The image above doesn't scream "dinner" to most -- especially those who spent childhood summers grubby-pawed and overheated, plucking them out of the cracks of walkways, driveways and wherever else they lurked.

But as this timely Wall Street Journal story reports, weeds are spreading to places other than just your garden, including the dinner table. Dandelion greens, purslane, burdock and lamb's quarters are becoming staples of both haute restaurants and homespun summer salads. They can now be procured both high-end ($9 per pound in one farmers market) and low-end (via elbow grease).

But can one waltz down a Brooklyn street and pluck a handful of dandelions from the edge of a vacant lot to pop in a pan for dinner? The short answer, says 27-year veteran forager and author "Wildman" Steve Brill, is "no." He quickly follows that it's not as hard as one would think, and that hunting for a free dinner "is like learning how to swim, dance or drive a car. Learning to recognize very tasteful, very healthful wild food is no different than any other skill."

His tips, a weedy poll and an additional "expert" opinion after the jump.

The tariffs that were initially going to be imposed on Roquefort were a retaliatory move in reaction to the European Union's ban on hormone-treated beef. But after a provisional agreement, officials from the EU and the United States decided to drop both measures. So, while the U.S. removed threats of tariffs on Roquefort, the EU has gotten rid of bans on imported beef from the U.S.

See how chefs are reacting after the jump.

This year is the 10th anniversary of Open That Bottle Night, an evening invented by Wall Street Journal wine writers Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, and they invite you to participate.

What exactly is Open That Bottle Night? It's an excuse to open a bottle you've been hoarding and saving for a special occasion (that never seems to roll around). It's a night where you can savor an incredible wine all by yourself, with someone special, or with a big group of foodie friends. It's a night where you have a reason to Open That Bottle.

As a confirmed wine hoarder, I love the idea. I tend to save special bottles and then never open them because it's never the right time, or I don't think the occasion warrants it. OTBN is about letting go of those packrat tendencies. I've gone through my wine and can't decide what to drink. I'm leaning toward the 2005 Fort Walla Walla Cellars Treaty, a gift from my parents and a truly amazing wine, but then again, it's supposed to be good for another decade or longer, so maybe I should hold off. I've got some unique wines like Norton from Missouri, and a bunch of South African Cabernet.

The important thing is to open something. And this year, you can Twitter about it. What will you be drinking on Saturday for OTBN 10?

Talk about a poor choice of words.

Yesterday morning, The Wall Street Journal's online "Deal Journal" ran this story entitled "Disaster Averted: Anheuser-Busch Deal Won't Raise Beer Tabs" discussing InBev's victory in a lawsuit (one of many) that sought to slow or stop the InBev takeover of Anheuser-Busch.

Timing-wise however, this report comes on the heals of Anheuser-Busch InBev's major announcement on Monday that the company will lay off about 1,400 employees in the U.S., primarily in the St. Louis area. You think those people feel like disaster was averted?

Come on, Deal Journal. I know sometimes in the fast-paced world of online journalism editorial slips are made, but not only is this headline insensitive, it's not even accurate. "Disaster averted" implies that some proverbial bullet was actively dodged. According to the post, the lawsuit simply posited that the lingering possibility that InBev might build U.S. breweries kept prices low. A judge rejected this unfounded theory, tossing out the lawsuit. That's not averting disaster: That's asserting there was no disaster to begin with.

But regardless, let's keep everything in perspective: Paying a few extra cents for beer is not a disaster. If this economy continues heading in the direction it's going though, we might find out what a disaster really looks like.

[Photo Credit: anheuserbusch.com]

Maybe you read about the fact that Campbell's Soup was the only stock on the S&P 500 that didn't fall that fateful day in late September, when the market tanked 700 points. This is like that. Only with recipes.

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), publishers are betting big that cookbooks will continue to sell even as everyone tightens their wallets significantly. No surprise there. Eating out is one of the first luxuries people cut back on in tough times.

But publishers are hoping this turn of events will help them peddle product during the upcoming holiday shopping season, which is shaping up to look otherwise pretty unappetizing. They are releasing a clutch of new cookbooks from well-known names, including Paula Deen, Jacques Pepin and Jeff Henderson, figuring that as long as people are cooking more from home, they will buy a book of recipes from names they recognize from the Food Network.

Last May, I was invited to a press tasting at one of my local Starbucks, to try out their new breakfast sandwiches and the warming program. Over the course of two hours, I tried four different sandwiches, a warm chocolate cookie and a bagel that had gone for a ride through the warming oven as well. The woman who was presenting was passionate about these sandwiches and her energy was infectious. By the time I left I was ready to eat my breakfast at Starbucks every day!

