Surely you already know of Etsy, the ebay for the crafty and craft-loving alike. But perhaps you've yet to hear of Vegan Etsy, the blog of a group of Etsy users whose online shops consist solely of vegan items.

The blog primarily features fun interviews with Etsy shop owners, whose products consist of about half baked goods and half vegan accessories (which are just as fun to peruse). There are also plenty of links to the shops, where you can buy vegan goodies to your heart's content. A sampling: blueberry muffins, lemony-glazed raspberry turnovers, pumpkin spice cupcakes...is your mouth watering yet?

In addition to being an awesome place to find new buyers and sellers, you can pick up some great tips from the Vegan Etsy crowd, like new recipes, helpful vegan websites, and gorgeous flickr pages. You can't really go wrong.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a great piece to update consumers on when it makes sense to spend the extra money to buy organic, and when it doesn't. Their goal was to offer sound advice to shoppers who want to buy organic, but want to watch their wallets, as well. After all, with grocery stores stocking everything from organic oranges to organic beers, it is difficult to tell just from the label what is worth buying for the advantages that organics offer, namely environmentally friendly production and a lower level of pesticides in the final product.

Basically, they found that it is worth buying the foods that you eat a lot of and probably not worth buying things you only eat very occasionally. The "to buy" list includes: apples, peaches, bell peppers, strawberries, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, milk and other dairy products, meat, poultry and baby food. The "not to buy" list includes: broccoli, bananas, frozen sweet peas, frozen corn, asparagus, avocados, onions, processed foods that contain both organic and non-organic ingredients and seafood.

The vegetables were divided up by the Environmental Working Group's data from pesticide residue tests, though growers emphatically state that conventional products are safe. Seafood makes the "not to buy" list because there is still no standard for the production of organic fish, unlike the production of beef and chicken.

Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is the most expensive coffee in the world. The name "civet coffee" comes from the fact that the coffee berries are eaten by civets, which are mongoose-like critters, in Indonesia and the coffee beans are excreted by then after digestion. The beans are then cleaned and roasted to make the coffee.

A rare brew, this coffee is not available just everywhere, but Coffee & Tea LTD in Linden Hills, Minneapolis stocks it. The shop sells the coffee for $10 per 8-ounce cup, making it one of the most expensive cups of coffee in the country, if not the single most expensive. The owner, Jim Cone, buys green beans from Indonesia and roasts them to order in a vintage 1910 coffee roaster. He compares the coffee to fine wines, noting that it "might be too much to drink everyday" and describes the coffee as "having a rich and caramel-like taste."

Interestingly, Forbes has priced Kopi luwak at $160 per pound, while Coffee & Tea LTD sells it for $420 per pound. Granted, the coffee shop roasts its own beans on site, but it still seems like there would be a cheaper way to get your hands of a pound of the coffee than to pay retail there.

One might expect price or taste to be the primary considerations when purchasing any food items, including beer and wine, but consumer research in the UK has shown that neither characteristic is more important to shoppers than brand is. 62% of men rate the brand of their beer as the most important consideration when purchasing it. Only 20% of men feel that price is the most important factor (30% of women rate price as a primary concern). It seems that label recognition is just as important when it comes to beer as when it comes to buying designer clothes.

To counteract this, more stores and bottle shops have been using special pricing to try to get consumers to buy certain brands. 33% of shoppers say that "they would be encouraged to go for a good 'offer' on a brand of beer that was not their first choice," almost double the percentage from last year. As a result, beer is sold in increasingly larger packaging, and although the bottles are smaller, to give the impression of value. The same applies to wine, where consumers look for promotions and money-off deals when making their purchases.

Grocery shopping is not usually the activity at the top of the "fun things to do" list, but Whole Foods wants to change your mind about that by making the experience relaxing and pleasurable. The company has just opened The Everyday Spa, a prototype full-service spa, at their Dallas store.

The spa is 4,500-sq. feet and is entirely enclosed in a soundproof section of the store. It offers the same services as other day spas, including a wide variety of skin treatments, massages, nutritionists and "wellness consultants." There is also a "private balcony where lunch is served" and a store that carries most of the skin care products and cosmetics that are currently located in the Whole Body aisle/section of most Whole Foods Markets, in addition to jewelry, shoes and clothing made with organic materials.

Grocery shopping and spa treatments, despite the fact that WF is trying to emphasize the organic connection between the two services at their stores, don't seem like the best matchup. The point of getting a full body massage, for example, is to help you relax and clear your mind, not to think about what to buy for lunch tomorrow. That said, if their prices and services are good, there's no reason to rule out one of their spas if this one is successful and they decide to roll them out to locations across the country.

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.

This year, the big question for Thanksgiving is not about how to make the gravy, keep the turkey moist or whether to serve yams or mashed potatoes with dinner, but whether dinner is going to be cooked at all. According to some food researchers, "Everyone wants to know: How do I get out of this and still make it seem homemade?" Their solution is to order the whole dinner in.

It's a sad thought for those of us who enjoy cooking in general or at least enjoy cooking for a special event with friends and family. Last year, 5 percent of consumers in the US ordered Thanksgiving to-go, and this year more than 6 percent are expected to do so. They order from local upscale restaurants or natural food grocery stores, if they're looking for organic or free-range birds. Some order the whole meal online and have it shipped to them. Others opt for make and take meal assembly stores or even local fast food places. And about 20 percent of all those who order in try to take credit for the meal.

Is it really so difficult to cook something yourself, especially considering there are so many resources to help? I know that there are at least a couple of people in my own family (who shall remain nameless) who really prefer to buy the dinner, not make it, if anyone will be heading to their house. Do you prefer to do Thanksgiving it this way, or do you stick with tradition?

