• Think you know a lot about Italian food? Think again.
• Speaking of Italy, plan your next trip to Rome, Sicily, or Milan.
• Did you know that Sting and his wife made their own olive oil and honey and that it's coming to America?
• The perfect tomato sauce.
• An A to Z guide to Italian grapes.
• Italy's best restaurants?
• 100 hours of solitude in Venice.
• This month's recipes: Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Soup with Cheese Panini, Lemony Rice-Parsley Salad, Tuna, Olive, and Bread Salad, Watermelon and Arugula Salad with Walnuts, Ham and Cheese Stuffed Veal Chops, Rosemary-Grilled Chicken with Mushroom Sauce, and a Prosecco-Saba Cocktail.

Garlic. Is it possible to even conceive of Italian cuisine without the pungent bulb? We've all experienced bad garlic, usually in the form of cloves that have been browned to death in oil and are ladled on top of the dishes at family-style Italian pasta mills. I swear those places much have a huge vat of this "garlic" prepped in advance daily. I'm all for banning that type of garlic, which would certainly never be found in the kitchen of a real Italian chef. Only the fresh stuff will do. Or will it?

• A recipe for a traditional Easter Meringue.
• Cooking lessons from Rome.
• Maine tomatoes are red, ripe, and ready.
• A little history on Chinese-Indian cuisine.
• Which matzo is the best?
• Be careful when handling your Easter chicks.
• A sampling of winters-end red wines you might have not tried yet.
• This week's recipes: Baked Chicken Legs with Tomatoes, Haroset with Dates, Pasta and Chickpea Soup, Passover Fritters, and Ricotta Cheesecake.

• There's no boredom with mushroom ragout.
• What it means to be a young farmer in the 21st century.
• My mom used to make boiled dinner for herself all the time, but not with corned beef (ugh).
• There are currently over 300 restaurants in the U.S. certified as green.
• The Globe taste tests breakfast bars.
• Cauliflower is usually called broccoli in Rome?!
• What are your favorite budget wines?
• This week's recipes: Easy Alphabet Soup, Pasta with Cauliflower, and Raisin Soda Bread,

Mario Batali will cook for you and 11 of your closest friends, if you are the highest bidder at a charity auction in Michigan next month. The "Sunday afternoon lunch in the true style of Rome", to be held on August 27th, includes a cooking lesson with as much participation as you want to have in preparing the food, wine tasting and (of course) a 10-course lunch. He auctioned a similar lunch for the group, The Conservancy, last year, which sold for $25,000. Batali says that he offers 6 to 10 such functions for charitable events every year and that most of them sell for around $50,000.

The silent auction closes on August 1st and bids can be placed online. The bidding starts at $5,000.

For those of you swooning over Nicole's recent post about kitchen bling, maybe you can do a bit of penance here with this Pope John Paul II bottle opener ... a.k.a. "The Popener."

When my old roommate came back from a bit of work in Rome, she brought me a John Paul II bottle opener, straight from the Vatican. At the time, I was not happy. What kind of girlfriend brings a bottle opener back from Italy?

While I would have preferred something I could wear or eat or sell at a vast profit on eBay, I came to love this bottle opener with time. Every Sierra Nevada I cracked after a long day at the office became holy. Every Brooklyn Brown Ale became the equivalent of 20 "Hail Marys."

If you want one, you had better get cracking. While they're currently on sale at romegiftshop.com for $14.99 (free St. Peter postcard included!), can a Pope Benedict XVI bottle opener be that far off?

MSN has posted a list of the top 10 cities for foodies, as determined by a travel site. The cities chosen are all over the globe, picked for a combination of unique dishes, celebrity chefs and all-around good cuisine. Barcelona, Brussels, Lyon and Rome were lauded for their long standing traditions, while Las Vegas and New York were included for having just about everything. While San Francisco did get a nod for its non-Asian cuisine, it seems to have been selected mainly on the availability of good Chinese food. Asian flavors are what put Tokyo, Vancouver and Hanoi on the list, too.

It appears that the definition of a foodie as someone who is willing (and possibly desperate) to eat anything has been put into play with this list, as along with Asian flair, Hanoi was picked for "unusual delicacies like dog or snake," including "fried snake skin, snake spring rolls, snake soup, and minced snake dumpling." Weird meats are all well and good, but to plan a whole trip around them seems a bit extreme.

Nevertheless, their list includes: