Well: Discussing Wine to Excess. Conversations about wine can be surprisingly complex, with hints of earthiness and spice.

Bitten: Recipe of the Day: Roasted Salmon Steaks With Pinot Noir Sauce. This sauce looks like a six-hour job, but it's actually relatively simple.

Diner's Journal: Josh De Chellis to be Chef of La Fonda del Sol. Josh DeChellis, formerly of Sumile and BarFry, will open La Fonda del Sol.

The Count: As Thanksgiving Goes, So Goes the Nation. In general, more people are eating at home — their own home — throughout the year, according to new data.

Across France, Cafe Owners Are Suffering. Traditional cafes and bars all over France are suffering and in some cases even closing, hit by changing attitudes, habits and now a poor economic climate.

Farm’s Open Harvest Draws 40,000 in Colorado. A farm couple received a big surprise when they opened their fields to anyone who wanted to take away vegetables left over from the harvest: 40,000 people showed up.

Off the Menu. Restaurant openings, closings and chefs on the move.

Dining Calendar. Cocktail demonstrations, wine classes, dining in darkness and more.

Books of The Times: Pig: It’s What’s for Dinner in Northwestern Spain. In this modest but enthusiastic addition to the Pig Lit canon, John Barlow recounts a year spent in Spain trying to eat every possible part of the pig.

The Minimalist: Fennel and Celery Make a Striking Pair. Though their textures are similar, the flavors of fennel and celery are so wildly different that the combination is striking.

Wines of The Times: A Fallen Superstar Earns New Respect. Pouilly-Fuissé wines have improved greatly in recent decades, moving on from the poor reputation they once had.

The Circle of Life With Bagels. Maria Balinska’s book uses the bagel as a way of viewing Polish-Jewish history.

Feed Me: Betting on Mac and Cheese. Macaroni and cheese with Humboldt Fog, a high-end goat cheese from Northern California, is savory without being acrid, and creamy without being heavy.

Playing to the Strengths of a Symphony of Squash. With at least 150 varieties of winter squash, and more added every year, it can be hard to know which is best for a stew or a tart.

$25 and Under: A Taqueria That Doesn’t Stop at Tacos. What sets La Superior, a small Mexican restaurant in South Williamsburg, apart is its dinner menu, with types of street food less frequently spotted in the city.

Restaurants: The Empire Strikes Back. Double Crown’s take on British imperialism goes something like this: Sure, foreign lands were plundered and indigenous peoples oppressed, but think of the snacks!

A Critic, Insatiable and Dismissed. Even among those who might have seen it coming, many were taken aback at the news that Gael Greene had been fired after 40 years at New York magazine.

The C.E.O. of Thanksgiving Dinner. You’ll have a saner, more satisfying holiday if you approach Thanksgiving the way a C.E.O. might run a company and remember to delegate responsibility.

Op-Ed Contributor: Where the Wild Things Were. The Pilgrims appreciated wild foods for their contribution to survival; Mark Twain, for their taste and their hold on his memory. All saw the foods as fundamental to the America they knew.

Motherlode: Passing the Sweet Potatoes. Holiday tables are filled with stories. What are some of yours?

Just a Nibble Before We Gorge Ourselves. Some of our greatest culinary minds have addressed the quandary of what small, tasty item to serve before a meal that, frankly, is excessive.

Food Stuff: DiPalo Chooses Wine to Go With Its Cheese. The DiPalo Dairy’s latest venture is an Italian wine shop, Enoteca DiPalo, which has opened just two storefronts west of the dairy.

Food Stuff: Brothers Bring Lavish Pastries to the Plaza Hotel Arcade. A luxurious satellite of the centuries-old Viennese pastry shop Demel opened last week on the lower level of the new shopping arcade in the Plaza Hotel.

Food Stuff: Asian Pears as an Alternative to Dried Apples. As seasonal fresh fruit choices dwindle, cooks turn to dried fruits to bake into pies and cakes, including dried Asian pears.

Cranberries Go Abroad, a Tonic for an Ailing Industry. Facing a glut of cranberries forcing prices to record lows, farmers began selling their uniquely American crop overseas.

Op-Ed Contributor: No Chefs in My Kitchen. “Chef” has pretty much replaced “gourmet cook” to describe anyone who cooks well. I must confess that the growing use of the word bothers me.

Shaken & Stirred: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Firewater. Five years after Mayor Michael Bloomberg banished smoke-filled barrooms, smoke is coming back. Only this time the smoke isn’t in the air. It’s in your drink.

The Sophisticated Table. An exploration of the 17th-century shift in French cooking, when chefs rejected pseudomedical dictates to emphasize a more novel merit of food: its taste.

The Holidays Downsized: We’re Going to Party Like It’s 1929. An event planner delivers a "winter wonderland" from the 99-cent store.

A Taste of Puerto Rico in Cities Across the Land. Once carried by wives to laborers in the fields, the meat-filled cakes called pasteles are now an indispensable part of holiday gatherings.

Choice Tables: England’s Culinary Wild West. Local-mindedness in the West Country’s restaurants is growing, making eating about a deeper connection between the people and the land.

Lives: The Homesick Restaurant. At a Pakistani meal in London, the unmistakable flavor of the past.

The Minimalist: So Guests Don’t Have to Juggle. Rolls that are as gorgeous as sushi rolls, but far easier to produce.

Diner's Journal: Copia Files for Chapter 11. Copia, the ambitious food, wine, and art museum in Napa, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday.