Groceries

So, you’re in the grocery store aisle or at a market booth, and in front of you are rows of maple syrup bottles. Prices start at $10, but many of the larger bottles cost more than that. You’re prepared to spend the money, but how do you know which bottle to buy? Not only are there different labels and descriptions for each bottle, but they’re all made in different states, and in Canada. Don’t be discouraged!

I’m not sure if this is true in other cities but here in San Francisco, it’s not unusual to encounter a corner bodega that’s devoted to natural foods. These places stock the familiar organic labels, local organic milk and vegetables, and often have a nice selection of wine. Sometimes there’s an odd mix of the organic and conventional bodega fare (bags of Cheetos tucked in with the taro chips, for instance.

Ariel asked me to pick out a few budget-friendly wines from Trader Joe’s for her Friday Board Game Night Gathering, where she planned on serving easy, make-ahead Italian food. I was excited for an excuse to visit Denver’s newly opened Trader Joe’s for the first time. Rumors of lines that wrapped around the building and parking up to three blocks away had kept me from venturing into the new store. Turns out, the rumors were true.

As we learned last week, rye whiskey can really carry a cocktail. It’s bold, spicy and dry, and those characteristics provide a firm foundation on which to build a complex flavor profile. Sweet and citrus fruits nicely soften its sharp edges, while bitter and herbal ingredients can help pick out and amplify many of rye’s deeper-seated elements, like notes of pepper and baking spice.

Day 4: Stock your kitchen for one new breakfast. In between blog posts and coworker chats this morning, I slipped away for a half hour to go to the grocery store. I needed just a few items for my new-and-improved breakfast tomorrow morning (I’m making this sandwich), and wanted to beat the after-work rush.

So you go to the grocery store, and maybe you’re extra hungry, or you are thinking about the busy week ahead, and suddenly there are a few extra items in your shopping basket, items that theoretically you could make yourself, but that will save you some time and preserve your evenings from the lure of the takeout menu. Do you know what I mean? What’s your convenience splurge at the grocery store? Here’s my latest.

Trader Joe’s carries a wide variety of extra virgin olive oils at competitive prices, but after doing a taste test of six of their oils, journalist and olive oil expert Tom Mueller found only three bottles worth buying — with one standout choice for both flavor and value. Mueller, author of the book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, shared his taste test results on his blog Truth in Olive Oil. His number one Trader Joe’s olive oil pick?

Q: I’m new to Trader Joe’s and have been into my local store just once. It doesn’t seem like the place I’d do my regular shopping, but I know TJ has a pretty big fan following, so I thought Kitchn readers would be a good crowd to ask for Trader Joe’s shopping tips. What are the days to find the best prices/sales, favorite products, or items to avoid?

As you eat your way through your Halloween candy stash, you might stumble onto a few Dum Dums, those ubiquitous little lollipops that have been around since 1924. And maybe you’ll even have a Mystery Flavor pop, its wrapper covered in question marks — is it pineapple-banana? Cherry cola? What is Mystery Flavor? We finally have an answer. According to Mental Floss, Mystery Flavor is created when the same candy equipment is used to make two different flavors.

It’s rare that you stay with someone for a month and they give you a gift. Imposing on someone for that long, especially when you arrive with not one, not two, but three children, means you should be the one giving the gifts, and plenty of them. But my hostess in Italy needed her friends to try her favorite Salamoia Bolognese. As I was packing to go home, she dropped it in my bag, “You need this. Trust me.

We’re coming up on back-to-school time and while I don’t have kids, I sense the season in every store or market I walk into. There are specials on school supplies, packaged cereals, and energy bars. While here at The Kitchn we love to tout the benefits of making your own granola and snacks, most of us have a box of granola bars or cereal for backup in the weekday hustle and bustle. So is there a way to do packaged foods smarter?The answer is: of course!

Every year I look forward to the start of my CSA. For the last few years I was part of a CSA in Brooklyn, but after a recent move to Boston I’ve had to start fresh with a whole new farm. So, in the spirit of change and the summer season, I’m going to be sharing my CSA box with you every week — what fruits and vegetables I receive, as well as how I plan to eat my way through it.

