"sale" news and stories

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.

Add Albertson's to the roll call of companies shutting doors due to the recession. The grocery chain has announced that they will be closing multiple stores in economically slammed locations like Florida, Texas, California and Nevada. Albertson's will still be the second-biggest supermarket chain in the U.S., but a bit of the bloom will be off the rose (or, if you prefer, ripeness off the tomato or mayo off the macaroni salad).

Of course, this means that there are bargains to be had at stores that are being terminated, with discounts of 10-90% off. I myself have picked up bags full of Indian specialties for 75% off (thus, my normally overpriced $4 jaipur vegetables are now a solidly discounted dollar), as well as staples like soup and beans for less than a buck and stacks of disposable foil baking pans for a dime apiece. I also scored some Bumble & Bumble hair products for under $10, but you can't eat those.

If you see an Alberston's with a "Store Closing" sign, it's worth checking out.

Ad Age reports (subscription) that sales of dark chocolate are up 40% this year, in increase leading to $1.62 billion in sales, after only a 29% increase from 2003-2005. One of the reasons for the increase is the fact that this past year has seen many reports that dark chocolate and cocoa are good for your health, in addition to chocolate bars promoting themselves as health foods. All the media coverage of the subject, on top of companies continually rolling out new dark chocolate products, has really made consumers more aware of dark chocolate and more willing to try it.

Any health benefits aside, consumers are learning to appreciate chocolates in the same way that they learned to appreciate different coffees so many years ago. Chocolate has nuances and the fact that people want to taste and learn about them is evidenced by the fact that more and more chocolates are stating their cacao percentages and countries of origin on the label.

Square watermelons (and even pyramidal ones) have been around in Japan for several years, and now grocery stores in the UK will sell them, according to the Daily Mail. Tesco will start selling the melons in October for less than £5 (approximately $9), far cheaper than the cube-shaped melons usually retail for in Japan. The melons, which are shaped by the clear plastic boxes they're raised in, will be imported from Brazil.

At Luxist, Deidre announced that the wines collected by Jacques Chirac while he was the mayor of Paris will be auctioned later this year. The city has decided that the liability involved in keeping the collection - which could be damaged by floods or other accidents in the bowels of the Hôtel de Ville, where it is kept - is too high to make it worth the risk, not to mention the fact that the wine budget for the city has been slashed dramatically and they can't really afford the maintenance. The wine budget reduction is a reflection of the fact that the Parisians aren't drinking wine at the same rates they used to. For example, despite an equal number of receptions, only half the amount of wine is consumed now as it was during Chirac's time in office.

The 5,000 bottle collection is expected to bring in at least $600,000, as it contains many fine wines, including 191 bottles of 1976 Krug champagne and several bottles of 1990 Château Pétrus (worth more than $1,700 each).

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