Two Hearts, One Saucer

It must be love when you’re willing to share a saucer in the morning. These love cups designed by German artist Otmar Alt for Rosenthal are perfect for couples still in the gooey, kissy, cutsie, luv-ya stage. Who knew a morning espresso could be so cuddly? At On a Mission in Claremont and Geary’s in Beverly Hills.

Canned Sweet

With the end of summer comes the perennial question: How do pie-makers make pies when there’s no fresh fruit? They get it from the can, of course. And if you’re going to have canned fruit hanging around the kitchen, it might as well have really cool labels like these funky ones from Oregon Fruit Products, which look like something you might have found in a 1940s mountain cabin.

The nation’s leading canner of specialty fruits and berries, for more than 60 years Oregon Fruit Products has been harvesting produce from Willamette Valley farms and putting it up in sugar syrup for national distribution. Among the fruits widely available are blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, gooseberries, raspberries, sweet Royal Anne and tart pie cherries, as well as plums. At major supermarkets.

Catch a Wave

You can cut an apple in quarters, remove the core from each quarter and then cut each quarter in half. But why? With this nifty corrugated apple corer/slicer, all it takes is a good push and you’ve got apple sections with the core neatly removed. And the sections have wavy edges . How great is that? At cookware stores.

FINDS: Dishin’ Bargains

Got designer dinnerware taste but a paper plate budget? Doin’ Dishes owner Anya Kemak stocks her stores--there’s one in Santa Monica and another in Long Beach’s Belmont Shores--with factory seconds, overruns and discontinued patterns and sells them at 40% to 70% off of retail. Among the lines she carries are Nancy Calhoun Design, Coors China Company, Fiestaware and Los Angeles Pottery, maker of this plate and bowl from the Afrikana series. The plate’s $7.50 and the bowl is $6.75, compared to the original retail prices of $21 and $18.

* Doin’ Dishes, 925 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 319-3474; and 5016 Second St., Long Beach, (310) 439-3474.