As any coffee addict knows, in places where a decent cup of coffee is hard to find, you’ll always find Nescafé. Though the coffee snob in me feels I should turn up my nose at instant coffee from a packet, I have a soft spot for those brown crystals that make it easy to find a steaming cup of hot coffee no matter where in the world you are.Yes, that’s probably the addict talking.

We all know it to be true: sriracha is amazing, and everyone should have a bottle in their fridge. But as with most cool kids on the block, there comes a time when young upstarts show up and vie for people’s attention. So what’s the next ‘it’ condiment?

So many of us buy our wine at grocery stores; they are an important spot for wine buying. But it’s been almost 18 months since I reviewed the wine offering at Whole Foods Market. My interest was piqued at a recent wine and cheese tasting at Whole Foods, where I was pretty bowled over by the quality of the wines tasted, especially the quality they del\ivered for the price. Want to see my picks for the summer?

Eating more fruits and vegetables is good for our health, right? We’ve all heard that for years, and it is true. But according to Jo Robinson, author of the forthcoming book Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health, what really matters is choosing the right varieties of those fruits and vegetables.

I find shopping at a farmers market relaxing: the colors, the smells, the tables spilling over with fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. It is a feast for the senses. Shopping at the grocery store, on the other hand, is usually anything but relaxing. Is there a way to shop only at the farmers market and skip the weekly trip to the supermarket? Sure! Here are my strategies for making it happen.

It may come as a surprise to some, but buying foods labeled cage-free or grass-fed does not necessarily mean that those items are what they say they are, or what we assume they mean.  This can be really frustrating if you are trying to do your best to purchase humane and sustainable food, not to mention that foods labeled with these claims are often more expensive.  Do you pay extra for organic, or non-GMO, or hormone-free foods?  Do you know which labels are reliable?

If you want to maximize your grocery shopping budget, the Environmental Working Group’s annual Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists are essential tools for figuring out when it is worth spending more for organic produce, based on the pesticide residue levels found on 48 common fruits and vegetables. This year, cherry tomatoes and summer squash join the Dirty Dozen.

The Whole Grains Council has a symbol that will help consumers identify products that are actually made with whole grains. If a product carries this symbol, it’s guaranteed to be made with 100% whole grains. They advise you to “be skeptical if you see the words ‘whole grain’ without more details, such as ‘crackers made with whole grain.’ The product may contain only miniscule amounts of whole grains.

Like many of you, I have fallen hard for coconut oil as of late. I love it in my scones, I love it over popcorn, I love it tossed with fresh steamed vegetables. And now here’s something new to fall in love with: coconut oil nonstick spray from Trader Joe’s. Oh, TJ’s, it’s like you read my mind.I have kept a can of nonstick cooking spray in my cupboard ever since I started baking regularly.

I can’t think of a more perfect person to interview for our Expert Essentials series (see the whole series so far here!) than Sam Mogannam, owner of Bi-Rite Grocery in San Francisco.  Not only did Sam grow up in the grocery store, which was owned by his family, but he went to culinary school and worked as a chef before returning to Bi-Rite to reinvent it from a cooks point of view.

I love going to the store, choosing which apple looks perfect to me, and stumbling upon products that weren’t necessarily on my shopping list. But there are weeks when it all gets tiresome, and I find myself going to the grocery store more times than makes sense. I’ve started to get smarter with each trip to the store, acknowledging that there are easy steps that alleviate the potential headache.1.

When I bring home a shopping bag full of fresh produce, there is some that goes onto a tray on the countertop and some that goes into the refrigerator’s produce bins. And that’s about where my divisions stop. But when I found that bananas were hastening the ripening of nearby avocados (which is sometimes unwanted!), I decided to look further into produce storage and adjacencies to avoid.

We’ve all seen those small “Sell by” dates printed on food products. With the holidays over, and the fridge clearing begun, you may find yourself with a few items supposedly past their prime. But how seriously should you take those expiration dates?According to The Salt, “sell by” dates are more about protecting the reputation of the food, and less about food safety.

