Photo: Amazon.com.

'The French Market'
by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde
HarperCollins Publishers -- 2005
Buy it on Amazon

Although glorious American markets do exist, nothing quite compares to the French marketplace -- the endless barrels of olives alone distinguish them. But in the next-best-thing category, the author of "My French Kitchen" attempted -- and succeeded -- to capture the art of French market-inspired cooking yet again in "The French Market: More Recipes from a French Kitchen."

French cooking at its core makes strong use of fresh produce, with dishes like the traditional tomato salad, which frugally pairs tomatoes with parsley and heaps of pepper to magnificent results. "The French Market" seems to share this proclivity for cooking with tight ingredient lists, relying largely on the flavors of quality produce -- and the occasional bouquet garni.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

The New York Times seems to think so. Indeed, many grocery stores in urban areas are closing up shop, and all that's left is a big open lot and a smattering of mom and pop convenience stores left in their wake. But despite the name, convenience stores aren't always, well, that convenient, especially when you're in need of fresh fruit and veggies, low-fat snacks and fresh poultry or seafood.

A study by New York's Department of City Planning estimated that over 750,000 New Yorkers live five blocks or more from a supermarket. And when that's the case, most people opt to drive or cab it to the store, especially if they have lots of shopping to do or little ones in tow. And at the end of a long work day, many people just don't have the energy - or the time - to stroll down to the grocery. (The study also found that there is enough need for 100 additional supermarkets across the city).

So what's a hungry person to do? Most people simply go without fresh produce and other things that are carried by larger supermarkets. Others are currently shopping at a store, but worry about it closing, because the only other option is miles away.

What about you? Did you or someone you know ever have trouble getting to a decent grocery store, especially if you live in a populated urban area?

Supposedly, everything is bigger in Texas and up until now, that adage has certainly held true for Whole Foods Market, which has their 80,000-sq. foot flagship store located in Houston. The company is now planning an even larger store for San Jose, California. At 86,000-sq. feet, the store will be the largest Whole Foods in the US and probably will hold the title for some time despite the fact that Whole Foods does seem to love large stores. With restaurants and spas opening inside supermarkets, what was once one-stop-shopping is now a shopping experience.

But is this getting out of hand? How large can a grocery store before it gets too big? This new Whole Foods, which will be located at the intersection of Blossom Hill Road and Almaden Expressway, will take up about 2 acres without including space for loading docks and parking. It's safe to say that it isn't exactly necessary to have a store that large, but do you prefer to seek out the biggest stores for your shopping when given the choice between a larger and smaller store of the same type?

Obesity in Britain, as it is in the US, is often referred to as an epidemic due to the quickly expanding waistlines of so many in the country. The Department of Health puts the number of overweight or obese people in Britain at 24.6 million, or around 40% of the total population, and they expect to see numbers increase over the next decade. People in the US are slightly healthier than they were lest year, in part because of trends towards healthier eating (even though we are still seeing a tremendous amount of very unhealthy food out there), but this same trend is not noticeable in the UK, according to a new study.

This study, which surveyed more than 12 million consumers about their shopping habits over the past four years, found that only 8% of Britons made an effort to buy healthier, more nutritious foods, such as organic products and "food with labels such as fresh, lite or low fat." 44% of British shoppers had made no effort to buy healthier foods, sticking with "value or extra-value lines" of products." Interestingly, there wasn't much difference in price between the baskets of the healthy shoppers and those who opted for cheaper, less nutritious foods. The healthy baskets cost an "average of £71.78compared with £71.18 for an unhealthy one," which means that most shoppers were buying what they perceived as value at a cost to their health and without saving anything in their wallets.

Marion Nestle says that when she talks to people, she hears "this phenomenal sense of despair about their inability to do anything about climate change, or the disparity between rich and poor." A despair that she says is alleviated by a trip to the grocery store where "they can make decisions about what they are buying and send a very clear message." Perhaps people really do express these sentiments to her, but unless specifically directed, it seems unlikely that most people make the connection between relieving their feeling of despair over the "disparity between rich and poor" and shopping for groceries - in this case, probably organic ones.