Of course, I didn't end up eating there every day (I think I've had just one breakfast sandwich from Starbucks since that morning) and as it has turned out, neither did most other Americans. Back in February, word broke that they will be phasing out the breakfast sandwiches come fall. And now, Denny Marie Post, the top executive in charge of food and beverages at the coffee giant has left the company. They haven't filled the slot yet and appear to be looking for someone who can come up with new food that will be tasty and compelling enough to drive flagging sales.

[via Consumerist]

It all started when Julie Powell decided her life needed additional meaning and purpose. She opened up Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, created a blog and, a book and movie deal later, the rest is history. She created a genre of blogging, in which people take on the entirety of a cookbook and blog/cook their way through its contents.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal, entitled, Latest Web Bloggers Give Cooking the Books a Whole New Meaning, Lee Gomes explores the crop of blogs that have sprouted up in the last few years that take on entire cookbooks. He calls this practice "cook-through" blogs and calls out several notable blogs that are currently cooking their way through volumes of recipes.

When it comes to this genre of food blogging, I've enjoyed reading Carol Blymire's French Laundry at Home and I'm excited to explore another site mentioned in the article, Ryan S. Adams' Nose to Tail at Home. I think part of the enjoyment comes from the fact that these blogs all me the vicarious thrill of this type of cooking, without the expense or clean up. How about the rest of you? Do you love cook-through blogs or hate 'em?

I have to admit, college and I were not the best compadres. I worked full time while going to school and frankly what I was learning and the cost accrued from said learning never did appeal to me. Now that I am established and a little bored in my career of ten years, it would take something pretty exciting to make me hit the books again. Imagine my surprise when I opened the Wall Street Journal this morning and discovered this article about the wine making program at a small community college in Walla Walla, Washington. It's a hands-on program that teaches everything from tannins and terroir to winery Spanish! How great is that?!

While I may not be ready to strap on a new back pack just yet; I'm going to at least order a few of their wines and review them here on Slashfood. Would you like to be in my study group? ;-)

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a great piece to update consumers on when it makes sense to spend the extra money to buy organic, and when it doesn't. Their goal was to offer sound advice to shoppers who want to buy organic, but want to watch their wallets, as well. After all, with grocery stores stocking everything from organic oranges to organic beers, it is difficult to tell just from the label what is worth buying for the advantages that organics offer, namely environmentally friendly production and a lower level of pesticides in the final product.

Basically, they found that it is worth buying the foods that you eat a lot of and probably not worth buying things you only eat very occasionally. The "to buy" list includes: apples, peaches, bell peppers, strawberries, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, milk and other dairy products, meat, poultry and baby food. The "not to buy" list includes: broccoli, bananas, frozen sweet peas, frozen corn, asparagus, avocados, onions, processed foods that contain both organic and non-organic ingredients and seafood.

The vegetables were divided up by the Environmental Working Group's data from pesticide residue tests, though growers emphatically state that conventional products are safe. Seafood makes the "not to buy" list because there is still no standard for the production of organic fish, unlike the production of beef and chicken.

A blade coffee grinder, which is the standard for most home coffee drinkers, has a food processor-like blade that swings around and chops up coffee beans. The grinders are usually fairly inexpensive and do the job of grinding up beans faster than you could do it with a hammer, but they are not necessarily very efficient, nor do they come close to getting the coffee beans evenly ground. Burr grinders, which are more expensive but crush the beans instead of chopping them up, produce even grounds and will generate the most consistent flavor in coffee - not to mention that they offer a range of sizes (from powdery fine to coarse) that work with different types of coffee makers, including espresso machines and french presses.

The Wall Street Journal's catalog critic sat down and tested a number of burr grinders to see which ones performed the best. The less-than-satisfactory grinders included the Capresso Infinity burr grinder, The Krups Burr Coffee Mill and the Cuisinart Automatic Burr grinder. The top performer was the KitchenAid Proline Grinder ($200), which produced grounds to exacting specifications and stored them in a nice glass container before use to eliminate the possibility of static charge making grounds adhere to the side of the container, as they sometimes did with plastic container models. The model given the "best value" designation was the Solis Maestro Burr Grinder ($115), which performed perfectly, but had a plastic grounds container that could have a minim static charge. In fact, it is the grinder that I use and it always does an excellent job - even with dark-roasted, oily beans that can jam up some other grinders. The KitchenAid would make a great Christmas gift "for coffee geeks," but the Solis is probably the way to go in terms of both price and performance.

