Tea Spot in NYC's Greenwich Village has a relaxed cozy environment that is perfect for escaping the infectious urban anxiety that often characterizes Manhattan. Tea Spot provides a fascinatingly aromatic treasure chest of teas from which to try. Since every tea has its own ritual, the staff is excellent at explaining how it should be drunk and how long the tea should remain in the pot. For example, with chamomile tea, they suggested leaving the tea in the pot for at least 7 minutes.

One of the most important ways to fully experince tea is to be sitting in the right atmosphere, one that is not overrun with people. One of the best parts about Tea Spot is that it's usually easy to find a seat. There are two floors. The bottom floor has few windows (it's mostly underground) but it's spacious and has several tables. Not only can you purchase tea to stay, but you can also buy it, along with tea pots and filters, to go and drink in the comfort of your home.

This past week, I tasted one of their many rooibos teas that seemed to soothe every neurotic bone in my body with its bright euphoric floral aroma and its sweet slightly nutty flavor. There is something wonderfully calming and meditative about the mere act of sipping tea. I poured just a dash of milk into my cup and was transfixed by the change in color from maroon to light red. For me, the experience of tasting tea seems to begin with a visual response. Then, my olfactory senses dominate my gastronomical perception; it's all about the aroma. And finally, the sensations on my taste buds allow me to become fully absorbed by the tea's unique flavor.

The Museum of Modern Art Store might not immediately pop into your mind as the perfect place to fulfill all your kitchen needs.

Makes sense - much of its items are pricey and elegant, and not appropriate for everyday use. But if nothing else, it's certainly fun to peruse the products and place them on your mental kitchen wish list.

From inside-out martini glasses to panda-shaped pink lunch bags, MOMA's got funky kitchenware covered. Check out some of the fanciful finds below.

I was just over at Crate&Barrel, swooning over all of the gorgeous new kitchen gadgets for spring. My new favorite? The oil and vinegar pump bottle, which allows you to pres a button and squeeze precise amounts of the mixture into a resevoir, where you can then pour it onto your salad, fish, bread...or directly into your mouth. (Wait. that would be gross. Scratch that).

Craving more fun, brightly-colored kitchen doodads? You know you are. Check out the marvelousness below.

Whole Foods had been expanding breath-takingly fast over the past several years, with new locations - many of which are huge or feature unusual amenities - popping up all over the place. Being everywhere is one way to beat out the competition (think Starbucks), but another way is to buy them up. Whole Foods has just announced that they will be buying Wild Oats Markets, one of their top competitors, for $565 million, with the deal expected to to close over the next few weeks.

Colorado-based Wild Oats has 110 stores in 24 states and British Columbia and has not been doing as well as its rival. Whole Foods has twice the sales per square foot of retail space, though Wild Oats has smaller stores, and recently lost both their chief executive and chief financial officers.

Some stores will be closed and others will be relocated to fit in with existing Whole Foods stores, but Whole Foods feels that they can improve the Wild Oats stores on the whole and "put jet propulsion under [them]" to bring their sales up to Whole Foods levels. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey estimates that it could take two ears to fully integrate the Wild Oats stores

More than six months ago, Whole Foods decided to ban the sale of live lobsters and soft shelled crabs in their stores because they determined that the practice was inhumane. The sea creatures, in Whole Foods' study, were not "treated with respect and compassion" on their journey from sea to market and until that issue could be resolved, no lobsters were to be put into the sale tanks in the fish department.

Since the ban was enacted, the natural foods store has not found any companies that meet its standards for the human treatment of lobsters. Until now, that is. Whole Foods is opening their first market in Maine next week and the Portland store will be stocking live lobsters. They have contracted with the Little Bay Lobster Co., a New Hampshire-based company, which will keep lobsters in private compartments for transport after catching them to reduce their stress.

Stocking live lobsters doesn't mean that they will be selling live lobsters, though. In the stores, an employee will use a "110-volt shock [to kill them and] to spare them the agony of being boiled alive in a pot of water."

Maine's lobster fishermen aren't thrilled with this plan. First, they are offended that a company that so heavily promotes its support for local farmers and fishermen would choose an out-of-state company when there are so many local ones to choose from. Second, the fishermen say that "they tell us we're doing everything wrong, obviously it doesn't sit very well with us," noting that using "a lobster electric chair" to kill the lobster sounds like a gimmick that won't impress consumers. Especially not in a state that loves its lobsters.