Rotisserie chickens—skewered birds roasted in rotating rows and sold everywhere from grocery stores to member-only club stores—are immensely popular, if you didn’t already know. In 2010 six hundred million rotisserie chickens were sold in the U.S. What is the secret to this bird?A recent article in The Washington Post shared a few interesting tidbits into how the rotisserie chicken is made:1.

We all know we should be consuming more whole grains and fewer products made from refined grains, but that doesn’t make the bread aisle any less confusing. Is multigrain the same as whole grain? And where does whole wheat fit in? Here’s a quick guide to these three common, sometimes confusing terms. • Whole grain means that all parts of the grain are used, including the nutritious germ and bran.

Three years ago I wrote a post asking if $7.50 was too much to pay for a dozen eggs. The eggs in question were gathered from pasture-raised chickens and in my post I brought up how pasture-raised poultry was handled differently than free-range or cage-free and why it was worth it to me. The debate in the comment section was lively, as I’m sure you can imagine. Today I usually pay $6.

Trying to eat and buy local is all well and good until I can purchase a giant tub of cottage cheese from my local Costco for $5. Writing for a food blog leaves me with a little guilt about that, but this new website helped me discover that my tasty breakfast snack comes from a dairy farm right here in Illinois! Want to see where your dairy comes from?

Many people, myself included, will tell you that buying bagged, pre-washed lettuce mixes makes it easier to eat more salad. More organized folks will point out that washing and drying your own lettuce isn’t that difficult and that bagged lettuce isn’t always that safe. What’s the best way to go? Well, the answer is complicated.I picked up the bag of lettuce pictured above at Happy Boy Farms, one of my favorite stalls at my local farmers’ market.

Who: Young and KennethWhat: The Winey Neighbor, a boutique wine shopWhere: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn Sometime last year I noticed work had begun on an empty storefront on Washington Avenue in my neighborhood of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. My curiosity piqued—Man, please let it be something cool and not another boring real estate office—I was encouraged when I saw a blue and white polka dot awning go up, with a cheeky name: The Winey Neighbor. A wine shop with a sense of humor?

Now that you’ve seen how beautifully this turkey turned out, I can confess how much actually went wrong while cooking it. The turkey cooked in half the time I expected, while my guests were an hour late. When re-heating the turkey, I managed to forget it was in the oven. I neglected to remove the giblets. And so on.But in spite of all my mess-ups, this was still one of the best turkeys I’ve ever eaten.

There’s a lot of praise for the La Chamba Casserole dish to be found on The Kitchn already, but I can’t resist joining in the love-fest with my newest crush, the La Chamba Soup & Bean Pot. I received this beauty as a gift several weeks ago and have been putting it through its paces ever since. Read on for my review.What is La Chamba? La Chamba is a line of clay cooking pots that are handmade in Colombia. The non-toxic clay naturally contains mica which makes it extra-strong.

I realized that it is quite a while since I did a Trader Joe’s wine tasting. So on Monday I headed off to the Trader Joe’s Wine Store in New York City to see what I could find at less than $10 a bottle for easy summer sipping. Well, some gems and some disappointments — read on to see which I liked, and which I didn’t enjoy as much.As you all know Trader Joe’s is the name synonymous with ‘Two Buck Chuck’.

My day job requires trips to the grocery store at least three times a week, and sometimes up to five times a week. Needless to say, I’m always looking for tools to help make shopping quick and efficient, with a minimum of forgotten ingredients — nothing is worse than having to return to the store for one stupid thing! — and I think I’ve found it all in the Grocery iQ app.

Unless you’re lucky enough to shop at a grocery that carries international candy, you may only know Cadbury, the UK chocolatier conglomerate, just for their Easter eggs. Next time you’re passing through an airport, be sure to check for these creamy chocolates!Although Cadbury is no secret (Kraft purchased the company in 2010 and the duo are officially the world’s largest confectionary company), their chocolates still aren’t widely available in the US.

One place I wouldn’t expect to find my new favorite tea is my hair salon. But that’s what happened last time I stopped in for a trim. And as it turns out, it’s no supermarket variety tea blend.Aveda salons and stores always have tea brewing. At first taste, I was surprised at the light flavor and sweet aftertaste. However, when I asked what the shop sweetened their tea with they told me it was a natural taste from the herbal blend and that the tea was unsweetened.

When concern about high mercury levels in tuna sent my household hunting for a replacement for our beloved tuna salad sandwiches, Trader Joe’s canned smoked trout stepped in. And honestly? I think it’s even more tasty &mdash and much more elegant — than plain old tuna. The fillets of fish are packed in oil, so they just need to be mixed with a dab of mayonnaise, a squeeze of lemon and some chopped herbs to make a flavorful sandwich filling.

I discovered this jar in the back of my pantry, and on an evening when my dinner options were sparse. Cracking open the jar, these giant (they really are huge!) beans didn’t seem like much. But when heated up with couscous and a dusting of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, I was surprised at the meal that resulted!At first glance, the beans seemed rather oily, but the tomatoes and chunks of spices kept my hopes up.

Not to dismiss the innovation of Ronnybrook FarmsMmm. We first spotted it at Whole Foods but ended up buying it at the farmers’ market, straight from the Ronnybrook vendor. And we’ve been eating it every morning for the past week, spread on raisin bread and toasted.Here’s what happens when you run this stuff under the broiler (or the toaster oven): The butter melts, and the cinnamon and sugar that are mixed in get bubbly and slightly crispy on top. Delicious.

America’s oldest beer maker, D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc., announced plans to expand this week. Are you familiar with this sought-after beer? Remember the first beer you learned to order in a bar? You know, your go-to choice when you were too young to know much about beer except that you were happy to get it? Yuengling (pronounced ying-ling) was mine. It sounded a lot cooler than Bud or Miller and tasted better, too.

In our list of top 5 foods, a fantastic Spring Roll is near the top. The crispness and combination of flavors always leaves us satisfied and not too full for whatever adventures lay ahead of us. We’ve been making them at home for years, but we still haven’t decided which wrapper is best. Do you have a favorite?We’ve used all different shapes, brands and purchased them from different locations.

It is hot out there, and while I do love a full-bodied red wine with dinner, these days I am all about refreshing whites, rosé or lighter reds that I can serve slightly chilled. This week let’s talk about the whites that are great for these hot summer days.

What do you get when you combine Cheddar, Swiss and Provolone into one gooey cheese? If you’re a resident of Missouri, you probably already know, but for the rest of the country — allow us to enlighten you. We just can’t keep our state secret or our undying love for this super tasty treat quiet any longer! Provel was originally invented in St. Louis, Missouri back in 1947. (It is now owned by Kraft.

We just tried Siggi’s yogurt for the first time, and whoa this stuff is thick! Siggi’s yogurt is actually a strained version of yogurt, and it’s made with traditional Icelandic methods. In Iceland, this thick, creamy stuff is called skyr.Siggi is actually a real person; his name is Siggi Hilmarsson, and he’s a rather young yogurt-maker from Iceland. The story goes that he got homesick for his homeland’s skyr-style yogurt, so he started experimenting.

We do quite a bit of our shopping at Trader Joe’s. It’s nearby, relatively inexpensive, and well-stocked with many of the fun foods we enjoy (hello prosciutto!). We buy most of our grains and produce items at a local co-op or the farmers market, and a lot of our other food comes from TJ’s. We’ve always been annoyed, though, at the baking section.Trader Joe’s, at least in our part of the world, has never carried “proper” sugar, or sugar you can bake with.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been caught on a weeknight with no fresh veggies in the fridge. Or if the veggies you thought were fresh turn out to be…not so fresh. Meet your new best friend: jarred roasted red peppers from Trader Joe’s.Each 12-ounce jar usually contains one very large or two smaller red peppers and costs about $1.99, which is really no more than how much fresh peppers often cost at our market!

We encountered a new (to us) green at the Echo Park farmers’ market last week: New Zealand spinach. Have you tried this?Like Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides) is not actually a true spinach, but it is similar when cooked and is considered a “summer spinach” because it thrives in hot, dry weather.As the common name implies, the plant is native to New Zealand and Australia, where it grows on coastal dunes and bluffs.

