Too lazy to cook? Since Monday, Logan's of Vermont has been doing its best to cover you.

That's when chef-owner Nick Logan opened the market and take-out restaurant at 30 Main Street in Burlington, the former location of Miguel's on Main.

The spot is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., for items ranging from elegant, Euro-style breakfast pastries to marinated meats to take home and grill and gourmet treasures such as oils and vinegars.

Logan says that the focus of his menu is take-home dinner items, from Black Angus sirloin to pan-seared chicken with fennel cream, available either ready to heat and eat or raw and requiring the touch of a home cook.

Lunch includes a range of panini, including ham, apple and Brie with mango chutney, and a classic Cuban with sliced pork loin, ham, pickles, butter and Dijon. Carrot-rosemary and asparagus-Brie were some of the opening soups. Sides are available, too, including enticing-looking squares of macaroni and cheese.

Click the photo above to see some of the desserts. For further food-pornographic edification, here's today's menu:

When I separate eggs, I sometimes end up with bits of yolk in the white, and messy fingers, too. So I'm grateful to this Chinese woman for showing me this clever way to do the deed — and reuse a soda bottle at the same time. (And I'm also grateful to writer Meg Maker for posting this to Facebook!)

The Seven Days food writers live to eat, not the other way around. That means that at any given moment, we're probably tasting something we want to recommend — or warn you about. And it's our job to know about new restaurants, dishes, chefs. Through Bite Club, you can get that info as soon as we track it down. In other words, you can get it while it's hot. 

Alice and I are excited to collect all of our food content here on the brand-new Bite Club blog. Our staff blog, Blurt, came to be a rather serious place for pithy posts about food news we've stumbled across, a photo of something amazing we've eaten, a lament for some axed menu item, or a trailer for a new food film. 

On the Bite Club blog, we can roam free. Check in each weekday not only for Alice Eats and Grazing but for Vermont restaurant, foodie entrepreneur and ag news, recipes, and links to the sometimes-strange, sometimes-vital food and drink content we find both locally and on the interwebs. Come and get it!

1580 Dorset Street, South Burlington, 862-4602

It's apple season. While those with an interest in being outdoors go apple picking, I found a more passive way to enjoy the season's quarry. Right in South Burlington, the Mill Market & Deli has plenty of dishes that showcase the same local fruit the cider mill uses in its Chittenden's Sweet Apple Cider.

In early September, the Mill straddles the seasons. On my recent visit, locals were still hitting the creemee window, though the chocolate and (fresh berry) black raspberry machine was broken, leaving just vanilla and maple.

But I was there to pick up a meal. The counter girl told me they were out of sandwich menus, and the options aren't written on a chalkboard, so I had to go from my memory of the website. This lapse was representative of a general disorganization I encountered at the market. I was asked to repeat my order three times and even then, they still didn't make it exactly to my specifications. The employee helping me wasn't sure of the items' prices or even where the store might have napkins.

That said, it's a great little market, full of quirky specialty foods, from Island Ice Cream to local meats and snacks. I grabbed a bottle of green-apple Jones soda and a bag of sweet and lightly salted Danielle pumpkin chips to make a fall cornucopia of snack food flavors.

It was a pretty ideal match for the Cider Mill sandwich. Composed of Boar's Head maple-glazed honey ham, green apples, baby spinach and red onion on grilled wheat bread, the sandwich was a roundup of crisp, sweet early fall flavors.

But what really defined it was its condiments: apple butter and honey mustard. The two combined for a symphony of sugary, spicy and fruity tastes. A layer of cheddar calmed the aggressive flavors with a blanket of creaminess.

It was a well-thought-out sandwich. But the Thanksgiving Feast pizza was truly inspired. Like a teenager with a mohawk, uncommon pizza toppings all too often exist just for the sake of doing something different.

Not the case with this pie, which seemed as if it had always been waiting in some culinary heaven, and had only now sent its avatar down to us.

