Via Vie chef Paul Virant's Twitter feed (say that 10 times fast):

Virant's caption: "These are "real" baby carrots. Did u know that the kind you get at the store are really big carrots that are shaved down by a machine?"

And speaking of things you get at the store:

Our cubicle mate, Char, was just telling us how, when she shops at her supermarket (we won't say which, but it rhymes with 'school'), she usually spends around $130 or so, and how, when she pays for her groceries, the machine spits out a coupon for $8 -- if you spend $150 or more.

She was obsessing about this -- and now we're obsessing about this -- because another co-worker, who only spends about $30 on her grocery trips, had given Char her own coupons for $5 off -- if you spend $50 or more.

Interesting, no? Methinks our supermarkets know too much about us and want too much from us. Check your receipts.

We're suckers in the supermarket, a new survey says.

Though more of us are shopping with lists in hand, 90 percent still give in to impulse buys, about half of which are decided in the aisles, according to a survey of 1,000 people by Miller Zell, an Atlanta retail consulting firm (which advises supermarkets on how to construct aisles so that we give in to impulse buys).

Surprisingly (or not), it's the Generation Y-ers who are increasingly shopping with lists -- and yet are more likely to grab the chips and salsa from the endcap, the survey says.

As a list shopper myself with an interest in this new frugality movement, I'm finding increased satisfaction in passing up encaps without nary a glance. That stuff usually doesn't catch my eye, anyway (though I do profess to a weakness for the dark chocolate covered almonds with sea salt and turbinado sugar from Trader Joe's, but who wouldn't).

How're you holding up?