Ellen,
I agree whole heartedly with your comments about margarine. Most grocery store chains used to have their own brands of margarine,but if you've noticed lately, they've had to take the word margarine off of their boxes and place the word "spread" instead.... There is definitely more water in the spreads and they aren't suitable for baking. The rule of thumb for a good margarine, is that it should contain a high fat content per TBS like 11 or higher. The higher the fat content, the better it will be to bake with. The only really reliable name brand margarine that I use for baking is Land O'Lakes. Believe it or not, the Wall-Mart Super stores have their own brand of margarine called Great Value and it's excellent to bake with. For a one pound box it's only 40 cents. If Land O' Lakes is not on sale, then I use the Great Value brand it's really terrific. It's one of the few "real" margarines out there.
Hope this information was helpful to you!
SC