"supermarkets" news and stories

Back in the '80s and '90s, grabbing dinner at the prepared foods section of your neighborhood grocery store meant picking up a rotisserie chicken, some gloppy potato salad, and maybe -- if you were feeling ambitious -- a trip through the salad bar.

While those rotisserie chickens haven't gone anywhere, these days, new high-end prepared food offerings have turned sections of the supermarket into full-blown restaurants.

Wegman's, a small supermarket chain based in Rochester, N.Y., features a Market Café that offers shoppers more than your average neighborhood diner. Pizza, sushi, stir-frys to order, homemade soups, even something they call a "large fish fry dinner." Whole Foods, the granddaddy of luxe prepared foods, goes even further. Here, depending on the store, you might find a Parisian cafe, a pizza bar, a BBQ shack, a sushi bar, a raw foods bar, a taco bar, a sandwich bar, or a full-out wine bar.

So what's the motive behind this new ready-to-eat bonanza? Profit, of course. Company execs want to keep customers returning to the store, and more visits mean more shopping overall.

There's an article in The Sacramento Bee that's been syndicated that says that food blogs are becoming popular! Of course, that's something we've known for a long time now, right?

The piece states that there are 48,000 bloggers right now, though doesn't really specify if that means there are 48,000 blogs or 48,000 people blogging (many blogs have several authors). And what is the big revelation in the piece? Readers read food blogs to get recipes, reviews, and ideas! Wow!

I often wonder why blogs are still seen as some alien concept. Some nice coverage for some good blogs though, including Chocolate and Zucchini and Cakegrrl (in the pic).

Our sister site Engadget gets some nice press in the piece, but Slashfood isn't even mentioned. I'm sure that's just a typo.

Earlier this week we reported that United Food Group had recalled 75,000 pounds of beef in Colorado. Now the company has expanded the recall to include New Mexico.

And it's not a little increase in the amount being recalled. To that 75,000 pounds you can now add another 370,000 pounds of ground beef that's being recalled. The details are a bit confusing. At first it sounds like only Colorado and New Mexico are affected, but the beef was actually distributed to 11 states, in over a dozen supermarket chains. Consumers are urged to either return or throw away any meat they might have in their refrigerators.

TechNewsWorld has the complete details at the link above, including the stores/brands affected and a phone number to call if you have any questions.

Update: Now it's 5.7 million pounds.

Of course, it's only for a few weeks, to see how the other half lives.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski and his wife are going to live on just three dollars worth of food stamps a day raise awareness of what poorer people have to face in their everyday lives.

It sounds great I guess, but is it really an accurate representation? I mean, what car is the couple going to drive to the store in? When they get back from the store, what kind of house are they living in, what kind of bed, what kind of TV are they watching, how much money do they have in the bank if they need it for an emergency? When I was a little kid, my family was on food stamps for about a year, and I think a lot of other factors weigh in on what happens to you when you have to be on them.

No, I'm not going to list them all here, but it's the subject of a new book by Tony Rosenfeld, co-owner of the b.good all-natural burger chain and contributing editor to Fine Cooking magazine. The full title of the book is 150 Things To Make With Roast Chicken And 50 Ways To Roast It.

Rosenfeld says that not many people roast whole birds anymore (besides Thanksgiving I guess). Most people are buying them pre-cooked. He worries that traditional cooking like that is becoming a little passe, and that maybe one day we'll no longer be able to get whole birds from the market.

Yeah, I have to admit that not only am I not roasting whole birds these days, most of my chicken meals come from pre-cut and pre-cooked chicken from Perdue. Oh well.