Herbs. Photo: Shawn Allen, Flickr

• A whole slew of herb-themed recipes to utilize any tasty greenery kicking around.
  
• Minneapolis' Nokomis neighborhood now has two new shops to feed local wine addictions -- Ken & Norm's and the Cork Dork.
• The Country Lane farm stand boasts delicious, freshly picked berries.
• Wondering exactly how to harvest your home crops? The Star Tribune offers some tips.
• On birds, boys, brews and backyard barbecues.
  
• Advice on how to cook up the freshwater fish brought home after a long day on the water.
• Taylors Falls' The Drive In boasts old-school nostalgia in both atmosphere and menu, while Kramarczuk's offers a cheap brat combo.
• Wine pick of the week: France's crisp, cheap Picpoul de Pinet.
• News Bites: New Zealand's olive oil, Calphalon pans, Iowa's Premier Wine & Food Expo and a benefit for St. Jude's.
  
• Recipes: Grilled Tuna with Parsley-Parmesan Vinaigrette and a slew of sweet corn dishes.
  

Nonstick has always been a cinch to clean up, but its ability as a replacement for traditional stove-top workhorses has been debatable.

Later this month, Calphalon will introduce a new Unison line of nonstick pans with two surfaces -- sear and slide -- that claim to make fond and seal in flavor in the case of the former and slip from the surface with ease with the latter.

Slashfood took the 4-quart sear pan for a spin with steak last week to see if it could stand up to its stainless sister.

See which red wine sauce was made by the nonstick after the jump.

For the last seven years, I have lived in an apartment that doesn't have any outdoor space. Any grilling I do must be done on an indoor, counter top grill so as not to set off any fire alarms or asphyxiate the members of my household. For that reason, I became a fan of the indoor grills named after a certain boxing celebrity. I used George's removed plate grill for a number of years, always accepting its drawbacks, simply grateful that I could get some measure of char on my turkey burgers.

Then Calphalon contacted me and said that they were making a pretty darn fine non-stick, indoor, removable plate grill and did I want to take one for a test drive? Intrigued, I said yes. Folks, let me tell you, this is the Cadillac of indoor grills. It comes dressed in a very sleek stainless steel casing, gives you the option of varying your cooking temperature and also allows you to set a timer (something that other grill never let me do) in order to limit cooking time. Additionally, the grill strips on the Calphalon grill are raised up much higher than the other grills I've used, allowing your burgers, steaks, sausages and quesadillas to acquire far more satisfying and flavorful grill marks.

I have always thought of myself as a waffle iron connoisseur. I was raised to believe that any consumer-level waffle iron constructed after approximately 1965 wasn't worth the raw materials from which it was made. So I scoured the thrift stores for vintage waffle irons, buying them for five and seven bucks when the opportunity struck and squirreling them away in closets and under beds. However, I've recently experienced a waffle maker that makes me begin to rethink my vintage waffle iron ways.

I recently got a chance to try out Calphalon's new non-stick, No Peek Belgian Waffle Maker and I am officially smitten. I ran it side-by-side with my favorite, vintage waffle iron and was floored by its superiority. It cooks more quickly than my old iron and bakes up a waffle that is fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. The waffle wells are deep and can hold lots of butter and syrup (or, as I like to dress my waffle, jam and yogurt). You can set it for the exact level of darkness you want, and when the bell dings, the waffle releases from the griddle easily and without tearing. You don't have to grease the iron prior to adding the batter, so to clean up, all you have to do is give it a quick wipe down.

Many of us only use a large roasting pan a few times a year and even though the meals we are using it for are holiday dinners, where to is important to try to get the food as perfectly cooked as possible, it is hard to justify spending $200+ dollars on a pan that gets so little use. Cook's Country tested some inexpensive roasting pans, all under $100, to see if they would do just as good a job as the more expensive pans while staying in our budgets.

Each of the pans they tested was designed to work both on the stove-top, so they could be used to brown meats, and in the oven or under the broiler. They chose pans with a minimum size of 15" x 11" inches, to accommodate largest turkeys. Overall, they strongly preferred pans that had sturdy, upright handles, which were easy to grip and did not interfere with the way the pan fit into the oven by adding an extra 2-3 inches to the length. They also found that stainless steel pans with aluminum cores offered the best heat distribution, while plain stainless steel could be a bit spotty when it came to browning. Their top picks were:

• CALPHALON Contemporary Stainless Steel Roasting Pan ($100)
• CUISINART Chef's Classic Roasting Pan ($80)
• KITCHENAID Gourmet Distinctions Roasting Pan ($50) - Best Buy
• GRANITE WARE Oval Roasting Pan ($22) - Best Buy for very infrequent roasters