Mayo, ketchup, mustard, salsa. There is so much more you can do to give your food some extra zing. The taste buds come alive with pleasure when the right flavors collide on your tongue, and we’ve gathered some truly exotic jams, jellies and chutneys to make your eating more adventurous and enjoyable. First, get an 11 ounce jar of Branston Pickle ($3.75 each; case of 12 for $36), a favorite condiment in the United Kingdom, where more than 28 million jars are sold each year. The sweet and tangy stuff is made from “vegetables in variable proportions” (carrots, rutabaga, onions, cauliflower, marrows, gherkins), sugar, vinegar, chopped dates, apples, tomato paste and more. It absolutely enhances a fish and rice or meat and potatoes meal. Just put a spoonful on your plate and take a little with each bite. Another UK delight is Piccalilli ($4.25 for 10 oz.), a yellow relish of chopped pickled cucumbers, green peppers and onion with tumeric and mustard. In the jams and jellies department, we wanted to know what lay beyond strawberry preserves and orange marmalade. Thus it was exciting to find Mrs. Miller’s Noodles, a Web site featuring the low-priced, beyond-the-ordinary products of a Ohio-based Amish family, the Millers. The family makes dandelion jelly, pineapple jam, mint jelly, hot pepper jelly, red pepper jam, tomato jam and sassafras jelly. All are $2.25 for 8 oz., except the hot pepper jelly, which is $3.50 for 18 ounces. At the Exotic Jam Factory, each season supplies its own selection of jams and jellies. Right now the pickings are great. Get some strawberry and cracked pepper jam ($9) to go with your cheese and crackers or cold meats. Or try the Jaboticaba jam ($9), which is made from a luscious Queensland fruit similar to the cranberry. Other offerings include nectarine and ginger jam, and a berry blend from their orchard which mixes Queensland Mulberry, Brazilian cherry, cherry guava and Jaboticaba. In the marmalade department, there’s orange and lemongrass and orange and whiskey.

Summer is the favorite season of many campers and hikers. They opt to take time off from work and backpack on mountain trails, spending the night away from city lights and noise. One of the pleasures of camping is enjoying a fresh cup of coffee or espresso at your camp site. At Everestgear, you’ll find the Thunderpress ($16) , a handy combination coffee press and travel mug, where you brew one cup at a time. For a larger group of campers, try the Lexan Javapress ($20), which looks like a clear pitcher with a coffeepot top. Place medium ground coffee inside, add boiling water, and allow to steep for 4 minutes. Press down the built-in plunger and you’re ready to serve your java. If you are more of an espresso person, GSI Outdoors carries a four-cup stainless mini expresso machine ($50). You place ground espresso beans inside it, set it on your camp stove to heat (this does not work in microwaves, or over campfires), and soon you have four double-shot (2.5-ounce) servings. To really impress your fellow campers, you can also purchase the milk frother kit ($20) to make lattes. Pour hot or cold milk inside the frother and move the plunger up and down until the milk foams. To look like a real outdoorsman, you can drink your coffee or espresso out of a Snow Peak Titanium Trek Mug from REI. This metal mug with a flip-top lid works as a cooking pot for pasta, a serving bowl for soup, and as a coffee mug too. It only weighs 4.25 ounces, so it’s easy to carry as well.

This week, millions of Americans will eat apple pie as part of their Fourth of July festivities. But apples are available in so many other yummy food products we wanted to share some of those online options with you. A truly indulgent gift from Wisconsinmade is the Gourmet Caramel Apple Gift Basket ($75), created by Amy’s Candy Kitchen. The basket holds one Belgian chocolate dipped caramel apple, one classic peanut caramel apple, a turtle caramel apple, three truffles, chocolate sandwich cookies and more. Less over-the-top, but also fun, is the “An Apple A Day Gift Basket,” ($42, pictured) from Designer Gifts, which contains apple cider, apple crisp, apple bread mix, and a magnetic notepad decorated with apples. Apple butter is a delicious and relatively healthy spread, which goes well with nut breads, banana bread and zucchini bread (certainly your neighbors have inflicted some zucchini on you this summer). Windy Hill Orchard and Cider Mill in York, S.C., sells pints of apple butter (with sugar, or sugar free) as well as pumpkin butter and strawberry butter (each jar is about $6). A butter box ($16.95) contains three pint jars of different flavored fruit butters. A 2-pound box of dried apples is $10. A bottle of dry apple cider, or of apple wine, goes well with many summer dishes, and Wandering Aengus Ciderworks of Salem, Ore. produces a variety of ciders for sale online. Pommeau, their apple dessert wine, is $40 a bottle, while the dry cider is $16 a bottle. One of the more unusual apple-related items we found is the giant apple strudel sold by Naegelins Bakery in New Braunfels, Texas (scroll down on the page to find it). This family-run bakery has been operating since 1868. Their strudel ($65.95) is more than 2 feet long and weighs 4½ pounds. Its apple filling is flavored with cinnamon, coconut and cherries. (Allow a week for delivery.) With a giant apple strudel and a bottle of apple dessert wine, you could be picnicking for a long time.

