Over at Cheap, Healthy, Good, they're usually pretty concerned with helping you find ways to lower your grocery bill. You can find posts on how to save, as well as how to make that inexpensive stuff into tasty meals. However, even a blog dedicated to being thrifty acknowledges that there are some things you just need to pay more for.

This post is about ten categories of foodstuff for which you simply must buy the top quality brand. The list includes cheese, with which I wholeheartedly agree, and store bought tomato sauce, which I'm in partial agreement. Never, in my opinion, get cheap cheese, but I find that I don't really use tomato sauce so I guess this one doesn't apply. Other highlights are chocolate and beer, both of which get an emphatic nod: both items are a luxury, so if you must indulge get something worth indulging in.

The post is interesting and amusing, but everyone has their own version of this list. What items do you absolutely have to have brand name for?

So you want to buy at least some organic food, but you can't afford to be/don't want to be the person buying organic garlic powder and organic jelly beans. How do you know when it's best to go organic and when it's absolutely OK to go conventional?

It's tough to eat healthily as a college student, but here are some tips to eating right while you're going to school.

Need some time tested advice that has to do with food and being in the kitchen? The Life Hackery has got you covered.

Reading through their list of fifty amazing time tested kitchen tips was really neat. I knew quite a few of them, but there were also a lot of information I wasn't familiar with. One of my favorites was the tip about how to tell if your eggs are old. I also really liked the tip about getting the burned taste out of a pot of burned rice.

Most of the tips seem really good. There was one, though, that I'm having trouble believing. The very first tip says that you can get rid of a garlic or onion smell from your hands by rubbing them on a stainless steel spoon. Does anyone know if that's true or not?

I like to think that I can cook a pretty good steak. I mean,even though I work in a pastry kitchen and don't cook savory food as often, culinary school has got to be good for something. However, I realize that not everyone has that kind of advantage in the kitchen.

The Times Online is here for you. They have an article with five steps to cooking the perfect steak. It's pretty simple and straightforward. Along with the five steps are a cooking time guide and a photo slide-show of each of the steps.

If you're having trouble mastering steak, check it out. The article has great advice and some yummy pictures. Does anyone have more tips for cooking steaks?

It's pretty common in the world of craft beer for brewers to come up with, hmm, interesting names for their creations. I love coming across really good names and trying to get the joke. Most of the time I get it.

Joey Redner, over at Tampa Bay Online took the time to compile a list of the top ten beer names ever. I won't spoil the number one pick for you, but there are some great names on the list. Beers with names like "Old engine Oil" and "I'll Have What the Gentleman on the Floor is Having" are just a sampling of the fun to be had.

This top ten list is just the opinion of one man, though. What would you put in a list of the top ten best beer names?

OK, so you didn't start making glacé fruits last month, to be tenderly rolled in sugar and wrapped in handmade paper for Mother's Day. And you didn't pre-order the fancy chocolates from the local chocolatier, the coconut truffles that say "I love you mom" in pink-dyed white chocolate. You didn't even remember to go the grocery store to get more butter to make her a batch of oatmeal cookies. Now it's Sunday morning. What to do? Here are a few ideas.

1) Buy her a subscription to Bon Appétit, Gourmet, or Cook's Illustrated Just order online and go to the bookstore to pick up this month's copy and roll it up with a ribbon and a flower. If she's far away, just forward her the confirmation email and an e-card.

2) Take her to the movies and smuggle in several bags of her favorite childhood candy (my mother's partial to Charleston Chews and those jaw-killing Jujubes). Have an illicit movie theater candy picnic.

3) Create an electronic recipe box for her on Epicurious.com - you can compile your favorite recipes and make comments about them. Email her the password.

4) Show up with a shopping bag full of ingredients and suggest you bake a cake together. Eat half the batter raw. Eat the rest while watching cheesy movies on TV.

5) Send her some virtual chocolates at virtualchocolate.com. One caveat: you must follow it up in a few days with some real chocolates. I'm partial to Moonstruck Chocolates these days - check out the friggin cute chocolate ladybugs.

