AOL Food's photo editor Rachel Been travels the world in search of deliciousness. Her most recent journey brought her to Guatemala's Chichicastenango Market.

There's no doubt about it: The cheese boom is in full swing.

Over the past several years, specialty shops have blossomed across the country, from southern California to Maine (including Blue Fog Market, Fromagination and The Cave), all with super-dedicated cheese selections. This month renowned Brooklyn, N.Y., restaurant Franny's became the latest eatery to open its very own specialty food shop, Bklyn Larder, just down the street.

Aside from an array of prepared foods cooked by chef Travis Post, Bklyn Larder has its own cheese room, with an appropriate humidity and temperature for aging and storing cheese. "This will enable us to carry larger amounts of cheese," says Francine Stephens, who, along with co-owner and husband Andrew Feinberg, co-founded the restaurant back in 2004.

In September of 2007, Feinberg attended the Slow Flood cheese festival in Bra, Italy to seek out unique and tasty cheeses to eventually carry at the still-in-the-planning-stages Larder. They can all be spied through the glass window of the shop's aging room. (Food voyeurs -- you know who you are -- beware!)

Los Angeles has many things to recommend it to the enterprising eater, and Surfas is unequivocally one of them. Why? Well, for one, take a look at this photo. Mycryo Gelatine Substitute. Lots of it. While the vast majority of the population would have absolutely no idea of what to do with it -- sprinkle it? snort it? use it instead of NutraSweet? -- the fact that Surfas carries it in such large quantities is just very cool. So is the shop's eye-popping variety of spices, flours, sugars, extracts, chocolates, nuts, dried beans, butters and -- well, you get the picture.

Geared towards pro chefs who presumably have a need for things like mycryo gelatine substitute (used mainly by pastry toques, as discussed here), Surfas is also a paradise for the less ambitious homecook.

Find out why after the jump.

Just in time for your next Saturday night pasta party, a new jarred sauce that's worth a first taste and second helping has appeared on store shelves. Mezzetta, the company famous for such glass-jarred wonders as snappy peperoncini and an addictive giardiniera, has launched Napa Valley Bistro, a line of pasta sauces prepared with Napa Valley wines. We were glad to cook up a sample sent our way and toss it with some noodles. Hey, anything for our readers – especially if it involves eating spaghetti.

We tried two versions: basic marinara and the creamy version. The saucy results are after the jump.

Ancient yet modern at once, Greek cuisine radiates with sunshine and bright, fresh flavors. Succulent lamb enlivened with rosemary and garlic, a classic dish, is as redolent of Greece as it is of springtime. And as is true of anywhere with a shoreline, seafood is center stage. Always present are plates of local feta, stark-white and salty, and olives whose depth of flavor will keep you from ever opening canned olives again. For dessert, honey forms a sinful pact with walnuts and cinnamon, or yogurt made in-house just that morning cozies up to macerated cherries.

A Greek dinner is lovely to prepare and a joy to eat. Many of the ingredients are staples you probably have in your kitchen, such as lemons, herbs, eggs and olive oil. Here are some ingredients you might want to try.

The Basics: Olives and Feta. Olive oil is central to Greek cooking. The essential Greek olive is kalamata. They should be deep black and packed in an olive oil and vinegar brine; a taste should reveal a distinctive, fruity flavor and a firm bite without mealiness. Here's a great recipe for using these beauties. There are other Greek cheeses beyond feta, but this standard should be available in every cheese case. The cheese should be pure white with a gently pocked surface, lounging in a clean bath of salt-water brine (never buy dry feta).

While you may never be able to own an actual kitchen gadget from Julia Child's kitchen (the Smithsonian has the complete contents of her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen on display here), you might be able to grab a set piece from the new Julia Child movie "Julie and Julia" -- if you happen to be anywhere near the New York metropolitan area this weekend.

The movie is Nora Ephron's melding of Julia Child's memoirs with those of Julie Powell, a Queens, N.Y., woman who blogged through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" over the course of a year.

The prop masters for Columbia Pictures are liquidating the set for the film -- starring Amy Adams (as Powell) and Meryl Streep (as Child) -- from a warehouse in northern Brooklyn, N.Y. this weekend. Slashfood popped in this morning to peruse the gadgetry used to fill seven kitchen movie sets, including the famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu.

