitting the supermarket with purpose is a big part of that. Before I get into groceries, though, let’s talk about working parents.

Buying a bar of chocolate shouldn’t be an academic exercise, but with the maze of labels available these days, it’s hard not to stand dumbfounded in the chocolate aisle. Not to worry! Here’s a cheat sheet that will help you look like a bona fide chocolate expert. If your label says bean to bar, it means that the maker has taken whole cacao beans and roasted, ground, and smoothed them into chocolate from scratch.

In the winter months, citrus fruits lend much-needed brightness and a happy zing to our fruit bowls and to sweet and savory dishes. Of course, we’re all familiar with common varieties — like lemons, limes, and oranges — but there are many other types of citrus coming into more common use, with a wide range of flavors, from bitter to sour to sweet, depending on the part actually being used. Here are five varieties you should definitely try.

Not so long ago, food companies treated snacks like eaters treated snacks — as afterthoughts, guilty pleasures, and check-out line impulse buys. Today, there’s a big, and growing, snack market. And it’s not sugary sweets driving that growth. Snack sales are expected to hit $22.9 billion in 2016, representing a 24 percent jump since 2012. At the same time, our grocery store spending has stayed flat — which means we’re spending more of our food budgets on noshes.

In the last five years, meat bars have exploded onto the snack scene. In 2014, Americans spent $2.5 billion on meat snacks, up 67 percent from 2009. There’s Epic Bar, the Austin-based company recently purchased by General Mills; Organic Prairie’s Mighty Bar; the Brooklyn-based Bricks Bar; Omnibar, the brainchild of a Montana rancher and a professor of Health and Human Performance; and more. These treats are finding fans among the Paleo, clean-living crowd.

The hearty, heavy flavors of winter are growing tiresome but fresh spring ingredients like peas and asparagus have yet to arrive. While you wait, do yourself a favor and try out a few ingredients you might not have had in your kitchen before. It’s not only the perfect way to busy yourself while you wait for spring, but you also might just find one or two that will become new staples in your pantry.

Unlike its flat, from-the-tap counterpart, sparkling water has character and pizzazz: The initial fizz announces itself; the bubbles tickle your nose as you drink, and can settle any upset stomach, or bring a buzzy satisfaction with each sip. But not all seltzers are created equal. Certain brands carry a cult status; their legions of fans buying in bulk to satisfy their insatiable cravings.

Bottled water is easy to stow in your gym bag, and a must for your at-home disaster-preparedness kit. However, its meteoric rise since the 1970s has had a negative impact on the environment, and the battle between bottling brands is hiking up the cost of our planet’s most important, precious resource. Luckily numerous government agencies are regulating the industry — in the U.S.

Arguably the two greatest things about shopping at a butcher are the freedom of choice, and the wealth of knowledge your butcher can offer. Buying meat from a butcher allows you to buy exactly what you want, in the exact quantity you want – something that’s not an option with pre-packaged meat. For some helpful advice on how to get the most out of a visit to the butcher, I talked to Ryan Fibiger of Fleishers Craft Butchery.

Those of us in the Midwest know that going to the grocery store is 100 times more awful in the middle of winter than it is any other time of year. It’s basically scientific fact. Even people who consider grocery shopping date fodder (me) can admit that the allure of a delivered option is strong in March. Receive food without putting on pants or a scarf? Count me in. Here are a few options for the grocery-phobic. You literally don’t have to think.

Meal kits have much to offer. They’re relatively simple to use, they can be catered to your dietary needs, and an increasing number of companies are using local and organic ingredients. Not to mention the obvious: Having all the makings of dinner delivered means you don’t have to make a trip (or trips) to the grocery store or even think about what to cook tonight. But those direct-to-your-doorstep boxes also come with a little baggage.

In case you weren’t aware, last year IKEA, that Swedish furniture store you probably fought with your ex-boyfriend in, announced the addition of a glorious wall of pick-and-mix candies to its lineup of meatballs and modular furniture. There are dozens of chocolates, fudges, sour candies, gummies, and licorices on offer and they’re all free of trans fats, artificial colors, high-fructose corn syrup, and GMOs.

I have trouble imagining my kitchen without garlic. Like onions and lemons, it’s a staple that I always have on hand, regardless of the time of year. While you may be able to purchase it year-round, the truth is, garlic does have a season. And come spring, what I have trouble imagining my kitchen without is spring garlic. Here’s why. Garlic is generally planted in the fall before the frost and harvested the following late summer.

Once spring hits, there are a few vegetables that aways take center stage. Asparagusfava beansrampsradishes I am talking about pea shoots. Made up of tender stems, small green leaves, and curly tendrils, pea shoots literally shoot right up out of the soil and off a pea plant before any pods are formed. They’re most often collected from snow or sugar snap pea plants, but can also be collected from English pea plants.