• Frank Bruni ranks his top ten new restaurants outside New York.

• How to cook dinner without waking your baby. Hint: use plastic forks.

• It's OK to pair oysters with red wine now, says Eric Asimov.

• The new breed of bars are more like bistros, with nearly full menus.

• West Coast frozen yogurt stores, led by Pinkberry, descend on Manhattan. Godzilla-style madness ensues.

• The Minimalist cooks with canned tomatoes, with a video on roasted tomato soup.

• Alex Witchel writes about bigos, Polish sauerkraut soup; Elaine Louie discusses a one pot recipe for homemade meatball sausage cooked with tomato sauce.

• Charlie Trotter will open a restaurant on Madison Avenue.

• We all need dried cherries, artisan cheeses and bamboo shopping bags...

Bored at work? High tolerance for grossness? Check out this B3TA (a juvenile, crude and quite hilarious British "arts" site) message board on "the worst thing you've ever cooked or eaten." The board is closed for posting, but there are 20 pages worth of responses. Some are almost certainly made-up, many are obscene, others so British they may be nearly meaningless to American readers (Bovril? Walkers crisps? Fry-ups?). But a lot of them are pretty darn funny.

Outstanding responses include turkey-wrapped sheep brain, roadkill badger, maggots meant for fishing bait and a chunk of cigar.

As for me, I'm going to have to pick the soggy tripe stew I ate in Argentina. Tripe is fine when all the stomach-y flavor is well cooked out, but this tasted of wet dog and gym socks and old burps, with the texture of snot-slicked rubber tubing. You?

Trader Joe's is a newcomer to my neck of the woods, opening in Chapel Hill just a few months ago. I'm a huge fan – whenever I can deal with the crowds I head over there to pick up my growing list of favorites. So far my favorites include their almond butter, Greek yogurt, sweet and spicy walnuts, paper bag pecks of "eco apples," Triple Ginger snaps, dried mango with chili and red pepper hummus.

But I have also had some real losers. The frozen hamburgers I had a few weeks ago were as hard as hockey pucks, with a weird, almost gamy smell. An apricot flan tart tasted of sticky cardboard, like an office meeting Danish left to dry for a week on the boardroom table. I was thinking of picking up some dessert for tonight, but I don't want to risk another disaster.

There have been plenty of Trader Joe's "favorites" lists in the past, but seeing how their stock changes so ridiculously fast, I'd love to start another one. So tell me, please, what's your favorite thing at TJ's? What to avoid?

Super Bowl Sunday is just over a week away. Almost everyone tunes in to the main event, whether they're watching the actual football game or just the commercials, making it the most-watched few hours of television all year. The Super Bowl is also one of the biggest snacking days of the year, and while pizza, hot wings and chili all popular choices, nothing flies off the supermarket shelves faster than chips, salsas and dips. You're probably better off using those store bought chips if you're going to be entertaining a crowd, but homemade dips can be even tastier and not much more difficult to make than store-bought. Here are eight great ideas for your Super Bowl munchies from around the blogs, but we'll be counting down a Dip a Day until the big game here, too:

• The Quick and Easy Artichoke dip from Simply recipes has four ingredients, is served hot and is ready in under 15 minutes.
• Mango Salsa has a fresh, Southwestern flavor from mango, corn, red onions and chilies.
• Similar to the salsa above, this Black Bean Salsa has corn, onions and peppers mixed in with black beans, for a heartier dip.
• Roasted Strawberry and Tomato Salsa is another fruity, but savory, dip. It features deep flavors from the roasted berries and heat from chipotle peppers.
• Susan's Artichoke Hearts and Roasted Red Pepper Dip is almost like a variation on hummus, made with tahini and blended until smooth, though it includes no beans.
• Spinach Parmesan Dip is always a hit at parties. Serve it with crackers or blue corn tortilla chips.
• French Onion Dip (pictured) is made from packet mixes all too often. Even though it's easy to use the pre-mixed spices, those versions won't compare with this homemade one.
• Too Many Chefs' Spicy Peanut Sauce is a great choice for dipping crudites, providing something a little different from standard ranch-type dips. It can also double as a dip for chicken wings.