More pictures and the sale location after the jump.

Want your roasts and baked goods to be perfect every time? Get an oven thermometer!

Eating pork buns (cha siu baau) is an excellent way to get a taste of New York's Chinatown. These warm buns -- either steamed or baked -- are full of savory barbecue meats, sometimes with scallions.

Last weekend, a friend and I decided we would eat our way through Chinatown by trying pork buns at various bakeries. And, what started out as a "pork bun journey" turned into an exploration of both savory and sweet buns, ranging from pork to red bean.

Fay Da Bakery, at 83 Mott St., has a variety of buns that you can select yourself with tongs when you enter the shop. While being underwhelmed by their pork buns, we were blown away with their sweet topping red-bean bun. The outside of the red-bean bun is coated in a flaky layer of sugar that balances marvelously with the doughy bun and the creamy red-bean paste.

Head directly to the Golden Fung Wong Bakery, at 41 Mott St., to try some of the best pork buns in Manhattan's Chinatown. Chunks of pork are flavored with a delicious mix of soy and oyster sauce. This bakery also sells an assortment of rice cakes and melon cakes that are worth trying.

I have always been a huge fan of deliciously rich and creamy whoopie pies. So, when I read the recent New York Times article about its current popularity among New Yorkers, I was not too surprised.

The article traces the history of this delectable to pockets of New England, Pennsylvania and Ohio. And, it explains that due to their gaining popularity, supermarkets like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and (specialty deli) Zingerman's sell them. But, my favorite spot for whoopie pies is at One Girl Cookies in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

As food historian Sandra Oliver states, the cake part that sandwiches the cream is not especially sweet and is often dry, because the frosting, the heart of the whoopie, is full of sugar and a gooey consistency. This characterizes One Girl Cookies' luscious whoopie pies. There is an amazing balances between the frosting in the center and the light fluffy dry cookie/cake.

Perhaps, one of the reasons why they're so special is that cream cheese frosting is sandwiched between pumpkin cake (see the photo above).

You can purchase a dozen whoopie pies from One Girl Cookies online for $27. The Times mentions another pastry shop in Brooklyn with whoopie fever called Trois Pommes Patisserie.

On a walk through New York last week, I stumbled upon Papabubble, an intriguing candy shop based in Barcelona with an outpost in Manhattan.

The shop is truly a candy paradise. Not only do you get to watch candy in-the-making, but you can also sample several different flavors, such as caramel filled apple, soda, fruit mix, and their current Easter mix. They even have candy molded into enormous lollipop rings.

Here, all the candy is made in the store before your eyes. Papabubble handcrafts their unique candy from sugar and natural essential oils, such as oil of clove.

Papabubble makes custom-made candies molded into specific shapes and with written statements or designs. While I was there, they were making "It's a Boy!" candy for a woman who had just given birth. Their turnaround for bespoke candy is about two weeks.

It's no wonder why Gadling got excited about the opening of Papabubble's New York store. It's located in between the Lower East Side, Little Italy, and SoHo on Broome Street between Mott and Mulberry.

For years I've had a juicer much like the one in the upper left corner of the image above. Sometimes it's great, sometimes not so much, but it's been a decent friend in the kitchen. However, every time I catch a cooking show, I see these brightly colored squeezers like the one to the right. The half goes in, and a quick squeeze later, every bit of juice has made its way out of the fruit and into the waiting receptacle. And it made me want one.

So today, I popped in my favorite used and new kitchen store and found one for $5 -- the perfect price tag for a kitchen gadget I wasn't sure about. I brought it home, I squeezed some lemons, and in a flash, I was in love. It's so easy and quick -- to use, to clean, to love.

But what about you? How do you juice your citrus, and which of the powerful triumvirate above gets used in your kitchen?

If the jury is still out for you, I recommend that yellow wonder of product.

Instead of having to cut butter with a knife, you can use a butter dispenser (pictured to the right). Or, better yet, why not try out this new device that creates butter ribbons? You don't even have to exert energy to spread the butter on your toast. As ridiculous as this sounds and looks, how can you not be mildly intrigued?