Many people visit Indian restaurants, discover they love food from India, but then have no way to re-create this experience at home. It’s always nice to enjoy a good restaurant meal, but it’s much better to enjoy these complex dishes in your own dining room. Thankfully, there are a host of online resources to help the aspiring cook learn the intricacies of Indian cuisine. The first thing on your shopping list should be some good cookbooks. Pushpa Bhargava’s From Mom With Love – A Complete Guide to Indian Cooking and Entertaining (Amazon, $25) contains recipes and tips for both novices and more experienced chefs. A good companion volume is 5 Spices, 50 Dishes: Simple Indian Recipes Using Five Common Spices, by Ruta Kahate (Amazon, $13.57.) Once you’ve spent some time reading through the cookbooks, you’ll need to order the right spices and sauces, as well as cooking tools specific to Indian cuisine. IshopIndian carries many different groceries, utensils and cookbooks, as well as Indian music, movies, incense and health and beauty items. The IshopIndian’s spices selection is impressive, covering 13 different online pages with selections such as cumin seeds, crystallized ginger, mustard seeds, paprika, sesame seeds, star anise and lemon powder. Beginning cooks should consider buying a chrome roti/chapati press. This six-inch cooking utensil ($22) flattens dough into thin, circular pieces, which are then fried or toasted. IshopIndian sells a gorgeous copper kadai, ($50), a shiny and large curved metal bowl used to cook and serve food. It’s similar to a wok, with a hand-hammered copper interior, and can be set on a dining table to great effect. Kamdar Plaza is another good online store for Indian food products. They have 13 different kinds of chutneys and sauces, for example, as well as a selection of Indian packaged sweets. When you are ready to serve this special meal to your family and friends, you’ll want to decorate the table with some beautiful candles from India. These floating lotus candles ($12) from Ten Thousand Villages can be lit and set in a large crystal bowl full of water for a relaxing centerpiece.

A lot of people have food allergies, intolerances and medical conditions that require them to adopt a gluten-free diet, to avoid the trouble-causing proteins found in cereal grains such as wheat, rye, barley and triticale. But it isn’t until they start trying to eat this way, alongside the gluten-loving gluttons known as their friends and family, that they despair there isn’t anything “good” to eat. Well, they can get over it because at least two large Web sites provide gluten-free versions of all the foods people love. At the Gluten-Free Mall, bread is A-okay and the brand name of the bagels says it all. Get five Enjoy Life Foods cinnamon raisin gluten-free bagels for $5.35. Made with brown and white rice flour and tapioca flour in a peanut-free, gluten-free bakery, these have no genticially modified ingredients or refined white sugar. For purists, Glutino makes premium plain bagels ($5.79 for 5), which you can buy at Gluten-Free. Glutino also makes sandwich bread with flax ($5 per loaf) and white sandwich bread mix ($4.35 for a 22-ounce box). Dessert can be a major bummer for the gluten-averse. Which is why planning ahead and stocking up on Ener-G doughnuts ($7 per bag), Glutano’s chocolate cake ($6.59) and Cravings Place Ooey Gooey Chocolatey Chewy Brownie Mix ($7.88) is probably a good idea. The selection hardly stops there. For summer grilling, there’s Mr. Spice Honey gluten-free barbecue sauce ($5.77; pictured), which is salt-free, fat-free, MSG-free and is appropriate for vegan diets. Both sites feature a wide array of gluten-free foods and vitamins, from soups, ready-to-heat meals, snacks, pasta, condiments, sauces and salad dressings, along with cookbooks.

There’s more than one way to arrive at a cup of coffee, as you know if you’ve ever checked out those little icons on the coffee grinder at the super market. Each represents a different method of brewing and results in a particular grind. Here at Shopperati’s coffee klatch, we decided to investigate a few methods and tell you where to buy the equipment. The basic 10-cup drip coffee maker is the choice of many homes and offices. Procedure: Dump in water, fill up filter with coffee, press start button. For one of the best-rated (and most expensive) of this type, check out KitchenAid’s 12-cup programmable Pro Line ($250). It boasts “professional-level brewing” and convenient features such as a water filter and auto shut-off. Also check out Cuisinart’s new Cup-O-Matic single-serve maker ($199). You control the strength and size of your coffee, plus it has a 60-ounce reservoir, so you can get a piping hot refill whenever you like. Using a French press or “plunger pot” is much more interactive (read: a bit more work), but the coffee it creates is strong and flavorful. Put the coffee in the bottom of the pot and fill with water that has just boiled. Stir and let sit. After a few minutes, attach lid and plunge. The screen pushes the grounds to the bottom. Bodum makes a variety of coffee presses, like the stylish Eileen French press ($60 or $70; pictured) or the double-walled press ($60) . To brew rich, potent Turkish coffee, which takes the finest, powder-soft grind, you’ll need what the Greeks call an Ibrik ($18 to $36 for brass, depending on size). Put in sugar first, then fill with water, and top with coffee. Place on a burner and don’t go away (complete instructions available at How to Brew Coffee). To make cappuccino and espresso at home, try a stainless steel stovetop maker from Espresso Zone ($80). This one has a nine-cup capacity and a frothing wand to steam the milk.