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> How do you establish valuation -- compare to what's for sale in the grocery store?

The other answer and plenty of online resources discuss the lists of what portions to designate and in what order. You can basically just read a set text that takes care of all the designating. Then everything is designated and sitting there. How do you establish valuation for dealing with these special foods in front of you?

For redeeming Ma'aser Sheni nowadays, you don't need to. The rule is (Arakhin 29a) that if you redeem Ma'aser Sheni on the too little an amount of money, the redemption takes effect. Accordingly, in situations where you won't be able to use the money to reacquire food in Jerusalem to eat in a state of purity (ie. always for now), you are allowed to purposefully redeem all the food onto the smallest halachic unit of currency: a peruta (~$0.02).

For the other gifts, if you don't want to bother giving them to their intended recipients, you can buy the gifts back at any price the intended recipient agrees to. After all, it's his property. Suppose I have 9 apples of Ma'aser Ani from my tree. I can give a fair market value of $5 to my local beggar and, if he agrees, keep the apples for myself. More practically, I might loan the beggar $20 at the beginning of the year with the agreement that he'll pay me back with however many Ma'aser Ani apples I happen to end up with. All with his agreement of course. (Similarly with a farm, I might lend a poor person ~$100 with the agreement that he'll pay me back with the bushels and bushels of Ma'aser Ani apples I'm sure to grow. Those apples sell in a grocery for more than $100 but my friendly local beggar is willing to take a smaller sum to avoid the hassle of being delivered all those apples at once when he doesn't have the infrastructure to handle them. All with his agreement of course.)