Germany has sauerkraut, Thailand has naem (fermented pork sausage), Sweden has surströmming (fermented herring) — it seems every culture has its own traditional fermented food. And with good reason: Research suggests these foods are nutritional powerhouses, and fermentation has also been found to break down poison in foods, like cyanide in cassava. Beyond their alleged health benefits, though, fermented foods are also delicious and useful in building tasty meals.

Meal kits are certainly convenient, and they’re also not as wasteful as you might think, but are they ever a good deal? To find out how meal-kit costs compare to traditional groceries, I ordered kits from Green Chef, Purple Carrot, and Hello Fresh, and then I went shopping for the same ingredients at the supermarket.

Unlike other vegetables, mushrooms often get their own little carved-out section at the grocery store. Not only are there half-a-dozen or so many varieties to choose from, but they also often come with the option to buy in bulk, pre-sliced, pre-cleaned, and more. It’s all a little daunting! And that’s before you take them home. Then there’s the question of the right way to clean and cook them. But what you really need to know is what you shouldn’t do to your mushrooms.

The first time I picked up a piece of honeycomb from my local farmers market, I was definitely intimidated. Honestly, I think I was drawn to just how pretty it looks. But once I got home, I had no clue about what to do with it. So it sat in my pantry for months before I had the courage to go back to the beekeeper at the market and ask him for advice. As it turns out, there are a whole lot of delicious ways to use it in the kitchen.

A few tips on reducing the amount of food packaging in your life.

With so much being written these days about food waste, comparatively less is written about the wastefulness of food packaging. Yet food packaging waste accounts for at least as much as, if not more than, food waste. From complex, tri-fold plastic egg cartons to snack-friendly boxes of individually wrapped apple slices, it’s not uncommon to find two or more layers of “protection” between us and the food we eat.

For many, salmon is the go-to choice when picking fish to buy for dinner. It’s not only a crowd-pleaser, but it’s also pretty easy to prepare for a weeknight or dress up for company. So given its popularity, it would seem that it would be effortless to shop for, right? Not exactly.

When you shop for limes, do you feel disappointed by a selection that’s anything less than the greenest of green? I certainly do. I always thought that yellowing limes were past their prime — but it turns out that’s really not the case at all. Mind-blowing fact of the day: Bearr’s limes (aka Persian or Tahitian), which are the most commonly sold limes in the U.S., yellow as they ripen.

The first step in my week of cutting down on food packaging was to take a hard look at my household of two, which seems to generate a lot more trash than I would like. I realized that even though I was doing a pretty good job of reusing and recycling, reducing the amount of waste I brought into the house in the first place was an area for improvement.

It seems like everyone is on the fermented drink bandwagon lately, but what if kombucha or even shrubs and switchels aren’t for you? Then it’s time to try something made with whey instead — like KeVita’s line of sparkling probiotic drinks. Not quite as bubbly as sparkling lemonade or seltzer, these drinks get their fizziness from fermented whey. It’s a much more subtle sparkle, which allows all the flavors to shine through.

Forget the woodsy, folksy engagement photos of yesterday, and welcome the new trendy thing: engagement photos taken in your favorite warehouse-style grocery store. Nothing says romance like giant vacuum-packed slabs of meat and packs of toilet paper large enough to TP an entire town. All jokes aside, I understand this couple’s shared devotion to Costco. When you’re into food, you spend a lot of time at the grocery store.

I have a weakness for ice cream that reaches its peak in the summertime, but the ice cream itself is only the half of it: I am a sucker for great toppings. Even as an adult, I insist on chocolate sprinkles when I visit my local ice cream shop because I am convinced they make the ice cream better. But what if you have outgrown sprinkles, and are hungry for something new and a little crazy to dress your ice cream sundae?

If you’re lucky enough to have a halal grocery store near you, stop what you’re doing and go there right this second. Well, actually, read this post first and then make the trip. Like other specialty food stores, a halal market is home to a slew of ingredients that are worthy of a spot in your kitchen. Beyond halal meat, the halal market is a great resource for North African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian specialty groceries.

Stuffing yourself with berries is easily one of summer’s greatest pleasures. I mean, it’s pretty much your duty to fill up until you’re tired of them because you’ll have to wait a whole year until you’re able to get your hands on fresh summer berries again. That means it’s pretty important to buy the best berries you can find — especially since they usually don’t come cheap, even when they’re at the peak of season.