Perhaps some of you are just going to run out to the supermarket and pick up the first turkey that you see on the shelves of the meat section a few days before Thanksgiving. While this strategy will get you a bird, it will not necessarily get you the best bird, as evidenced by the NYT's cook-off of different types of turkey. The first step in turkey shopping is to find out what kind of turkey you actually want and how much it is going to cost you.

• Heritage turkeys are the types of birds that were served more than, say, 50 years ago when a turkey with breasts larger than the rest of the body was not necessarily desirable. Most of the breeds of bird are not commercially bred and some may even be endangered, so a limited number of them are available at a premium price.
• Free Range turkeys are ones that, like free range chickens, have the option of going outdoors instead of being completely confined, although some free range birds are actually raised completely in the open, so you might want to ask your meat provider about the origin of a free-ranger.
• Organic turkeys are raised on organic feed and without antibiotics and "natural" turkeys make similar claims. Whether you want an organic bird is a personal preference, but Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, is quick to point out that "growth hormones and preservatives are not used in California chickens or turkeys, so you just don't have to worry about [that aspect]."
• Conventional turkeys are the least expensive and easiest to find. Some say that they have somewhat less flavor than other birds and, because they have such a large amount of breast meat, they have the potential to be drier than the meat from other birds.

Once you have the turkey, all you have to do is defrost it (unless you've found a local source for frozen turkeys), cook it to perfection and enjoy. You might also want to mention to your dinner guests the amount of time you put into the turkey-finding process so they, too, can appreciate it a bit more.

I wouldn't have guessed that Ina Garten was a cake-mix kind of gal, but I suppose that once you have your own line of boxed mixes, your perspective probably changes somewhat. Ina's Barefoot Contessa mix line includes brownie and cake mixes, frostings, fillings and even a pie crust mix. The mixes aren't entirely new, but this is the first time that I've seen so many of them, so perhaps their original distribution was limited to a few specialty stores.

The appeal of Ina's recipes is that she manages to make them look better, as well as more indulgent, than anything you could get at a bakery. The fact that her famous coconut cupcakes are now in a box... makes them lose a little something, especially since they claim to come with a cream cheese frosting mix, to which you have to add cream cheese.

Products like sauces and preserves make sense, since even if Ina isn't in the kitchen making them by hand, you can feel confident that it is her recipe. But to convert one of her cakes into a mix really looses the homemade appeal, which is what made Ina a success in the first place.

There is a new website geared towards those who, like so many of us, spend a lot of time shopping and looking for that one great deal on an exotic sea salt, a rare olive oil, or a really decadent dessert. One Gourmet Goodie spotlights one gourmet food item every day and offers it at a discount price. The downside is that the selection is limited and the offer only lasts for 24 hours, but the upside is that this results in a fairly substantial discount. There are sites that offer this "deal of the day" type of service for other goods and services, but this is the first one that I've encountered that does so with things just for foodies.

Past items included a Halloween Cake sampler from Black Hound Bakery in New York (pictured), Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownies from Simply Divine Heavenly Brownies, Chocolate Wine & Liqueur Sauce 2 Pack from Anette's Chocolates Napa Valley and an assortment of Cheddars from around the World. There are five new items each week, with the Friday item available throughout the weekend.

In keeping with the spirit of my last post on Trader Joe's, I noticed something new - and rather surprising - at my local store this weekend. On the fruit display, where four-packs of apples of all kinds are usually stacked, there was a large, open bin of various kinds of apples. There was also a roll of plastic bags and a sign exhorting the benefits of mixing and matching Fujis, Galas and Braeburns, both organic and conventional.

If you're not familiar with TJ's, you're probably thinking that this isn't such a strange thing. After all - in most grocery stores, you can bag your own apples. Trader Joe's has always had their fruit pre-packed, though, and to see all the types of apples loose and mixed together was just... not very Trader Joe's-like!

It took me a minute or two - as opposed to a few seconds - to pick out four organic Fujis. Is the TJ's in your area doing this, too? And, if so, do you prefer this type of display?

I'm beginning to get the impression that writing about Trader Joe's is some sort of fall-back for food writers who don't have any other good ideas. On the surface, this seems like a good idea. There are plenty of good things to say about it and they come out with new things frequently, most of which are worth a mention. Unfortunately, the new things - products, store locations, etc - aren't what seem to attract the press. They seem to enjoy writing about how they are or are not impressed with the store and why it is popular.

Here is yet another article from an east coast paper where the author wondered why Trader Joe's was so popular, tried it and decided that it was a store worth visiting, at least from time to time. The problem with the piece is that the Washington DC area already has several Trader Joe's locations, so the chance that this revelation is actually news to residents, or to anyone else who has shopped at Trader Joe's, is slight.

After far, far too long a time with their slow-loading yet content-less website, Trader Joe's has upgraded to something worth visiting. The site now offers a complete look at the history and values of the privately-owned company, as well as the same information on new locations and copies of their latest "Fearless Flyer" newsletter.

The best thing about the site is that they now have a great display of their new items. Once you select your location from the drop-down menu, a page with pictures and descriptions of some of the new products in your area comes up. I already found that Cheddar with Mango, Chile & Lime is a new type of cheese ("one of the most unique cheeses (ever!)") currently being offered, a product I might not have noticed simply stocked on the shelves. They also have a useful FAQ that answers some questions about labels and nutrition, in addition to clearing up the ever-present concern of whether Trader Joe's products will turn you "into a superhero, a professional athlete or one of the great brainiacs of humankind."

Great job with the website overhaul, TJs. We love having a site that we can use!

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?

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.