Are Reduced-Sugar Cereals Worth It?
"Conscientious parents, or guilt-ridden ones, sent the word to major cereal manufacturers not too long ago: Make our kids' favorites with half the sugar, please." Posted at 7:46 AM Central Time

Why Do We Collect Things?
"If you collect -- or ever plan to collect -- anything, your first priority should be to develop an honest self-awareness of your personal ambitions. You might even try to predict how those ambitions are likely to evolve throughout the remainder of your life." Posted at 7:39 AM Central Time

Barcodes: Building Blocks of Design
"It is an unofficial fact of modern life that the average grocery store clerk will attempt to scan an item at least a dozen times before breaking down and manually pricing a troublesome product through the cash register. The act of scanning has become so ingrained in everyday commerce that a scan gone awry can generate everything from an audible sigh of displeasure to a rolling of eyes to an under-the-breath slandering of a grocery store manager named Brian...Using a massive database of bar codes, [Scott] Blake creates mosaics of easily recognizable figures such as Oprah, Elvis, Madonna and Jesus. More impressively, he tailors the bar codes to his specific subjects, so that a portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger is also a coded -- and fully scannable -- representation of the actor's film career." Posted at 8:20 AM Central Time

Disabilities prove to be no barrier to helping others
"Every Monday, for about the past eight years, members of the program have become expert grocery shoppers for those less able. Two to three members of ACAP volunteer their time to buy groceries for Oak Hill Village's Country Store, located within the complex. Residents of the independent living apartment complex rely on the grocery store for everything from Skippy peanut butter to ginger snaps to Scott toilet paper. For the residents of the complex, the store allows them to do their grocery shopping without venturing out into the cold or waiting in long lines at the local grocery store." Posted at 7:46 AM Central Time

Beyond cheddar: tips from a cheese maker
"[Cheesemaker David Frisone Strenio] recommends refrigerating blue cheeses, softer varieties, and those you don't intend to eat for a few days, and sometimes keeps hard cheeses on the counter. Refrigerated cheese should still be taken out a little while before serving -- its flavors and textures will be more fully appreciated at room temperature. 'Keeping it cold just numbs it,' Strenio says." Posted at 7:40 AM Central Time

Web Wunderkammer: A collection of curiosities for study & grins
"Cabinets of Curiosities were small museums collected and curated usually by one individual. The contents were objects of an exotic nature, culture artifacts, oddities, extraordinary crafts etc. from around the world... The outcome of the online "Cabinet of Curiosities" project and the ultimate disposition of its contents are unknown at this time. However, currently we are looking for image donations (just images) of objects in personal collections that are strange, humorous or odd..." Posted at 10:03 PM Central Time

LOVE: The pleasures of grocery shopping
"I really like grocery shopping, and it isn't just because I like food and cooking. Though that's a big part of it. I think I like grocery shopping quite a bit because I like the stores, the way they're laid out, the lighting, all of that. I have a similar fondness for office supply stores, too. Anyway, I thought about all this because I went grocery shopping this morning to my favorite store, Whole Foods..." Posted at 7:54 AM Central Time

HATE: I hate grocery shopping
"I don't know about you, but I 'HATE' shopping. It is such a waste of time. Well, I started looking around and found a site about ordering groceries online. Half the stores they offered for my area were not delivering in my state. I finally found one called PeaPod. This service is offered by Giant." Posted at 7:49 AM Central Time

Americans spend 10.7% of disposable income on food
"Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 7, the average American had earned enough income to pay for his or her family's entire 2005 food supply. According to the USDA, American families and individuals currently spend, on average, just 10.7 percent of their disposable personal income on food. By comparison, last year it took the average American until late April to earn enough money to pay for their federal, state, and local taxes." (Press release) Posted at 9:53 PM Central Time

New 'Lifestyle' Marsh offers a different look
"Kristi Speheger was taken aback the first time she walked into the new Marsh supermarket in the Traders Point Retail Center on West 86th Street. 'It was so different the first time we came in here, it was a little bit disorienting,' she said. Jodi Marsh, the grocery chain's vice president for community relations, said company executives hear that a lot. And the reason is simple. The store, which is just off I-465 on the Northwestside, is organized in a completely different way than the traditional grocery store. Instead of a design that features aisles that shoppers walk up and down, this Marsh -- along with two other new 'Lifestyle' stores in Noblesville and Fort Wayne -- features a central courtyard surrounded by specific departments." Posted at 7:27 AM Central Time

New shopping cart displays grocery list and checks you out
"You're shopping for groceries, making your way down the candy aisle, when suddenly one of the products tries to get your attention." Posted at 7:03 AM Central Time

The Six O'Clock Scramble
"For the monthly subscription price of $4.95, you will receive a weekly e-mail newsletter with five tried-and-true recipes each week (one for each week-night dinner). The newsletter also includes tips for surviving the hectic dinner hour and a grocery list for the week's ingredients." Posted at 6:58 AM Central Time

My analog Palm Pilot
"When I travel, I usually write everything that's super important to me down on a 8.5x11 piece of paper, fold it twice, and stick it in my pocket. That way, when I need to look up a phone number or jot down an address, I don't have to get out a notebook, my computer, or hunt around for a piece of scrap paper. And it won't ever get stolen like a cell phone or handheld might." Posted at 8:02 AM Central Time

Got terrible handwriting?
Then try this Printable Grocery List at BlueSuitMom, a resource of work and family balance information for executive working mothers and their employers. Posted at 8:33 AM Central Time

