EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first column by Lauren Schulz who will be writing a weekly roundup of the interesting bits from the food sections of some of the nation's leading newspapers.

If you’re still one of those old-fashioned types who gets the newspaper delivered to your doorstep, and if you also love eating, drinking and cooking, then you understand the simple pleasure of opening up your Washington Post or Los Angeles Times midweek and seeing the food section slip out from between the meaty news sections.

Some people think of features sections – food, art, style -- of papers as the dessert, to be read after they eat their vegetables: the front page, metro, and business. They may even save the section until darkness falls, so that they can savor the articles with a glass of something delicious in their hand.

Others dive right into dessert guilt-free, figuring they’ll get to the “serious” news later on, after they’ve dined on stories about restaurant openings, recipes and ideas for cocktail parties.

More likely, though, you’re the online kind. You cruise through your bookmarks whenever you have a wink of downtime on Wednesday, taking note of what new place you want to try (and what place is so new you might want to avoid it for a few months) or writing down some interesting-sounding wines to pick up on your way home that evening. Once you are off the clock, you’re thinking about parties you want to have, parties you want to go to; foods you want to serve, and things you’d like to be served.

Either way, please consider this weekly roundup another tasty little treat you can look forward to.

Fall Is in the Air: Spotlight on Beer

There were three interesting beer items in food sections around the country this week. First, The New York Times’s Florence Fabricant reports that the Whole Foods Market on the city’s Lower East Side was trying to open up a wine shop recently, but the plan met community resistance – so they decided to go quirky and open a beer room instead. Complete with refillable 64-ounce “jugs” and a lineup of local New York beers on draft, this should be a hit with that neighborhood’s hipster clientele.

Will there be a brewed awakening for beer drinkers, who might not really care about their waistlines or alcohol content? Proving there is not much going on in the month of August in Washington, the Post’s beer column this week is about a possible new ruling that would require bottles to be slapped with a “serving facts” label, letting drinkers know both how tipsy they can expect to get, and how many extra miles they’ll have to jog the next day to stave off a beer gut. However, only in the last couple of paragraphs do we learn that the Tax and Trade Bureau, which regulates packaging of malt-liquor products, is only opening what is known as a “comment period” on this proposal; it depends on feedback, and if it’s positive, companies would have three years to comply with it.

The Los Angeles Times makes readers thirsty with a fun story  about upscale keg parties – how a collegiate, downmarket idea has been reinvented with freshly made craft beers that are high on taste and price tag compared with their undergraduate relatives. You, too, can host an “elegant kegger” just by choosing a food-friendly microbrew and matching it to the food you’re going to serve, which might be anything from a nachos feast to a simple, autumnal roast chicken. As the days get cooler and foods get heavier and spicier, beer can feel just right, especially after a summer of light and clean-tasting white wines.

A Change of Season, and Mood

Speaking of fall being on its way, and also along the lines of simple, unpretentious foods, there are items worth noting about hot dogs, pickles and pie in the Washington Post: First, an interesting feature on how street vendors in D.C. are moving more in the direction of those in other big cities like New York and Chicago and selling ethnic cart-goodies beyond the usual boiled hot dogs with mustard or ketchup. The story focuses on Washington, but it talks about the street food business in the whole USA. For example, did anyone else out there know street cart owners across the country make an average annual salary of $33,000 (according to one report)?

An article about canning includes a pickle-chips recipe by the chef Carole Greenwood, who owns Buck’s Fishing and Camping and the Comet Ping-Pong pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington, is one to tuck away for the colder days (to go with that sausage plate and hoppy ale). And the companion to the story on canning is “Who Doesn’t Like Pie? You Could Step It Up Here,” a review of two cookbooks coming out this fall, which gets you thinking about how nice warm, fruity and buttery sounds with a generous dollop of cool and creamy … lemonade and sorbet start to seem a million miles away.