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.

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.

Have you heard of "falsies"? They're the latest news in the beer drinking world. Falsies are pint glasses that have an extra thick bottom, so they look like a pint but actually only hold about 14 ounces (rather than the 16 ounces that a pint should have).

The Wall Street Journal did a piece on deceptive beer pours last week about this issue, and a lot of people are up in arms about it. I can't say that I blame them. If a restaurant or bar needs to raise prices, that's fair: most of us know by now about the hops shortage and fuel prices that are driving up the cost of beer. However, I draw the line at trying to cheat people out of beer.

Some establishments have unapologetically switched to 14 ounce glasses. That's also fine, as long as you inform your customers of that practice. I'm all for turning a profit, but businesses that cheat their customers are the lowest of the low in my book. Next time you're ordering a pint, make sure you're getting what you paid for.

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?

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.

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.

It's ok to put a little butter on your corn on the cob and add a bit more dressing to that salad. The nutrients in some vegetables are fat soluble and are absorbed much better by the body when accompanied by a little fat. A study conducted at Ohio State University, found that the absorption of nutrients was not only higher when accompanied by fats, but that it was actually minimized when the fat-free foods were eaten alone.

Previous studies have shown the same results in rats, but this study followed the nutrient absorption of human diets. It was a follow-up to a 2004 study that tracked nutrient absorption when comparing low fat salad dressings to fat-free ones. In this one, salsas and salads were served to participants with and without avocado. Absorption of beta carotene jumped by up to 18 times the amount, and lycopene jumped as much as 7 when the avocado was included, even controlling for the nutrients added by the avocado itself.

The core market for Dunkin' Donuts is the segment of the population that feels uncomfortable with the word "panini." To accommodate them, the company changed the name of one of their new sandwiches to "stuffed melt," but this isn't the end of their push to make customers more comfortable.

In an article (subscription only) in the Wall Street Journal, the marketing and branding teams of Dunkin' Donuts revealed their research has shown there are two main groups in their potential customer base, dubbed "tribes." In the first tribe, there are people to frequent Starbucks. They like the atmosphere there and want their coffees with a couch; Dunkin' locations are too bare-bones for them. The second tribe is the Dunkin' tribe. These make up the core audience for Dunkin' donuts and are "bewildered and turned off by the atmosphere at Starbucks." When they do, perchance, wander into a Starbucks, they "don't get it." 

To keep the existing customers happy while bringing in new ones, Dunkin' Donuts is making some changes. In addition to renaming some of their products, they are bringing in new foods, like dough-wrapped pork and "Dunkin' Dawgs" to encourage customers to come in at lunch time, as well as cookies and other baked goods to bring them in in the afternoons. The pastry cases and espresso bars will be revamped to look flashier, but there will still be no couches. They don't want customers to feel too comfortable because it actually, according to their research, makes the Dunkin' tribe uncomfortable.

As consumers become more discerning in their tastes, particularly with regard to food, they are just as likely to get a craving for foie gras with dinner as they are to want spaghetti and meatballs. And people are projecting their tastes onto their pets - because if they want the foie gras, why shouldn't their beloved dog have some, too? People button some dogs into tiny clothes and carry them around as though they were children. The Wall Street Journal points out that the humanization of pets is what is driving the upswing in the number of gourmet and premium pet foods that are hitting the market.

New lines of pet foods include gourmet, pre-prepared "stews" and pet condiments, like IAMS Savory Sauce, which comes in flavors like Roasted Turkey and Pot Roast. These products are marketed as ways to spoil your pet, though the companies are undoubtedly hoping that they will be used daily, or at all meal times. The people who tested the food for the company reported that they were "like people food... It's what [they] would give their own [families]." People don't like the idea of feeding seemingly unappetizing food to their pets, but love it when the products sound like things they would want to eat. And, of course, the pets love it. Unfortunately, the trend is also driving up the number of obese pets.

Pet food companies assure consumers that the new foods can be healthy, but vets say that not only are most house pets not active enough to warrant extra calories, but that they have no significant nutritional benefit over ordinary dog foods. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, obesity affects 25-45 percent of pets.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal described the difficult position that 100 calorie snack packs find themselves in. According to the WSJ, the problem is that if they taste too good, consumers will eat multiple packs at a sitting, so the companies have to make them taste just good enough to motivate customers to finish the bag. If the product is too bad, consumers might not be likely to purchase it in the future, so companies only have to keep people from spitting out their snacks. This is an industry niche that is not filled with award winning goodies by any means. A taste test done by staff picked out some of the best and worst options in a group of determinedly average candidates. Overall, Vitalicious products were preferred to other brands in taste and had overall fat contents lower than their competition, but here are the rest of the picks:

Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs

• Best: Planters Peanut Butter Cookie Crisps
• Worst: Chips Ahoy! Thin Crisps

Keebler/Sunshine Right Bites

• Best: Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes
• Worst: Mini Cheez-Its

Vitalicious

• Best: VitaCake
• Worst: Muffin tops

Depending upon where you live, it is quite likely to be the middle of winter at this moment and when it's cold, dark and icy outside, it's not the sort of weather that inspires you to drag your grill out of the garage. But if, like me, you love to grill, the Wall Street Journal went to the effort of rating indoor grills so we don't have to brave the elements to cook up a burger.

They rated the grills, looking for an electric version that could deliver the smoky flavor and great sear of a real barbeque. To get right to the point, they rated the Sanyo Smokeless Indoor Electric Grill from Cooking.com as the best overall performer and the best value compared to all the other grills they tested. The Sanyo grill had gaps in the surface - like a real grill - to let fat drip away from the meat, as well as being large enough to cook food for the whole family at once.

I've personally been disappointed with the results from my current electric grill, which is the type endorsed by a professional boxer. It never seems to brown the meat and, other than constantly opening it, I have yet to find a reliable method of testing for doneness as it cooks.