The homemade crust was thin and crisp, and the Thanksgiving Feast was host to two homemade sauces, a garlicky white sauce and a tangy cranberry one.

Mixed on the crust, they combined into a slightly creamy, slightly sweet concoction that played a surprisingly similar role to tomato sauce. Set in a layer of chewy mozzarella, thinly sliced turkey, spinach and onions showered with Parmesan added even more Thanksgiving flavor. I might have liked some chunks of butternut squash to add another dimension; my boyfriend proposed sage stuffing. But even unchanged, this is a $15.50, 16-inch pie we will certainly order again.

We finished lunch with a pair of homemade cider doughnuts so light that they'd gotten away from us several times in the strong winds at the Mill's picnic tables.

But once I bit in, I found the desserts to be more cakey than I had expected from their aerial acrobatics.

Though not as airy as I might have hoped, the flavor was excellent. A hint of apple imbued the cake. A crust of sugar and spicy cinnamon covered it with just the autumnal tastes I was hoping for.

It seems I discovered the Mill just in time to bring in the cool weather. Surely as the leaves turn and fall, I'll be enjoying another Thanksgiving Feast.

Alice Eats is a weekly blog feature devoted to reviewing restaurants where diners can get a meal for two for less than $35. Got a restaurant you'd love to see featured? Send it to [email protected].

If you're the kind of person who loses all sense of time and self control whenever you visit King Arthur Flour, you might want to carefully plan your next visit. As in, set both a monetary and caloric budget and tell a friend where you're going, lest you get lost.

A few weeks ago, the baking giant unveiled the fruits of its yearlong, $10-million expansion. Though the building sprawls along the same hillside it's occupied for years, it feels like an entirely different place. And the complex looks like a wood-and-steel mothership. Which it is, of course, for thousands of bakers all over the world.

69 Elliot Street, Brattleboro, 254-6143

Growing up outside New York City, my favorite flavors came from India. My earliest memory is of tandoori chicken.

When I moved to Vermont in 1998, I was nonplussed as to why something that seemed so effortless as preparing delicious, flavorful Indian food seemed so difficult within the borders of the Green Mountains.

My only hope was India Palace, a family-run restaurant in Brattleboro where I habitually stopped on my trips from Burlington to Connecticut. The food was flavorful, the meat was of good quality and the prices were astonishingly low.

I excitedly returned on Sunday for my first meal there in more than a decade. I found that India Palace wasn't bad, but it was no longer great, either. The food to price ratio, however, was still unbelievable.

I ordered the $21.95 tandoori dinner for one, which proved to be more of a tandoori dinner for three or four.

Immediately after ordering, I was presented with a cup of mulligatawny soup (above right). It smelled delicious, its cumin aroma sensuously filling the air. The lentil soup also had a spirited punch of acid, and as I swallowed it, black pepper lightly burned my throat.

It’s less than 12 hours until August turns a corner. For me, it signals a sad close to a season that begins in early June and wends its way through three glorious, salmon-colored months: the season of sipping rosé, almost to the exclusion of other colors.

When I went to pick up another bottle of the pink stuff this week, the usually teeming display of rosé had disappeared; the remaining bottles had been relegated to a mid-shelf rosé ghetto. With heavy heart, I grabbed a bottle of pale Blaufrankisch and resolved not to let the moment die. So that you might consider joining the crusade, here are some wines you can (and should) keep drinking until the rain starts lashing your window — or until they become stranded behind an autumn display of Syrah or Cabernet Franc.

What makes rosé so ridiculously perfect, besides being the anathema to sticky, hot days, is that it pairs like a glove with almost any kind of food. It's cheap, too, or at least can be found for a song. Sparkling rosé can help you wash down anything from fries to oysters to acorns and seeds (why not indoctrinate squirrels, too?). 'Still' rosé loves on BBQ pork, salads, tarts, burgers, or even any iteration of tomatoes you’ve dreamt up in the last few, red-stained weeks. The wisps of acid in a dry rosé deftly meet those in food, punch for punch; their inevitable fruitiness makes for satisfying patio pounding.