Do you like granola? We do. We always think about making it ourselves, but never seem to get around to it, sadly. So we jumped at the chance to try out a new online product: MixMyGranola, which lets you mix up custom batches of granola that are shipped to you overnight. What would this be, we wondered? Gimmick? Great granola?A little of both, it turned out, in the end.

May the cheapest pasta win! That’s what happened, anyway, when New York convened a panel to sample different store-bought, dried pasta. At 99 cents a pound, TJ’s was the least expensive pasta of the bunch, and it beat out some very fancy brands. Which grocery store staple came in last?

Although I’m still kicking myself for not joining my boyfriend on his recent stay in Sintra, Portugal, I have been happily enjoying the culinary souvenirs he brought home. Among them were these local specialties called queijadas de Sintra, or Sintra cheesecakes. The ingredients are simple – sugar, cheese, flour, egg, and cinnamon – but their effect is intoxicating, and I’ve found myself craving more of these little cakes ever since I polished off the last one.

We hope you’ll forgive us for writing about kumquats again, but these ones are different! We just can’t contain our excitement over finding these two unusual kumquat varieties at the Hollywood farmers’ market this weekend. They exemplify one of our favorite things about farmers’ market shopping – the unexpected discovery of new colors, textures, forms, and flavors.

Here’s a small, colorful note from my time in France last week. At the market some of the pears had dabs of something bright and scarlet on top. What was it?It turns out that all of the stems were dipped in wax to seal them. My market tour guide, Rosa Jackson, told me later in the week that this was done to keep the pears from ripening too quickly.I’ve never seen this done in the States – have you? Does anyone know why keeping the stem sealed prevents ripening?

When visiting friends who like to cook and bring back edible souvenirs ask me where to shop for spices, I always send them to Goumanyat & Son Royaume, a treasure trove of high-quality spices on the rue Charles-Francois Dupuis near République…Run by Jean Thiercelin (who speaks English, by the way), Goumanyat has been in the fine food business for seven generations. This is where chefs like Alain Ducasse and Joël Robuchon shop for high-quality spices.

Last weekend, we found branches full of fresh Barhi dates at the farmers’ market. While we were sampling the crunchy young fruits, the man who grew them urged us to peek around the corner…Along the sidewalk, just behind the Dates by Davall stand at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, are several date palm trees, laden with green fruits. Although we’d seen such trees around town before, we admittedly had no idea they were the same as the dates we snack on.

If you’re in San Francisco and you have a hankering for Kinder eggs, elderflower syrup, some spaetzle, and a copy of Der Spiegel, have we got the store for you.In Noe Valley at the corner of Church and 28th, just a stone’s throw from the MUNI J-Line is Lehr’s German Specialties, a quaint little shop on a quiet street in San Francisco flanked by Victorian row houses. They have tons of German candies – Kinder eggs, marzipan, and other German chocolates.

I just love rosé wines. I get so excited at this time of the year, as the new vintage arrives on the shelves, and I know that I have a whole four to five months to enjoy them. Over the past four to five years sales of rosé wines worldwide have exploded. Call it the Rosé Renaissance! Whatever, it’s great. Despite this I am still surprised when people tell me again and again “I don’t like rosé wine”, “I never buy rosé wines”.

So many grocery stores now have olive bars, with big barrels full of olives sold in bulk. They are great when you want a mix to serve as appetizers, and although some people get squeamish about germs (yes, we’ve seen people use their fingers), we don’t tend to.Recently, though, we picked up a container of pre-packaged, Kalamata olives at a store that didn’t have an olive bar.

Kewpie mayonnaise was prominently mentioned in Wednesday’s Times Dining section article on MSG and its ubiquitous presence in processed foods. We only knew Kewpies as those eerily big-eyed dolls – what was this mayonnaise? According to Kewpie’s official website, mayonnaise was first introduced to Japan in 1925. Since then, Kewpie mayo has been one of the predominant household condiments there. People often use it on vegetables and as a salad dressing.