There are a lot of flavored waters marketed to kids on the grounds that they are tastier than plain milk or water, but have less sugar than juice or soda. Parents can give heir kids one of the usually colorful drinks and will not have to worry that they are actually drinking it at lunchtime in place of a soda from the vending machine. This week, the Wall Street Journal held a taste test with groups of both adults and children to see if the drinks' taste held up to their marketing hype.

Aroma Water was the must adult-oriented of the four brands, with the flavors (which are actually scents) of either lemon lime or mandarin orange embedded into the bottle cap, not the water itself. 90% of taste actually comes from smell, so there is no flavoring added to the water and yet it still tastes flavored. These were "subtle, natural and refreshing. Waddajuice is a brand of juice diluted with water, just as the name implies. It comes in white grape and apple and has no added sugar. It "retains enough flavor that kids may thing it is the real thing." Crayola Color Coolerz! are waters sweetened with sucralose (Splenda) that are "very tart, extremely sweet and neon-colored." Flavors include Purple Pizazz, Berry Blue and Screamin' Green. Wild Waters are naturally sweetened waters that have minerals and vitamins added for an extra nutritional boost. Flavors include Flippin' Fruit Punch, Groovin' Grape, Twistin' Tropical Punch and Rippin' Raz Lemonade and tasters placed them squarely between Waddajuice and Crayola in terms of sweetness.

Waddajuice and Wild Waters are the best choice for kids as they are sweeter than Aroma Water, which adults will probably enjoy, and have no artificial ingredients.

It seems that more and more restaurants are offering prix fixe menus these days, a fact that the Wall Street Journal picked up on in their weekend edition. Restaurateurs and chefs like fixed prices because they can much more easily plan the labor and cost of what will be used for a meal, since everything will be timed and the menu options are limited. Diners who might have only had a main course and a dessert are now having salad, as well. For multi-course menus where the portions are small, a nice piece of duck that might have been one main course ordered à la carte, is now several smaller courses for multiple diners.

How can you, as a diner, tell if a fixed price menu is really a good deal? The WSJ suggests that a good place to start is by looking for "wide margin items," such as chicken, salads, pastas and salmon on the menu. They are foods that typically have a significant mark-up, which could be even higher behind the set price. Another thing to look for is tricky wording. For example, "tomato carpaccio" is really just thinly sliced tomatoes, though on the name alone some restaurants might up the price.

And what are signs that you're getting a good deal? Tasting menus that "bear no resemblance to à la carte offerings" often indicate that special time or care has gone into their preparation. And if the chef is well-known and you just want to "put yourself in his hands" the memories of the meal might be worth the price, no matter what it is.

Crab cakes are a favorite food of many seafood lovers. They are made with crab meat that is bound together with a small amount of filler then fried (or baked) until crisp. There are a huge number of variations on the basic cake, but the most important ingredient is, of course, the crab. Summer is typically considered to be crab season, but thanks to frozen and imported meats, crab cakes are available to most people year-round. The question is not whether you can get them, but whether they are worth getting. The week, the Wall Street Journal's Catalogue critic asked that very question and taste-tested five kinds of mail-order crab cakes.

All the cakes had to be cooked at home before serving and all but one was shipped pre-formed. The top choices were Philips Seafood and Chesapeake Bay Crab Cakes and More, which came in first and second with only the narrowest of margins deciding the winner. Third place was the Cadillac Crab Cake Co., the company that shipped the crab cakes unformed in a "loaf," allowing you to shape them according to your preferences.

The biggest drawback is that not only are the cakes expensive, but shipping is pricey, too, so keep that in mind when you decide you want a crab cake or three in the dead of winter.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) decided to put several food storage bags to the test to see if their claims that they would keep foods fresher, longer, really were true. They went out and bought fresh strawberries, a fruit notorious for spoiling quickly, and placed them in three different containers: Freshvac Pro containers, SimplySmart PrimeProtector Produce Bags and Ziploc Double Zipper bags.

As a control, some berries were left in their original container. Those molded quickly. The rest of the berries were checked at six and fourteen days in their respective containers. The Freshvac berries started to mold on day six, but the SimplySmart berries were still fresh and tasty at that time. Ziploc'd berries were kept mold-free for the entire 14 days, although the berries had shriveled "unappetizingly" by the end.

So, Ziplocs ($2.79 for 20 bags) are the way to go for short-term storage unless you want to pay 5 times as much for SimplySmart ($4.99 for 10 bags), but the best thing to do is try to eat the berries or other veggies soon after you buy them and not to buy more than you can eat.