When is a PB&J not a PB&J? When you substitute pistachio butter for peanut butter and dried fruit for jam—exactly what is required to make an Italian-approved "PB&J." More

Lately I have taken to eating raisins and dried tart cherries as snacks. I normally eat lots of locally grown apples and pears this time of year, but for some reason my local markets, Fairway and Citarella, have had little or no local apples. What's up with that? It's apple and pear season in the Northeast, but not at these markets apparently. Normally I hit my local Greenmarkets on Saturday and/or Sunday, but I've been traveling most weekends for the book, so that hasn't been an option. More

Before the chillier temps set in and we all start (at long last) on pie, tart and crumble baking, here's how I'll be satisfying my fruit fetish: airy, delicate slices, crisp and almost candied, tinged with just the slightest bit of oven-brown on the edges. Let's make apple chips! More

Sometimes, you just have to eat a granola bar. Maybe you want a rib-eye steak, but you're stuck on a wildernessy trail or just at your cubicle, and the rectangular snack is all you got. There was a day when the Quaker Chewys were the leader of the pack. But the granola bar aisle has come a long way, expanding into bars with flax seed, exotic dried fruits (exotic as in, beyond just raisins), and pumpkin seeds (when it's not even October!). We tried about 20 snack bars, in search of the most satisfying ones that didn't just taste like candy. No offense, candy, but this isn't your taste test. Find out which bars were our favorites. More

The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read all her mission reports here. Hundreds and thousands! Photograph from Shenghung Lin on Flickr Drying hachiyas. Photograph from nineblue on Flickr Hoshigaki are tender, succulent, and moist. These are Hachiya (acorn-shaped) persimmons dried the traditional Japanese way—in the sun, with nary a preservative in sight. The taste is intense—concentrated persimmon flavor with honeyed overtones and perhaps the barest hint of cinnamon—but it's definitely the texture that gets to me. Hoshigaki have chewy, almost jelly-like insides that I distinctly remember my mom trying to con me of when I was a kid ("Sweetie, those dried-up persimmons don't look very good, why... More