But it is true that consumers have the power to change the marketplace and that they are doing it every day with the decisions they make at the grocery store, as The Economist mentioned in a recent article. The organic food industry is growing by leaps and bounds and there is an ever-increasing call for higher-quality food, held to higher standards, whether they are organic, local, fair-trade, hormone-free, etc.

Growing up in the NYC suburbs, I always thought most grocery stores were the same. So many of the foods seemed to be generic items that were aimed at an ideal of America circa 1950. I assumed that if you wanted Kosher, Italian, Asian, and Latino foods you had to dig out that minor bottom shelf section in the back of the store. That is until I did several road trips across America, and lived all over during college and grad school. I came to realize that markets tailor their products to the region and even the city.
Now this regional specialization is being fine tuned to its maximum potential. Many markets, whether small and local, high end, or the big chains, are researching their customers to find out what they want and need. Attention is focused on ethnic and religious background, economic levels and education, and supplying products to fit their local neighborhood. The most progressive stores in custom tailoring tend to be privately owned independent markets that are in urban areas. The Philadelphia Inquirer has been investigating this trend among the smaller, urban markets in Philly. It seems that the "old-fashioned corner store" is back, and better than ever.

If you've ever been in a bar with micro-brews on tap, you've no doubt noticed a trend towards the ornamental, baseball-bat-sized tap handles that accompany some beers. A recent AP story charts this trend and includes a little history on tap handles. Apparently they were a product of a post-prohibition regulation requiring bars to identify which beers they were pouring. I still don't know how that kept bars from putting a different keg on the tap. At any rate, the story highlights the niche that ornate tap handles have become, pointing to companies like Tap Handles, Inc., which cranks out about 200,000 handles a year. Their site has a pretty impressive portfolio of their creations. BeerCollections.com also has a pretty nice gallery of tap handles. I've always been fond of this tap for Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. The AP story also gets extra points for using the term "breweriana."

One of the best features of Trader Joe's is that they have a large display promoting their new products. They ususally introduce a few products at a time at intervals of three to four weeks, a small number that would disappear unnoticed into the regular shelves. But thanks to the displays, a regular shopper can tell at a glance if there are any new things that need to be added to the shopping list. This Crushed Ginger is one of their newest products and it only took a second before I decided to put it in my cart.

Typically, when a recipe calls for fresh ginger, it asks for a teaspoon or a tablespoon of minced ginger. With this pre-crushed ginger, I can just measure out exactly how much I need and continue with the recipe, without bothering to peel, mince (with my microplane grater) and then store the leftover portion of a piece of fresh ginger. The jarred stuff will keep for at least several weeks in the fridge once it has been opened.

A recent Australian study, the first of its kind, revealed that people who shop for groceries online tend to make better food decisions than those who don't. The reason for this was that when customers searched for one product - milk, for example - lower fat options were shown as a result, as well as the full-fat. Since they took the time to read the options on screen, as opposed to grabbing a carton and moving to the next item on their list, many shoppers chose the low-fat option. This happened with just about every food group.

Interestingly, the study also showed that the shoppers continued these habits, choosing the same, healthier products on multiple shopping "trips." When further nutritional advice was offered, consumers made even better choices.

The study tells us that when people take the time to really think about what they're doing or buying, people will tend to make better choices than when they're just taking the first thing that comes to mind. This is a good sign that messages about food choices and health are sinking in.

Hannaford Bros. operates 150 grocery stores in upstate New York and throughout New England and is implementing its own system, perhaps in lieu of a nutritionist at each location, to let customers know the nutritional value of the foods they're planning to buy. Their rating system assigns stars to food items based on USDA guidelines, adding points for nutrients and taking away for high levels of fats and sugars, but not taking calories into account. The system is:

• 1 star: good choice
• 2 stars: better choice
• 3 stars: best choice
• 0 stars: no nutritional value

The store stocks over 27,000 items and only 25% of them got one or more stars. Some staples, like cooking oil, were not evaluated. Is it a perfect system? No, but it does accomplish its goal of giving consumers a general idea of the nutritional value of foods without requiring "a nutrition degree to understand." A store survey said that 8 out of 10 customers wanted some form of nutritional guidance and they're trying to deliver it in a basic form.

Consumer Reports always delivers the information that shoppers need to know: what's out there, what is (and isn't) good about it and whether or not it is worth the price or time involved. More often than not, they are evaluating products, but in a recent study, they took a look at some of the stores that sell them.