Fellow blog Dvice explains that all you have to do is insert a stick of butter, twist the handle, and out comes a paper-thin ribbon of butter. Another blog, Bookofjoe boasts that it can turn each stick of butter into 10 feet of butter ribbon. But, don't fret, you don't have to use it all at once. You can leave the stick of butter in the dispenser and place it in your refrigerator.

The device also works with margarine. It's dishwasher safe, and it can be purchased from Amazon for just under $15. So, if you're concerned about accidentally cutting yourself when slicing butter, this is the perfect alternative. Forget sharp knives and decorate your toast in butter ribbons!

Pie-making is a true expression of a cook's love: of ingredients, of process, of feeding hungry people something good to eat. For cooks, the pie is the hug, but how about a pie you can hug? We're way ahead of state fair blue-ribbon season, but in one shopfront at the venerable etsy they believe in being prepared for contests beyond pie-baking and pie-eating. Buggabug's shop features not just a menu but a feast of patterns for creating your own huggable food easily and inexpensively from felt.

The Blue Ribbon Pie collection features lemon meringue, cherry, pumpkin, even grasshopper. If that's not enough to satisfy your sweet tooth, try tea cakes, doughnuts, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls -- even a box of Valentine's day chocolates. A lumberjack's pancake breakfast will get your day going, and after the whistle blows, why not unwind with some Chinese take-out and a movie?

If you take a cup of tea with your pie, Martha Stewart shows you how to make adorable teacup pincussions. If your pie of choice is cherry, Martha has her take on that as well. So does Better Homes and Gardens, where embroiderers can try your hand at this cherry redwork pillow (free log-in required). Finally, yarn expressionists can try this cherry pie slice at craftbits.

All of these projects are simple to intermediate to accomplish. And if your favorite way of pie crafting is the old-fashioned one -- rolling out dough and lining a tin with it, tossing fruit with sugar and spices, artfully layering a top crust over the filling, and putting the whole thing into a hot oven -- then slashfood can help you with that. Though we're not averse to the crafts of cooking, our heart is still with the craft of cooking.

Over the last few days I have been mulling over a post about my fridge-cleaning plan. Basically, I'm trying to only buy base necessities when I need them, and otherwise rely on the foods in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. The plan is to clear out as much as I can, by eating and not trashing, and then re-stock.

And it seems that I'm not the only one mulling over this plan, although my motivations are a wee bit different. Over at eGullet, there's a challenge to go without shopping for one week, and live on the food that's waiting to be eaten in your home. I'm right with Steven Shaw, the man behind the plan, that we so easily horde food without eating it, although I don't think it's as simple as: "If you spend $100 a week on groceries, this experiment will put $100 back in your pocket quicker than you can say stimulus." Should you have a pantry full of foods you've never touched for years, maybe. But otherwise, you'll need to replenish, which is my goal.

The more you love food, the easier it is to go nuts and pick up things that appeal to your foodie whims. As I see it, by using up that old horseradish dip, mustards, and frozen soups, the space is not only free for new flavors, but replenishing with a plan. By that I mean: a fridge and freezer full of the ingredients I especially like, want, and find useful, rather than the remnants of whims past.

So I dare you -- don't go out and shop! Discover all the tasty nibblets you have right at home.

[via The New York Times]

Splenda is a somewhat controversial topic among food lovers, with some gourmands hailing it as the best thing since sugar and others arguing that it is only a matter of hours before some scientist discovers that the stuff drives monkeys insane, induces scabies, or makes your earlobes turn green. With that in mind, I'm going to state the following:

IF you use Splenda, and

IF you find yourself paying too much for the stuff, then

You might try visiting Splendid Life. The retail site for all things Splenda offers products that I haven't been able to find in stores at prices that are far below the prevailing rates in my neighborhood. Even with shipping, in fact, my recent Splenda purchase cost about half the price that my local supermarket charges. The only downside is that they tend to be a little slow about delivery; my order ended up taking about a month. Still, with savings like these, I'm willing to plan ahead.

Incidentally, the site also carries various Splenda-themed consumer goods, like t-shirts, baseball caps, and yoga mats. Personally, I'm avoiding the Splenda advertisements, largely because I don't want to encourage strangers to harangue me about Splenda-induced earlobe disease.