Tavolo, from Chris Douglass of Icarus and Ashmont Grill, is now slated to open the first week of August. Near the Ashmont T in Dorchester's Carruth building, it will serve antipasti, pizza, panini, and pasta priced from $3-$15.

Davio's is opening at Patriot Place on Aug. 1. A little post-tailgate lobster risotto, anyone?

The Biltmore in Newton has a new chef and menu. Jason Owens, who has been at the restaurant in front-of-the-house positions including general manager, will be offering the likes of tuna tacos, hog wings, and fried artichokes with spinach and gruyere fondue. It's the self-taught cook's first time leading a kitchen.

If you're in New York and can't get enough of Todd English, he'll be opening the Libertine there ("the ultimate modern English tavern") in the early fall.

Everyone, it seems, is carrying some version of the Sigg bottle. I have a Sigg and a couple knock-off Siggs (you have to if you want to keep one at the gym, one at your desk, and so on). Drinking from the aluminum one pictured here, from either the real or the faux, is like sipping from a canteen. My colleague Wesley Morris and I are thinking of inventing a Sigg belt, which would hold the bottle (he slips his into a mesh pouch on his backpack, but it's not convenient to grab) and have a slot for a cell phone. He's stopping there. He refuses to hang a camera on the belt, in the event we actually market one.

We were comforted with cookies. More tests from the forthcoming "The Boston Globe Cookbook." When the lightning felt very close, a cookie helped.

It's always fun to go to the farmers' market and buy a bunch of vegetables and then decide what to do with them. No recipe. Just start cooking. I came home with zucchini, yellow patty pan squash, and tomatoes.

I pulled out my mandoline and started slicing the zukes and squash, layering them with sliced tomatoes and lemon thyme in a baking dish (above). The vegetables were roasted until they were tender. Before they were finished, I dusted the top with Gruyere cheese and let it melt and brown. A recipe will be in the Food section in the next week or two.

A blog reader, tired of beet and goat cheese salads, recently asked what to do with a glut of beets coming in from a CSA share. Here are a few quick, at-random suggestions, in case anyone else is being beaten by beets:

Roast them, then skin the beets and cut them into large wedges, sprinkle generously with sherry vinegar, and let them sit for a day or so. Then sprinkle with kosher salt, a tiny bit of sugar, and olive oil. They soak up the vinegar and make the roasted-beets-in-salad configuration a bit less tired. Instead of the standard goat cheese, you can put the beets with arugula, sections of de-membraned citrus (Meyer lemon or blood orange are good), marcona almonds, and a slice of fresh mozzarella or a sliver of Parmesan. Shower with salt and pepper, and top with a citrusy vinaigrette.

Another easy thing to do is slice the roasted beets and put them in sandwiches, maybe on a nice baguette with goat cheese, arugula, and salt and pepper. Or whatever suits your fancy.

I also love to make borscht, as I'm a huge fan of cold soups in summer. I don't have a particular recipe I like at the moment, but try one from a favorite cookbook, then doctor as you see fit next time. I like to add a squeeze of fresh orange juice or zest sometimes, or ginger. Top with a blob of Greek yogurt.

Also good: beet risotto. Make your standard risotto and throw in roasted beets at some point during the cooking process. Or dice raw beets and put them in right at the beginning. They turn the grains a beautiful color. I might serve this with simple grilled fish, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with lots of fresh herbs. This meal might be a good way to get rid of the beet greens, too -- they'd be nice sauteed and served on the side with the fish and risotto. (What to do with beet greens would take up a blog entry of its own!) If you can get your hands on the nutty, chewy grain farro, you can make a fantastic risotto-style beet farro.

Any kind of beet-and-grain salad is delicious. You can chop beets and make a pseudo tabbouleh with bulgur, chopped mint and parsley, cucumber, olive oil, lemon juice, and plenty of s&p. Couscous (not a grain, but that's OK) tossed with beet chunks, liberal chopped basil, feta, olive oil, vinegar, and s&p is a nice side. Am I crazy for imagining that beets might be good rolled in nori with brown rice, creamy goat cheese, wasabi, and chives for a beet maki?

Beets are also good in pasta. Caramelize some onions and toss them with spaghetti, some Greek yogurt, chunks of beets, and salt and pepper. Sprinkle lots of grated pecorino on top.

In Mark Bittman's recent picnic-dish extravaganza in the New York Times, he suggested a raw beet salad:

"Peel beets and grate them (a food processor will keep the juice contained). Add pistachios or hazelnuts; dress with orange zest and juice, and olive oil. Add bits of goat cheese and chopped parsley."