The newest issue of Cooking Light, which is their 20th anniversary issue, has the magazine's choices for the top 20 cities in the US, based on 15 criteria that they feel embody their "Eat Smart, Be Fit, and Live Well" philosophy. They looked at fitness, health and exercise data from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of parks and recreation areas (and how often they're used) from the Trust for Public Land, restaurant ratings from the Zagat Survey and James Beard Foundation, and the USDA's farmers markets listings. Everything was evened out on a per capita basis and the cities with the most of everything made the top cut.

One of the top ten cities will be featured each month in the magazine this year, so readers will have access to information about all the things that got the city their ranking.

1. Seattle, WA
2. Portland, Ore.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Minneapolis, MN
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Boston, MA
7. Denver, CO
8. Milwaukee, WI
9. Philadelphia, PA
10. Tucson, AZ

As you might expect, I have a lot of cookbooks, old and new, sweet and savory, healthy and decadent. The division between those last two types of cookbook always seems more important around the beginning of the New Year, since many hope to add new and improved eating habits to their list of things to accomplish during the year. The difficulty with cookbooks is that all to often "healthy" books are unfairly labeled as not being worth it, with bland or boring recipes that can't compare to the ones found in the more "decadent" cookbooks.

While it is true that the more fattening, higher calorie recipes usually taste good (assuming that you're using a good cookbook in the first place), so can the healthier ones. And this year, there were plenty of health-conscious cookbooks released to add to your collection, whether you are looking for something healthy or just for some that that tastes good.

Comfort Food Makeovers and Fast Food Fix both remake recipes into lighter versions without sacrificing flavor. The Biggest Loser Cookbook is based on recipes that worked for contestants on the hit show, and The South Beach Diet Parties and Holidays has a good selection for entertaining. Perfect Light Desserts has lots of lightened sweets recipes

Other health-conscious books include What to Eat to help you shop more effectively and choose nutritious foods, The Healthy Lunchbox has a selection of kid-friendly, easy to make lunches that are better than most school-provided alternatives. California Squisine is another fun, kid-friendly book to encourage kids to eat right (without knowing they're doing it). Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy is a great resource for those who really need to manage their food intake to deal with diabetes.

The New Year is always full of possibilities. There are meals to be eaten, recipes to try and, of course, a slew of new food trends that will shape the way we eat and what food issues will be at the forefront of the news. Of all the trends that seemed to be pushing towards the forefront in recent months, these are some of those that look like they're about to have a breakout year.

Single Origin Chocolates - Dark chocolate was the hot item last year, but more companies, including Hershey's, are introducing and promoting single origin chocolates with cocoa beans from one country - or even one plantation - for their unique flavor profiles.

Healthy Soft Drinks - Jones Soda has eliminated high fructose corn syrup from their recipes. Enviga has been fairly successful so far, thanks to the large amount of publicity that it has received, and Diet Coke Plus will be coming to stores in a few months. Look for other soda companies to follow suit.

Healthy Food Labels - Hannaford supermarket introduced a labeling scheme of their own to direct shoppers to healthier foods and the traffic light system was a success in the UK. Don't be surprised to see more obvious messages about what is and is not good for you.

If you know someone who loves to bake, chances are good that you frequently enjoy the fruits - or cookies, cakes breads, etc - of their labors in the kitchen. While they do enjoy what they're doing, why not use the holidays as an excuse to pay them back with something that every baker either wants or needs? This list has eight of our top ideas for the baker in your life and, even though some of them are on the expensive side, keep in mind that you'll probably have a chance to enjoy anything that the create with these tools, too.

Topping the list of great gifts is a stand mixer. They're great for mixing up just about anything you could want to bake, from cookie dough to bread dough. The standard is the KitchenAid 4 1/2 quart mixer, which is a great choice for the casual baker, but if you're really serious, you might prefer to get a more powerful machine, like the 7-qt Viking mixer.