Fast food restaurants are all about convenience: the convenience of getting inexpensive food quickly and not having to cook. McDonald's, long the standard of fast food, has decided to consider making a move to an even more convenient format. Modeling their change on convenience stores, McDonald's is test marketing the concept of selling prepackaged drinks in their stores. The products include sodas, sports and energy drinks from Pepsi (even though McDonald's carries Coke in their soda fountains), such as Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Gatorade, Propel Water, Lipton tea and Tropicana juices, all of which are stocked in a large, convenience store-style refrigerated case.

According to a Morgan Stanley research report, 62% of consumers "said they would drink different beverage at quick service restaurants if given the choice." McDonald's says that it is too early to judge consumer response in their Texas and Kansas City test stores, but is considering expanding the offerings and the test markets if it is positive.

The California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) just released the results of a study they conducted on California's Food Landscape, entitled "Searching for Healthy Food." Basically, the study started with the facts that the state of California had " more than four times as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as supermarkets and produce vendors" back in 2005 and the CCPHA wanted to see if California was in a better state today.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like things have improved all that much during the course of 2006. There are still an average of just over 4 times as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as supermarkets and produce vendors, with a range of 1.84 in Santa Cruz County to 5.72 in San Bernardino County. CCPHA suggests trying to encourage supermarkets and farmers markets to develop in underserved areas to try to stop the spread of the convenience-types of stores and restaurants, as the greater their concentration, the higher the obesity risk tends to be.

The worst counties were: San Bernardino, Sacramento (5.66), Fresno (5.34), Orange (5.13), Solano (5.08), Kern (4.87), Stanislaus (4.79), Contra Costa (4.66), Riverside (4.63) and Alameda (4.61).

The worst cities were: Bakersfield (6.63), Fresno (6.23), Long Beach (5.80), Riverside (5.58), Sacramento (4.97), Anaheim (4.79), Stockton (4.73), San Jose (4.62), San Diego (4.58), Santa Ana (4.40) and Los Angeles (4.24), with San Francisco (3.85) and Oakland (3.81) just barely cutting under the state average.

The USDA's nutritional guidance system, MyPyramid, has not been the smashing success that organizers hoped it would be when it was unveiled almost two years ago. The problem seems to be that the new pyramid, as opposed to the old one, only provides guidance, not hard and fast numbers to follow. This means that diners need to take responsibility for their health and their choices - and motivating them to do so is not an easy task.

Trying to help the public to better understand and make use of the already in-place system, food manufacturers and retailers have joined together to create the Take a Peak program. The program aims to get people thinking more closely about health and using MyPyramid with in-store advertising, banners, signs and kiosk. Displays will how reminders of how many servings of whole grains should be eaten per day and what serving sizes look like. Some products will be given a logo indicating why it maybe a good choice.

The trial run of the program will cover 2,000 stores in 17 states and includes Publix, Raley's and SuperValue. Depending on the response from consumers, it may not be long before the plan (or propaganda, if you prefer to look at it that way) ends up in stores at the rest of the US, as well.

California has been hit by an unusually bad cold snap this year and the effects of the freezing weather have really taken a toll on crops - and the bad weather isn't even over yet. Some estimates say that at least 75% of the citrus crop has been destroyed and others say even more, drawing from the more than 80% that was ruined the last time the state suffered a severe cold snap. The weather is so bad that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the 10 agricultural counties that have been hardest hit by the weather.

86% of the lemons and 21% of all the oranges sold in the US are grown in California, which makes it the largest citrus-producing state in the country. The loss of crops is devastating to the farmers, but it will also hit consumers hard at the grocery store. Orange and lemon prices are already increasing and the wholesale price has more than doubled in the last seven days alone. Juice prices will increase as well. "The price spike is expected to hit supermarkets in the next two weeks, when the present inventory dwindles."

While citrus is taking the biggest hit, basically every winter crop in California has been damaged, from avocados to lettuce, and consumers across the country will feel the effects of doubling and tripling prices in the produce department, especially if they want to buy US-grown fruits and vegetables.

Trader Joe's is sometimes criticized for the way that they package their produce. Much of it, with the exception of apples, is packed in little plastic containers that protect the fruit from being damaged or bruised and, in general, make it easy to grab a pre-set amount of tomatoes or other fruits and veggies. The pre-set amount is usually four or five items, depending on size, and can be inconvenient if you either need a lot of things or just want one. One of Trader Joe's newest offerings appeared in stores just this week and takes advantage of the grab-n-go nature of this packaging. It is a little kit containing all the ingredients you need to make fresh salsa: three tomatoes, a jalapeno pepper, a large shallot, garlic cloves and a lime. The instructions are printed right on the label and simply direct you to five up all the ingredients, combine and stir with lime juice.

I opted to make mine in the food processor, mincing the garlic, shallot and most of the jalapeno, then pulsing in the tomatoes and extra pepper. I used everything that was included and added a little bit of salt and pepper, too.

Owned by a German company called Albrecht Discounts, ALDI is a discount grocery chain that started in Germany in 1948. Decidedly no frills, the company stocks virtually all house-brand products, all offered at very low prices thanks to exclusive deals with their suppliers, many of which are big-name producers. ALDI has approximately 5,000 stores worldwide and the two Albrecht brothers, who own the company, are some of the riches men in the world.

But getting back to ALDI's business strategy, does this sound like another store that we know of? The same strategy, although executed by the US staff and tailored to their customers' tastes, is the exact same one used by Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's, although it may be based in Southern California, is actually owned by Albrecht Discounts. The company was purchased back in 1979, long before it hit the cultural mainstream. Since that time, it has been left to turn itself into a very trendy, upscale grocery store by following a similar business plan to ALDI. TJs has low prices and a lot of store-brand products, but a different image that appeals to a different group of consumers.

There are federal regulations in place that dictate how terms like "fat free," "low fat," "reduced fat" and "light," among others, can be used with regard to food. Fat free foods, for example, must contain less than .5 grams of fat per serving. It may seem like there is enough definition in this area of food labeling already, but a new label is catching on rapidly: the "lean" label.

For a long time, the "lean" label has been applied only to USDA certified meats that have less than 8 grams of total fat per serving, and no more than 3.5 mg of saturated fats. A recent ruling change means that the term can now be applied to packaged foods, putting it in direct competition with "fat free" and other existing labels for the consumer's attention at the grocery store.

Do consumers really need another way to describe the fat content of, say, frozen pizza? It would probably be too much to as that they just start printing the fat content right on the front of the box.

Shoppers in Atlanta, Georgia may want to take note that Trader Joe's is planning on opening a store within the next 12 months. Unfortunately, representatives from the company have been pretty tight-lipped about a location, but it does say that it will be "midtown" on the Trader Joe's website.

The California chain, as we all are probably well aware by now, is known for offering gourmet foods with a focus on quailty and convenience, at very low prices, often under its own label. Instead of producing all of the products themselves, they work closely with national or global brands that meet their quality standards to get lower prices for shoppers. One of the reasons that this strategy works so well is that the stores have a wide variety of items, but a very limited choice in each category, so once a product makes it into the store, it will not face much, if any, competition for sales. Many products are packaged to serve two or four, making them ideal for busy families or couples.

If rumors can be believed, the company is planning more than one Atlanta location to follow this first store, as well.

Frozen foods were once a technological wonder, but are now often the butt of food jokes, grouped together with fast food as unhealthy substitute for "real" food that is rarely worth eating. But frozen dinners are quick and convenient, though sometimes grouped with fast food on people's "do not eat" lists, they frequently present a healthier alternative to it when you really need something that doesn't require much preparation. There are also so many new frozen food products on the market every year, all made with technology that permits a wider range of textures in the final dish, that even staunch from-scratch cooks might be tempted by some of the organic, all-natural options in the freezer case. Besides, you're not the only one eating them. More than $25 billion of frozen foods were sold last year, peaking in January with the sale of diet-oriented foods. Here are a few more frozen food facts:

• 53% of all American households use frozen dinners at some point.
• They are most popular with 18-24 year olds, those over 75 and single people. Roughly 400 new frozen-food products, from toaster waffles to turkey dinners, are introduced each year by more than 300 companies.
• Despite the fact that they are so popular with singles, there are more 2-person and family-sized meals available than ever before to get in on the "busy family" market.
• Mexican frozen food is extremely popular right now, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

NOKA chocolate claims that they sell the most expensive chocolates in the world and at prices that range from a shocking $309- $2,080 per pound, no one would argue that point. The point that is debatable is whether their chocolates are worth that price. From their literature, you might suspect that the chocolatier of NOKA would be trailblazing through jungles to find the most perfect cacao beans to produce chocolates with the "rarest and purest" single-origin dark chocolate instead of melting chocolate into simple molds in a Plano, Texas strip mall.

Dallas Food has just completed a brilliant expose that reveals the outrageous markups on NOKA's products and the source of their chocolates, which they buy from a well-known and well-respected chocolate maker but conceal from their clients to protect their image as "chocolate makers" and their pricing, which includes a markup of up to 4,444%.