There's a fantastic-sounding recipe for beets with mint and yogurt from Madhur Jaffrey on Epicurious. Find it here.

What else? Beet ice cream? I think one could make a lovely beet tart with phyllo, feta, and herbs. Beet tarte Tatin? Beets are so versatile, because they pair well with so many things: herbs such as mint, greens peppery and mild, cheeses soft and hard, citrus, creamy things, cumin.

What do you do with beets?

The story of how I was invited to the home of Iranian-born Afarin Ketabi to sample the dishes of her Persian culture this week is too long to go into. She is an exceptional cook and one of the most gracious hostesses I have ever met.

I was honored to be there, dining on beautiful trays of rice, meats, and vegetables.

Saffron-flavored rice with pistachios and barberries Whole red snapper roasted with sumac and limes Basmati rice with golden potatoes Fresh fruit Cookies Tea The teapot, which was set on a Persian samovar

There was more: yogurt and cucumber dip, yogurt and spinach dip, stuffed cabbage leaves, a lamb khoresh, eggplant khoresh (think of khoresh as a kind of stew), sweet and sour stuffed chickens, and homemade saffron ice cream, which Afarin's husband, Mahmoud, sandwiched between sugar wafers to make the most luxurious ice cream sandwiches imaginable.

Food page contributor Debra Samuels, who has studied Korean cooking for many years while living in Japan, and is working on a Korean cookbook, is currently obsessed with a cold Korean noodle dish called mool naeng myun. She found this cooking video to show you how to make them. In next week's section, Debra tells you where to buy the dish in Boston.

It's not fried or frozen, but the seafood gumbo at Highland Kitchen's still pretty darn good.

This just in from the folks at Highland Kitchen. They'll be kicking off the work week with Fried and Frozen Mondays.

From the kitchen, this means the likes of buttermilk fried chicken, chicken fried steak, fried green tomatoes, fried oysters, and fried pickles.

From the bar, this means frozen drinks: icy versions of margaritas, blackberry daiquiris, periodistas, and Irish coffee. Plus the two that most call my name: frozen Negronis and Fernet slushies. The Negroni -- gin, vermouth, and Campari -- is one of the world's best cocktails, and the awesome digestive powers of Fernet Branca can only be enhanced in slushy form.

Apparently ace bartender Joe McGuirk was looking for glassware in the basement when he tripped and fell over a blender. He had an epiphany: frozen drinks. His pratfall is your windfall.

Highland Kitchen, 150 Highland Ave., Somerville. 617-625-1131.

Yesterday, in this post, I asked whether the salmonella outbreak had caused you to stop eating tomatoes or change which kinds you ate. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released this morning answers my question on a large scale: Nearly half of Americans are no longer buying food items they ordinarily would, due to fear of contamination. The poll also found widespread support (86 percent) for a produce tracking system. Here's the full report:

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Troubled by the tainted tomato scare, nearly half of Americans are concerned they may get sick from eating contaminated food and are avoiding items they normally would buy, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll has found.

Although three in four remain confident about the overall safety of foods, the poll found that consumers overwhelmingly support setting up a tracing system for produce in the wake of the salmonella outbreak first linked to tomatoes and, now, hot peppers.

Eighty-six percent said produce should be labeled so it can be tracked through layers of processors, packers and shippers, all the way back to the farm. The lack of such a system frustrated disease detectives working on the salmonella outbreak. Although federal officials lifted the tomato warning Thursday, the cause of the outbreak remains unknown.

The poll found that 80 percent of Americans said they would support new federal standards for fresh produce. Meat and poultry have long been subject to enforceable federal safeguards, but fruits and vegetables are not, although produce increasingly is being implicated in outbreaks.

Christy Taylor, a first-grade teacher from Sacramento, Calif., said she has all but given up on supermarket produce and is buying most of her fresh fruits and vegetables at the local farmers' market instead.

"I see the same farmers every single week," said Taylor, 30, the mother of 2-year-old twin girls. "You meet the people and you see where the (produce) is coming from."

Her twins love tomatoes, she said, and chomp on them as if they were apples. But until the mystery of the tainted tomatoes is solved, "I feel a little bit more comfortable, a little more safe, doing the local farmers' market," Taylor said.

In addition to the salmonella outbreak, this year has seen the largest ground beef recall in history, raising consumer concerns reflected in the poll.

