• Read about one of Boston's most in-demand bartenders
• Delicious, creamy local goat cheese makes for great croquettes, squash blossoms, tomato soup...
• Want to make our own cheese? Feeling frustrated? Try a kit
• Doughnut Plant has an unbelievable selection of sweet, fluffy pastries, managing to thrive without the hype that so many competitors rely upon
  
• And if you can't make it to Doughnut Plant, try your hand at making your own orbs of sugary goodness
  
• A Boston couple becomes the first U.S. business to exclusively import African wine made by indigenous producers
  
• Find out how the owners of one Rhode Island-based grocery store can afford to keep prices so low
  

Store brand products can be more affordable and, in many cases, better tasting than their name-brand counterparts. With some products, the larger national brands actually produce the store-brands, which simply receive different packaging before being shipped out to stores. Personally, I'm an open minded shopper and don't usually discriminate between name brand and non name brand food items. I buy store-brand sodas along with Diet Coke and do price and ingredient comparisons with products I haven't previously tried, often to discover that the store brand is almost identical to the more expensive corresponding brand.

That said, there are still some products that I won't buy if they're an off-brand. I prefer Heinz ketchup, for example, and approximations of Honey Nut Cheerios just don't quite measure up. It's probably because they're familiar flavors that I grew up with, and for that same reason, you probably have some, too. What store brand products will you not buy?

Martin's Food Market, at their new location in Eldersburg, Md, is adding an unusual new type of employee to its staff: a nutritionist. The nutritionist will be available to shoppers, to help guide them through the aisles and make good food choices. She will also be able to answer general questions about health and wellness and customers can make one-on-one appointments with her for more in depth nutritional planning. It's not quite clear whether there will be a fee for the services of the nutritionist, although it seems more likely that there would be one for the in-depth appointments than the one-off questions of shoppers.

The nutritionist could point out that baked chips are a healthier alternative to regular ones, and help consumers read the labels so they know what they're getting. While many consumers already know what they should be eating, or what the healthier choices are, the nutritionist can provide the nudge that is needed to take that option.

The only reason for store to keep a nutritionist is to please the customers, since the nutritionist would inevitable steer people away from more processed, less healthful foods, which could hurt sales of those items. But if shoppers are coming in to meet with her or because they have gotten recommendations in the past, a loss of junk food sales wouldn't hurt the store. So the real question here is, would you take advantage of such a service if it was available at your local grocery store?

Now that Amazon.com is selling groceries online, a whole world of opportunities has opened. Obviously, your day opens up since you don't have to spend time driving to the grocery store, pushing a cart around the store, waiting in line at the register, and perhaps even fighting with your kids about what flavor Pop-tart to get.

But an interesting thing has popped up with the Amazon.com grocery store. Customers are rating grocery products,just as customers rate books, CDs, and movies. This gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk has over 350 customer "reviews," also shows what other customers bought when they bought the milk. Hey, if they can tell you that customers who bought the DVD V is for Vendetta also bought Ultraviolet, Amazon can tell you that fellow customers who bought the Tuscan gallon milk also bought bananas, grapes and fresh vine-ripe tomatoes. Good to know.

No gift-wrapping on the milk, though.

Wow.

As if it wasn't already the world's largest retailer (aside from Wal-Mart, of course), Amazon.com has added groceries to their ever-expanding list of "stores." I remember back when online groceries and home-delivery was first introduced with PeaPod and WebVan. Both of them subsequently tanked, but perhaps the idea was ahead of its time. Amazon must believe that now is the time. Currently, they are only offering over 10,000 non-perishable items like breakfast cereal, microwave popcorn, and boxed macaroni and cheese.

Has anyone used it? Do you find that it's any cheaper? Faster? I imagine the convenience factor is likely the most attractive feature, but if you have to go to the market anyway to buy perishable items, I can't see that there is much convenience there anyway.

NPR's Melissa Block recently spoke with noted nutritionist Marion Nestle about grocery shopping, food advertisements and healthy eating, all of which are the subjects of Nestle's new book What to Eat. Nestle talks about how grocery stores lure shoppers through their aisles and how food manufacturer's advertising "crosses an ethical line" by marketing products to children. Nestle calls for restrictions of television advertising and, if possible, the elimination of cartoons on food packaging. In an additional clip, she goes on to talk about the trend toward organic offerings by large supermarkets and the move to weaken organic standards.

It looks like Trader Joe's is set to open a store in yet another Joe-less town. Though they have not released the address yet, Trader Joe's has confirmed that they are planning to enter the Pittsburg market. Local speculation and city officials say that the specialty grocer has plans to move into the Wheeler Paint Co. building on Penn Ave in the neighborhood of East Liberty. There are only five TJ's locations in Pennsylvania at the moment, so this should be good news to Pittsburg residents who are fans of the store.

Now that TJ's has store-opening almost down to a science, it's no surprise to hear that the store should be open by the end of the year.

A few months ago, I mentioned that some food producers were testing out a new advertising strategy where they add smells to their packaging , trying to lure customers in with scents that promised how tasty their products would be. Grocery stores also appear to be applying this technique. The flyer pictured here, for example, is one I recently received in the mail from my local supermarket that tried to lure me with its sensory (scent-sory?) appeal.

To experience the smell, the oven door had to be "opened," but I was cautious in my approach because the warning label read "Do not open if you are highly sensitive to fragrances." How strong could this smell be? Keeping the flyer at a distance, just to be safe, I peeled back the label. It actually smelled pretty good and, much to my surprise, not entirely unlike the blueberry muffins it was trying to represent.

One small sample wasn't overwhelming, but I certainly can't imagine a whole store filled with them. Like the perfume samples that infest so many magazines, I can imagine advertisers increasing the strength of their scents until they're overwhelming. Walking through the bakery section and smelling fresh breads is one thing, but once the cereal aisle starts to smell I think the idea will lose a lot of its appeal.

The last time we checked in on GroceryLists.org, there were about 800 lists, but today they're up to more than 1,100. Though they're still working on getting a list from every state in the country, the site is sort of like Post Secret for non-creative types. In fact, like Post Secret,  they're working on a book that will present all that they've learned from reading other people's lists. For example, you can take a look at what you need to throw a great party (hint: "'boys please' in puffy, iron-on letters" is critical) and learn that some people need far more help than they can get at the grocery store.

Judging from the way the collection at GroceryLists.org is growing, it seems that a lot of people must keep lists. I know that I do. Of course, I never see anyone at the market walking around with a list besides me. Not that there's anything wrong with that.... Do you keep a grocery list, or do you just walk into the store and hope for the best?

The tiger tomato has just made its formal debut at Marks & Spencer stores in Britain. The tomatoes are small, about the size of cherry tomatoes, but have dark red flesh accented with green stripes. Apparently, there is a growing demand for "novelty produce" to the point where farmers in the Isle of Wight are frantically working to develop new types of tomatoes. One of the next to hit the shelves will be the "strawmato," said to be very sweet and designed to pair with melted chocolate.

I can't honestly say that I like the idea of a tomato dipped in melted chocolate, no matter how sweet it is. I do, however, understand the desire for new and more unusual forms of produce. Isn't that why heirloom tomatoes and other less conventional fruits and veggies are popular? In fact, these tiger tomatoes sound like dwarf versions of the red zebra tomatoes, but perhaps more brightly colored.

Everyone needs to grocery shop at some point, fueling the continuing desire to live, even if you're not a big fan of doing your own cooking. Grocery stores have their own standards for packing bags based upon how to enable your foods to travel well: cold items with cold items, produce in one bag, don't cram too much in. The last rule is the one that gets tricky because sometimes it seems like you end up with 10 bags for 10 items when you're leaving the store. It could be more, if some of the plastic ones are doubled-bagged. Recycling the paper and plastic bags is an excellent idea, but switching to canvas grocery bags is an even better one. They are reusable, so they help cut down on waste, and many stores will even give you a per-bag discount for bringing them in! The bags can be purchased at many supermarkets, as well as being available online, and will pay for themselves in a few uses. They usually cost from $7-12.

Is grocery shopping the new national past time? Sometimes, it can certainly seem that way. With lines around the block at store openings for Trader Joe's and Whole Foods markets, one would think that the customers were lining up to see a Broadway show or a blockbuster movie, not to pick up a quart of milk and some specialty produce. Shoppers drive for hours to visit a Wegman's grocery in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland or Virginia - not only to get all the goodies they need to stock their kitchens, but for the fun of it. Cheese tasting, gourmet and artisan prepared goods and other foods, like sushi, prepared on the spot by skilled chefs are all draws of markets like these, whether their prices are high, low or midrange.

Why is shopping becoming entertainment, though? USA Today tried to answer that very question and found that the answer lay in a combination of factors. Americans are more interested in new and quality foods than ever before. They want healthier foods, international flavors and they want to find it all in one store because the long-standing tradition of one-stop shopping is the only kind that fits into a busy schedule. Consequently, the stores that offer everything do well, so well that people want to visit them more than other stores. "Nothing compares with it," a customer said of Wegman's. "You can spend an entire day there."

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Cranky Consumer column went grocery shopping - online. Many grocery stores now offer the option of shopping online, following in the footsteps of companies that sell groceries online, like Freshdirect and Peapod, but have no retail stores. To take full advantage of the retail location and see how the process worked, the WSJ opted to order online and pickup in-store from 2 national and 3 local supermarkets: Albertson's, Pathmark, Sam's Club, ShopRite and Waldbaum's.

The products at each store were generally found to be of good quality, though a few items were closer to their expiration date than the WSJ might ordinarily have selected. All of the stores took care to ensure that frozen and refrigerated goods were kept at appropriate temperatures until the very minute of pickup and some even had dedicated checkout lines for online shoppers.  But none of the stores were entirely without problems.

While Whole Foods market already has a foot in the door on the grocery market in the United Kingdom, due to its ownership of the Fresh and Wild market chain, there are no Whole Foods stores in England. Yet.

Whole Foods is planning to open a 75,000-square foot British flagship store on the Kensington High Street in London next year. While that is still some time away, commentators are already speculating as to how the US chain will fare overseas. It seems that some feel that the chain will not do well in the competitive market there, but signs point to the success of the American store because of the poor track record of British markets in the United States. The American market is cutthroat, possibly moreso than the UK's.

Look for the opening in early 2007. If all goes well, the chain hopes to expand into continental Europe in the future.

Alongside their article about Trader Joe's opening in New York, last week's New York Times ran a list of the top ten most popular items at Trader Joe's by volume sold.

• Charles Shaw Wines
• Mandarin Orange Chicken
• Nuts About Antioxidants Trek Mix
• Lite Shredded 3 Cheese Blend
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Trader Darwin's High Potency Chewable Multiple Vitamin & Mineral Formula Dietary Supplements
• Crumbled Gorgonzola Cheese
• Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans
• Trader Giotto's Pizza Formaggi (Four Cheese Pizza)
• Cheese & Green Chili Tamales

Strangely, I only buy two out of the top ten items - Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans. My top trail mix pick would be the one that has all the peanut brittle in it, not the antioxidant mix. If I'm getting cheese, I'll go for the imported Feta or Parmigiano Reggiano, not pre-crumbled Gorgonzola. With only 10 out of the three thousand items, I supposed that I shouldn’t be surprised that I only regularly purchase two of these items. Which of these are your favorites?