Small Bites

- Juan Valdez is the Starbucks of Colombia.

- McDonald's tries to spread America's cupcake craze to Europe by naming them after New York neighborhoods and selling the desserts in its German stores. Though cupcakes are still newer to those across the Atlantic, some are already tiring of them.

- Marcus Samuelsson, former chef of Aquavit restaurant, has a personal essay about food on Huffington Post's new food site.

- Don't try this at home: Japanese knives are for serious chefs.

- More people are buying kosher products for health reasons.  A few years ago, I told a friend that I didn't like the taste of generic supermarket chicken and she recommended I try buying kosher chicken, which I now do because it actually does taste better.

- Aluminum foil or plastic wrap — which is better for the environment?

- The way farmed catfish and farmed tilapia are raised makes them safer to eat than farmed salmon.

- The Washington Post's All We Can Eat blog has some notes on a recent event with Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet magazine, where she spoke about her last book, her time at Gourmet and Twitter.

- Eating eggs has often been assumed to have a negative effect on cholesterol, but that assumption may be wrong for most people.