Forty-six percent said they were worried they might get sick from eating contaminated food and that they have avoided foods because of safety warnings that they normally would have purchased. Twenty-nine percent have thrown out food earlier than usual and 14 percent have returned food to the store.

Such a level of uneasiness among consumers is "very significant," said Michael R. Taylor, a former senior federal food safety official who now teaches at George Washington University.

"When you have almost half the population avoiding certain foods because of safety concerns, that's very significant from the standpoint of economic impact for the people selling the food, and from the standpoint of peace of mind for consumers," said Taylor. Tomato growers say they have lost more than $100 million as a result of the current salmonella outbreak, which has sickened more than 1,200 people in 42 states since April.

The poll also found gender, racial and economic gaps on attitudes about food safety. Women, who do most of the shopping, were more concerned than men. For example, 39 percent of men said they were "very confident" that the food they buy is safe, but only 23 percent of women said they felt that way. However, men and women agreed on the need for better federal oversight.

"We've got to protect our food supply," said Stephan Weiss, 58, of West Linn, Ore., who runs a small engraving and embroidery business. "And if more inspectors are going to prevent people from getting sick and dying, then it's worth it."

People with lower incomes were less confident in food safety, as were minorities. Nearly half of Hispanics had little or no confidence in the safety of the food they buy.

In Congress, a leading advocate of food safety reforms said the industry would do well to listen to consumers on the need for tracing.

"We live in an age of technology where you can bar-code a banana," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "We've got to work this through with the industry and come up with something that's reasonable. The more confidence consumers have, the more goods they will purchase."

While the produce industry agrees that federal standards for preventing contamination are necessary, there is no consensus on a mandatory tracing system. Cost is a concern, especially for smaller companies.

The poll also found that 56 percent of consumers do not believe the government has enough inspectors to scrutinize food imports. If more are needed for imports and domestic produce, 70 percent said the cost should be covered through fees on industry. That echoes a proposal by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The telephone poll of 1,000 adults was conducted July 10-14 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the overall sample.

------

Associated Press polling director Michael Mokrzycki and AP writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

Mmm, veggie rumaki.

Your morning read, courtesy of the New Yorker.

No. 2 made me laugh out loud.

The Pan-Mass Challenge, which takes place this year on August 2 and 3, and benefits Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, holds a barbecue at the end of the first evening for thousands of riders in Bourne at the Mass Maritime Academy.

Some riders end their challenge in Bourne, others sleep overnight and the next day head for Provincetown or Wellesley.

Here's what's on the menu, made and served by 250 volunteers:

6,000 hamburgers
5,000 slices of cheese
4,800 slices of pizza
3,000 calzones
2,000 chicken breasts
2,000 baked potatoes
2,000 cookies
1,800 hot dogs
1,400 ears of corn
1,200 bags of potato chips
1,100 brownies
400 gallons of vegetarian chili
300 pounds of lettuce
210 gallons of clam chowder
150 cases of soda
70 kegs of beer
50 pounds of potato salad
No EPO (performance enhancing substance)

The FDA has declared our favorite summer fregetable (like a frenemy, but with less angst) once again safe to eat.

I'm glad we've got tomatoes back, but really -- we still don't even know if that's what caused the salmonella outbreak. Maybe it was tomatoes. But maybe it was chilies. Maybe it was something else altogether.

Do you feel safer eating tomatoes with the FDA's OK? Did you stop eating them, change which kinds you ate, or disregard the warnings altogether?

Endangered species?

According to New Scientist magazine (in a post I discovered via The Grinder), German researchers have shown that high CO2 levels in the atmosphere lead to wheat crops with less gluten, the protein that gives bread structure. By 2050, the researchers say, the predicted CO2 levels in the atmosphere could lead to dough that rises almost 20 percent less.

Here are some reasons this is upsetting:
Artisanal bread
Baguettes
Crusty bread
Dinner rolls
English muffins
Focaccia
Garlic bread
Hot dog buns
Italian bread
Jam on... what? crackers?
Kalamata olive bread
Limpa
Marble rye
Naan
Onion bagels
Pumpernickel
Quick-rise bread
Rye
Sourdough
Toast
Unbleached flour bread
Very good bread
Whole wheat
X-cellent bread
Yeast bread
Zucchini bread

There are more.

If we only have about 40 years of good bread left, maybe it's time to go on a high-carb diet. Though that may not be such a good idea either.

At Pigeon Cove, Whole Foods' seafood facility in Gloucester.

