I am one of the biggest fans of shopping at home that Natchez has. Like many of you, I will search high and low before I go out of town for an item. Many times when you can’t find a product, especially a food item, it is because of one of two things:

First, you may not know where to look for it, and second, your grocer may not know you are interested in the item.

I found this to be very true with my recent article on the Halloween treats. The witches’ fingers actually got me more phone calls and e-mails than any other recipe I have ever run. And every call was about the ingredient marzipan.

I learned my lesson about using hard-to-find ingredients many articles ago. The marzipan I used for the fingers was purchased at Natchez Market. You can locate it on the aisle where the chocolate chips are located.

When I was grocery shopping the other day Barry Loy, the manager of Natchez Market, and I spent some time talking about this very problem. Either customers assume the store doesn’t carry the product or he doesn’t know that anyone is looking for it.

In an effort to help our readers and their customers The Natchez Democrat, the Markets and I are beginning a new venture. And I think it will be a help to you the reader.

Beginning today, the Markets’ four stores will have displays with the Wednesday food article and the ingredients needed to prepare it. And since I will let them know two weeks in advance of the food subject, they can have on hand any unusual ingredients the recipe requires.

They will also keep me up to date on new items which I can in turn pass on to you. I rarely have time to browse in the grocery store, so I often miss new things and some of them are quite good – such as the two new items Loy showed me this week. They both involve two of my favorite things: cookies and convenience. The first one is from Nestl\u00E9, who has pre-measured the dry ingredients including chocolate chips, for cookies All you need to add is butter and eggs. You can pull this box from your cabinet and turn out chocolate chip cookies in no time.

The next one comes to us from a new company in Jonesville, La. The Achilles Plantation company is marketing a new line of frozen cookie dough. Available in chocolate chip and oatmeal, the dough is already mixed and formed; you simply place it on a baking sheet and in minutes you have freshly baked cookies.

The best part is that the cookies are individually frozen so you only bake as many as you want. And, the bag is resealable for easy storage.

4Hats off the Friends of the Cemetery. Their first annual Angels on the Bluff tour was a huge success. My understanding is that somewhere between 1,100 and 1,300 persons attended the event. If you were unable to attend you missed something wonderful. The tour was both informative and entertaining.

Of course we thought the ghost of little Rosalie, the only civilian killed in Natchez during the Civil War, was by far the cutest little ghost in the tour. If missed hearing &uot;I can’t papa, I’m killed&uot; you can drop by the house; I am sure Emily Hall will be doing encores.

Christina Hall is the food editor at The Democrat. She can be reached at 442-9101 or by e-mail at christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com