Based on a survey of more than 20,000 consumers, CR found that the three most important things to grocery shoppers were "short lines, low prices, [fresh] produce," though good service and clean stores were also important. Most shoppers went to multiple stores each week or each month to pick up all the things they needed, shopping for produce at one store and dry goods at another. But using these criteria as a baseline, five supermarkets came out ahead: Wegmans Food Markets, Trader Joe's, Publix Super Markets, Raley's and Whole Foods Markets. All five had a desirable combination of qualities that kept shoppers coming back regularly.

You have probably seen a Starbucks kiosk in a grocery store before. It seems that some are full service and some offer only part of the full menu, but all can provide shoppers with a coffee or Frappuccino. Granted, you can generally also get a muffin, but the idea of getting a drink while you do your shopping doesn't seem that foreign. Getting a Big Mac, on the other hand, does.

McDonald's and Petrucci's Market IGA, a supermarket in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, are pairing up and installing a full-service fast food franchise inside the grocery store. Petrucci's is described as a "perishable's driven" market, so they specialize in produce, meats and other non-packaged goods, though they do stock those as well. It is the only market within 15 minutes of the city and has an upscale-looking Tuscan theme to it - a look that does not seem as though it would fit well with a fast food restaurant.

The owner/operator of the in-store McDonald's franchise said, and the Petrucci's owner agreed, "The town of Burgettstown really needed the convenience and service that both Petrucci's Market IGA and McDonald's provide." The question is, did they need them in the same place?

Retailers are reporting a drop in their sales of impulse items - those sodas, candies and packets of gum that are stacked up in checkout lines - since they have switched to self-checkout lanes at some stores. Customers are too busy watching the register availability to pick out additional snacks, assuming that such snacks are even available near the new machines. Statistical data was collected by a retail consulting firm, which noted that women's impulse buying dropped by 50% and men's by 27.9%. The biggest drops in sales were in individually packaged salty snacks (down 53%) and sodas and bottled waters (down 50%).

While this may be bad news for retailers, it is good news for consumers. Not only will shoppers save a few dollars when they're out shopping, but they will save thousands of calories over the course of the year - avoiding a potential weight gain of 2.5 pounds, according to the above-mentioned retail firm. The "Self Checkout Diet" may not become a best seller, but this information is certainly something worth keeping in mind the next time you're out at the store.

While the name gets thrown around a lot, especially with the ever-increasing discussion of shopping at local farmers markets and avoiding conventionally grown, mass produced produce, many consumers still wonder what heirloom tomatoes really are.

While some feel that a set, defined time limit of 50 or 100 years must be included in the definition of an heirloom plant, the short definition of an heirloom tomato is that it is an open-pollinated tomato plant, meaning that it is naturally pollinated by exposure to birds, insects and animals. Hybrid plants, the commercially grown tomatoes, do not always produce reliable, viable seeds due to the fact that some (if not most) of the crosses used to generate the plants were done artificially.

The more traditional tomatoes, those that are often seen in supermarkets and the majority of restaurants, have been bred to enhance certain characteristics besides flavor. For example, many have been selected for disease resistance or for having a slightly thicker skin, which makes them hold up better during shipping. Most of these conventional tomatoes are close to spherical and very red in color. Their flavor is ordinary, with little "wow" factor.

A new study, done by a supermarket consulting firm, says that nearly 60% of consumers are consolidating their shopping and taking fewer trips to the grocery store. A first reaction to this might be to say that consumers are doing more shopping at specialty stores and even local farmers' markets, and only taking trips to the main supermarket for staples. This may be true, but the study actually showed that the biggest decrease in shopping trips was in "downmarket" shoppers, which seems to indicate that a desire for specialty goods (or the often more expensive local goods) might not be driving the trend.

This raises the question of how often people actually do shop? Just a few short years ago, it seemed that most people, especially those with children, stuck to a once-a-week schedule, often heading out to the store on a weekend morning. Do you go to the market on a daily basis, picking up fresh ingredients, or do you take trips once a month to a warehouse store like Costco to stock up on bulk items and simply augment that with a couple of brief trips to a local store in between larger trips?