1611 Harbor Road, Shelburne, 985-8498

We all need a taste of luxury now and then. Usually, in those cases, we assume that those meals will be stressful on the wallet. But smart diners know that even at the finest restaurants, meals earlier in the day can cost a fraction of rich dinner prices. To give both me and my billfold a treat, I indulged in brunch at the Inn at Shelburne Farms.

We were led through the grand entrance to a table for two just below a painting of the original homeowner, Lila Vanderbilt Webb. It had taken me weeks to get a reservation, and the joint was indeed jumping. Our server warned us from the beginning that the kitchen was backed up and it would take 15 to 20 minutes for our food to arrive.

That ended up being more like 30 or 45 minutes, but good conversation in opulent surroundings is really the goal at Shelburne Farms. I wasn't in a hurry.

And the food was worth it. The veal and pork terrine was tender and smoky — perfect for a Sunday picnic in Provence. It was bathed in tarragon Hollandaise that had just a whisper of anise flavor. Eggs were poached perfectly and lent an extra layer of creaminess to the plate, which also included microgreens and an herb crostini. It was a delicious plate, but for $13, the portion was more like an appetizer than a hearty breakfast.

In the September 2012 issue of Bon Appetit, Andrew Knowlton anointed his "50 Best New Restaurant Nominees." One Vermont restaurant landed on the list: SoLo Farm & Table in South Londonderry.

Miles and mountain ranges mean that no one in our office had yet visited SoLo, despite heady rumors that have floated north. BA's nomination was a call to action. This week, with the gravest of intentions, I drove down, wandered into the restaurant's warren of rooms, and unfurled my napkin.

It's easy to get caught up in the Burlington restaurant scene and forget that southern Vermont is a magnet for urban chefs and eaters who co-create an eclectic, polished dining culture. So it is with SoLo, opened last summer by chef Wesley Genovart and his wife, Chloe — who both have some formidable NYC restaurant chops, including stints at Per Se and the running of the much-feted East Village restaurant Degustation. (For Chloe — originally from Vermont — SoLo is a sort of homecoming). 

Any serious cocktail lover might order one in a low voice — such is the stigma that can accompany the Cosmopolitan. Somehow this simple blend of Absolut Citron, fresh or Roses lime juice, cranberry and a splash of Cointreau became, in the late 1990s, the cocktail equivalent of a Carly Rae Jepsen song.

But the bartenders that bastardized the Cosmo into sticky, sweet ubiquity are long ago and far away from from the bar at L'Amante in Burlington, where classics rule in both food and drink. With a chef who's a bona fide wine expert and a staff that know their Grillo from their Garganega, this is certainly a place to indulge a love of vino. The cocktail list, by contrast, is short and simple.

Ask bartender Ian DeLorme about wine and he will joyously pour you something new to try. Yet he also keeps classic drinks up his sleeve, including a tart, fresh-juice Cosmopolitan he first blended at his mother's request for a not-too-sweet version. 

This summer, DeLorme has been making a Cosmo using floral Hendricks gin, shaking up a generous pour of the stuff with fresh lime and lemon juices, splashes of Cointreau and cranberry juice, and floating St. Germain on top. The resulting drink has tiny bits of ice and hints of roses, a pool of citrusy herbaceousness that you want to dive into and emerge, buzzed, on the opposite rim.

Ian's Gin Cosmo

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice, then add the first five ingredients:
4 ounces Hendricks gin 
Juice from half a fresh-squeezed lemon 
Juice from half a fresh-squeezed lime
1 ounce Cointreau
Splash of cranberry juice
A very light splash of St. Germain

"Shake hard," DeLorme advises, then strain into a martini glass. Float some St. Germain on top, garnish with a wedge of lime, and serve.