Yesterday Whole Foods implemented stricter guidelines for its farmed fish. (Read a recent Globe story on salmon here to see why this is important.)

The market already prohibited antibiotics, added growth hormones, preservatives such as sulfites, poultry and mammalian byproducts in feed, and genetically modified or cloned seafood.

Here's what's new:

Fish farmers now must work to minimize their impact on the environment, protecting sensitive habitats, monitoring water pollution, and sourcing feed ingredients responsibly.

They have to pass third-party audits and provide detailed information on their practices.

Fish and shrimp must be traceable from hatchery to pond to processing plant.

Toxic chemicals such as malachite green and organophosphate pesticides are verboten.

Though there's no mention of emamectin benzoate (used to control sea lice) or synthetic pigments (fed to farmed salmon to turn them pink), these are comparatively rigorous standards. If Whole Foods shows other retailers that keeping an eye on food safety can be a good business move, hopefully more will follow suit.

Click here to find the transcript of today's Boston.com chat on food and restaurants.

The chat takes place every other Wednesday at noon. If you want to join us on July 30, go to Boston.com around noon and click on the link at the bottom right corner.

This is where the magic happens. Ha.

Sometimes I don't have time to pack lunch, and that means food from the Globe cafeteria. As cafeterias go, it's not half bad. But some days there just isn't anything I want to eat. And that's when it's time to pimp my lunch.

Take the above, from yesterday. I got a side of rice and a side of corn on the cob, cut the corn off the cob and put it on the rice, then topped it with black beans and other veggies from the salad bar. There was an improbably nice salad of watercress with walnuts and dried cranberries, so I got some of that too. Back at my desk, I tossed the beans, rice, and corn with hot sauce, kosher salt, pepper, a bit of olive oil, and sherry vinegar. (Yeah, I'm a nerd. I keep all those things at my desk. But they come in handy!) It was quite tasty.

I can't be the only one who does this. Tell me about your favorite lunch/salad bar/cafeteria pimps.

And for some serious, and sweet, inspiration along the same lines, go here.

Tony's Clam Shop on Wollaston Beach in Quincy has been around since 1964. I guess that's enough time to get frying clam strips down, because they're pretty darn good here. Maybe it's because they use canola oil, or maybe it's the batter, but the clams and onion rings here have just the right crunch. The batter's flaky, not greasy.

The lobster roll's not bad either.

They don't exactly skimp on the meat!

On a whim after work, we zipped over there for dinner. It was the perfect evening -- a cool breeze was coming in off the water, and the sunset was vivid. We watched it and strolled along the beach after our lobster roll and clams. Plenty other people were doing the same, and it felt like vacation for a few hours.

If you're not up for seafood, just the sea, Tony's also serves hummus, falafel, and other Middle Eastern specialties.

Sheryl's post below links to a pattern for making your own reusable fabric shopping bags. I like the idea, but considering that for about six months my couch has been adorned with pillow forms draped in fabric I eventually intend to turn into pillow covers, it's not particularly realistic.

If you're also not likely to sew your own, here are some alternatives.

* Dogeared, a company known better for its charm necklaces, is making canvas bags now too. Some favorites from them:

* Japanese designer Shinzi Katoh makes all kinds of irresistible housewares, plus plenty of tote bags. These are coated in vinyl, very practical for rainy days. In case you can't read the type, the one on the left says: "I love orange juice. It's sweet and color is pretty. When I drink orange juice, My body is orange!" The one on the right says: "I love to take my dogs walking in the park. As I tend to be slow in doing things, I can't follow close behind. How do you like spend your holiday? If I have enough time, I would like take a stroll with my lovely dogs all day long." Hey, they don't have to make sense. They just have to be sturdy grocery carriers. You can find more bags adorned with charming Japanglish at the Shinzi Katoh website (in yen, but with more designs) or at Unica Home (in dollars).

* The FEED Bag saves plastic bags, and the purchase price feeds a child in school for one school year, under the auspices of the World Food Programme (and Lauren Bush). You can buy one from Amazon.

* Less cute but extremely practical is the Acme Workhorse. It weighs 1.5 oz., is made of rip-stop nylon, and folds up inside a teeny sack when you're not toting things in it. Get one at reusablebags.com.

* Along the same lines are Baggu bags, which come in a phenomenal range of colors. Get 'em here.

Have you started bringing your own bags to the grocery store? Have you purchased one for this purpose, or are you using old totes from conferences, NPR pledge drives, and the like? What's your favorite way to lug home groceries?