COLLECTIBLE MEMORIES FOR SALE
"Mary Diden, 80, still has the first doll she ever received as a child, and it is dressed in one of Diden's own baby dresses. She has also kept her first doll house, a gift at the age of 7, she said. These and hundreds of other treasures are stored away in the house she's lived in since she was 6 months old. It may be time, Diden said, to part with some memories." Posted at 8:52 AM Central Time

The ultimate sideshow
"'No, I don't think [this interest] is morbid or strange,' says Hoff, 44, pausing in the midst of a disquisition on the intricacies of bodily decay. 'Haven't people always been interested in death?' If Hoff's peculiar fascination is not to everyone's taste, it has at least found a suitable home for the next few weeks. His private collection of mortuary artifacts -- from embalming shunts to Victorian-era 'animal-claw jewelry' -- are part of Good Mourning America, a new exhibit at the American Dime Museum that casts an eye on the evolving business of death and grieving in America, particularly around the turn of the last century." Posted at 8:48 AM Central Time

Reciprocality update
Thanks to everyone who has been sending in lists. I know I owe some of you that B&W photo as offered via Nervousness. I haven't forgotten -- I'm just way behind! Posted at 8:32 AM Central Time

Write on: Rockland assistant treasurer's unusual pen passion
Jane Sforza, assistant treasurer for the town of Rockland, [Massachusetts,] believes one should always have a pen close at hand. At last count she had more than 90 of all shapes and sizes, neatly mounted on her desk. 'You know when people go away they get T-shirts or keychains? I get the pens,' Sforza said. 'It started with my granddaughter's Happy Meal pen. She was 3 years old and I said, 'I want that.' That's how it started.'" Posted at 7:20 AM Central Time

Reduce, reuse, recycle, reconsider
"Sometimes a discarded box would be a handy reminder of what my son liked to eat. I once found him assiduously writing, in pencil, an item on the grocery list on our fridge, said item's box in hand to help with the spelling." Posted at 7:10 AM Central Time

Low-carb diets slice into baking business
"...but it's the U.S. bread industry that's been mired in a nightmare, watching industry-wide sales of white bread products dip 7 percent to 10 percent during the height of the low-carb diet fad. Instead of moving to whole grains in lieu of white brands, some customers took bread off the grocery list altogether. Now the industry is fighting back." (Registration required: Use BugMeNot.) Posted at 7:05 AM Central Time

What sort of shopping/grocery lists do you use?
"I was flicking through a magazine the other day and read an article about shopping lists (the article was about de-cluttering) and I wondered how many people here use a constantly maintained/updated shopping lists to organise their pantry/fridge etc.?" Posted at 7:06 AM Central Time

Flickr: Photos tagged with grocery
After you look at all 700 of our lists, head over to Flickr and look at all 250+ photos tagged "grocery." Posted at 7:00 AM Central Time

Red Herring Blog: Listmania
"Lists are the white noise of information. They're everywhere, and we all make them, but they're so familiar they escape our notice. What's on a to-do list is what matters; the list itself as a thing -- as a way of organizing information -- isn't worthy of attention." Hmmm. Don't necessarily agree with that but... Posted at 6:36 AM Central Time

For collectors, anything is a fair target
"There was a time when almost everyone in the country collected stamps. That was only about 20 years ago. For children at that time, stamps were like money, with which they could get beads or trading cards. Middle school and high school students learned about the world's geography by collecting stamps, while adults considered it a 'classy' hobby. But times have changed. These days, doing what everyone else does is considered boring and simply a waste of time. That's why the ranks of 'yeopgi' (crazy) collectors are increasing now. These collectors acquire virtually anything, and don't care what other people think about their collections. The item may be trash to other people, but is a treasure to the collector himself." Posted at 7:11 AM Central Time

Unusual Museums of the Internet
"A HodgePodge collection of unusual Internet museums and collections. Includes unusual collections from Wooden Nickels to Antique Typewriters, and almost everything in between." Posted at 7:12 AM Central Time

True Food Now!
"Go behind the label and get the facts on genetically engineered foods: What's going on 'behind the label' of the food on our supermarket shelves in the United States? A secret genetic experiment... and you should know that just because it's not listed on labels, doesn't mean it's not there. So what's an American consumer to do?" ...At the bottom of the page there's a link so you can "print a shopping list of non-GE brands and take it to the store with you." Posted at 7:08 AM Central Time

At 50, TV dinner is still cookin'
"It began as a solution to that All-American holiday problem -- what to do with the leftover turkey. But executives at C.A. Swanson & Sons weren't talking about just the remainders of the family meal. They were talking 520,000 pounds of poultry. The Omaha, Neb., frozen food company had overestimated the demand for and undersold its 1953 Thanksgiving supply..." Posted at 8:03 AM Central Time

Where's the Beef? And Eggs? And Cereal?
"The Kroger Co. (Cincinnati), the country's largest supermarket retailer, has opened a 105,000-square-foot store in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, its largest supermarket to date. Taking direct aim at Wal-Mart, Target and Meijer hypermarkets, the store -- four football fields in size -- contains a Fred Meyer Jewelers outlet and aisles of dinnerware, kitchen appliances and office furniture." Posted at 8:00 AM Central Time

Business owner strives to make vacations easier for tourists
"No one wants to go grocery shopping on vacation; or at least that's what Liz Skipper thinks. It's also the premise for her 1-year-old business, Accomplish More Concierge Services, which offers grocery delivery, vacation planning and gift baskets through its Web site, www.accomplishmore.net." Posted at 7:36 AM Central Time