Fresh berries are the highlight of summer. Nothing beats the satisfying “pop” of a fresh blueberry, the decadence of a juicy strawberry, or the sweet-tart symphony of a ripe blackberry. But that tiny box of raspberries in the grocery can set you back a pretty penny, and organic berries — well, you’d better brace yourself. Why are the jewels of the produce world priced like semi-precious stones?

Choosing an ice cream isn’t as simple as vanilla and chocolate anymore. Slow-churned, non-GMO, no-sugar-added, grass-grazed — your grocer’s ice cream section is a display of never-ending banners, slogans, and callouts, all vying for your attention with a very wide array of pricing options. The freezer is crowded, the goalposts are always changing, and new arrivals seem to come every week.

As impulse buys go, you can do worse than the occasional box of fresh berries, but who among us hasn’t broken out in a cold sweat over the refrigerator case, stricken with sticker shock? Luckily, there are a few ways to eat your berries without breaking the bank. You might have noticed that you can get a lot more bang for your buck purchasing strawberries than blueberries.

Looking to recreate a baseball game experience? Feeding a bunch of picky kids? We tasted nine top hot dog brands to decide which ones are best for your situation.

Whenever I am lost for dinner ideas and wandering aimlessly through the grocery store (this happens more often than you might think), I make my way over to the antipasti bar. You know the one — it’s that little corner of the store, maybe by the fancy cheese or the deli, with a gorgeous display of olives and marinated vegetables.

A Caesar salad is only as good as its dressing. And while it’s not hard to make an incredible one from a few pantry staples, sometimes you just don’t have the time. A bottle of the store-bought stuff is a quick, painless way to get salad on the table fast. But with an aisle full of bottles to choose from, just which one exactly is worth buying? We tasted some of the most popular brands in order to find one that’s worthy of its convenience.

I’d be the first to tell you that nothing beats homemade croutons. But even though they’re quick and easy to make, there are times when they’re still not fast enough. That’s when store-bought croutons come to the rescue. There are a whole slew of bagged options out there — we tasted our way through them to find the best. If you like your Caesar croutons to add extra cheesiness to the salad, then these are for you.

Not to be dramatic, but a breakfast sandwich can make or break your entire day. We tried seven from national and regional chains and ranked them from worst to best.

We love Trader Joe’s for so many reasons, but especially for their incredible selection of frozen foods. And while their frozen breakfast section isn’t the most robust, what they do offer should pique your interest. Whether you’re looking for a savory or sweet start to your day, they have some fabulous — and affordable — items on hand. We sorted through the offerings, and we can say with confidence that these are their best frozen breakfast foods.

We all know the big soda brands like Coke and Pepsi, but in almost every corner of the United States, there is at least one well-loved regional brand of the bubbly stuff. Here are just some of the most popular regional soft drinks from around the country. Combine the flavor of cream soda and strawberry bubblegum and you’ve got Big Red. The glowing-red soda has been around since the late 1930s and continues to be popular in the southwest.

Back-to-school means packing not only lunches for my two small children, but also school snacks. While I enjoy making their lunches, I primarily rely on packaged foods for snacks. Most weeks we load up on crackers, cheese sticks, and fruit from our regular grocery stop, but we occasionally switch things up with a trip to Costco or Trader Joe’s. Just before school started, I took my 5-year-old daughter, Ella, with me on a snack-stash trip to Trader Joe’s and asked her for her help.

Nabisco released a new flavor of Oreo a couple weeks ago, and it’s a far cry from the birthday cake and cookie dough flavors we’ve grown familiar with on grocery store shelves. Oreo’s latest flavor replaces its traditional creme filling with Swedish Fish gummy candy. The new limited-edition flavor is only available at Kroger stores, but if you don’t have one nearby, don’t get FOMO just yet.

Chicken nuggets in almost any form beyond homemade are a much-demonized convenience food. It’s difficult to call which presentation of convenience is more polarizing: the drive-thru chicken nuggets or the box of store-bought, frozen chicken nuggets. Truthfully, I once held the same distain for both and swore up and down that my future kids would never eat mass-produced nuggets. Ah, how little we know about parenting before we are parents.

We love Trader Joe’s for their snacks and pantry staples, but what’s really special is the freezer section. Amongst the frozen veggies and appetizers, there’s a selection of frozen shortcuts that help ease our dinner woes on harried weeknights. Here are five of our favorites. Did you totally miss fresh fig season? Not to worry — Trader Joe’s has your back. Instead of opting for dried, look to the freezer section.

The first thing I do when I come home with a bag of grains, flour, or seeds is put it in a glass container. Having to deal with rubber bands or bag clips usually ends in me spilling things all over my kitchen counter. But what if you run out of glass containers? What if you just don’t want to deal with the hassle? Luckily, Bob’s Red Mill It seems like an obvious switch to go from the regular plastic bags to resealable bags.