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If you go to France this summer, you might notice a new logo in restaurant windows or on menus. It's a simple graphic of a rooftop covering a saucepan, and it's supposed to designate fait maison, or homemade. It's designed to highlight places that make their own dishes rather than bringing in frozen or sous vide — prepared meals cooked in a water bath, sealed in airtight plastic bags and designed to be heated up later.

I know, you're thinking, French restaurants don't cook their own food? A recent catering union survey shows some 31 percent of restaurants in France use at least some prepared foods, but others suggest the number is much higher.

Regardless, now the establishments that use shortcuts will have to own up to it.

Jean-Paul Arabian is the owner of Le Cameleon, a cozy bistro tucked into a side street in Paris' Montparnasse neighborhood. He's thrilled about the new law.

"Homemade will be the war against restaurants that buy their food already cooked and in plastic bags, ready to heat up and serve to clients at ten times the price," he says.

It's not hard to understand Arabian's frustration and relief. He makes everything from scratch and everything is seasonal and fresh. And it's not hard to verify. His bustling, stainless steel kitchen is part of the dining room dcor. Diners can peer in at preparations as they sink their teeth into succulent, sauced meats and perfectly cooked vegetables.

Starting next January, if you don't see the logo on the menu - the food is not homemade.

But what does that really mean? Just days after the measure was passed, it's already stirring controversy. Many wonder if the fait maison label will really guarantee better eating.

The linchpin of the new rule is that homemade fare must be made only from "raw ingredients," meaning the food product has undergone no significant modification, including being heated, marinated, assembled or a combination of those procedures. But the definition does allow for "smoked, salted, refrigerated, frozen or deep-frozen" produce as well as vacuum packed food as ingredients for dishes other dishes.

In Le Monde newspaper, one restaurant critic called it a "dud decree" that pandered to frozen food lobbies because "any frozen raw product from spinach stalks to shrimp can figure in a dish dubbed 'home-made.'"

Except for potatoes. Frozen fries can never be called homemade.

"That's because French restaurants don't want to be called fast food," says Stanislas Vilgrain, who operates three sous vide food packaging plants in France and the U.S. and is totally against the new measure.

Vilgrain sells high quality meats, sauces and prepared dishes to restaurants on both sides of the Atlantic under the name Cuisine Solutions.

Vilgrain says the new measure is pointless and misleading.

"The important thing in a restaurant is that you get high quality food served in the most efficient way. Why stigmatize someone who is using a sous vide product?"

Vilgrain prepares dishes such as Beef Bourguignon and Coq au Vin. He says his meals have fresh, quality ingredients and the new homemade label ignores that.

"We do a short rib from a Michelin three-star chef's recipe. We cook it 72 hours at low temperatures. No restaurateur can do that in his restaurant because he can't tie up his ovens for that long. It's an outstanding product backed by some of the world's best chefs," says Vilgrain. "But under this new law, it wouldn't qualify for homemade."

But, of course, frozen green beans would.

The annual progressive gathering known as Netroots Nation wraps up its annual conference in Detroit this weekend.

In the hallways and the meeting rooms, much of the buzz was about the presidential race in 2016 — and who might run on the Democratic side.

But Vice President Joe Biden, who gave the keynote address on opening day, didn't factor much into that speculation, despite being President Obama's wingman on everything from the stimulus package to the Affordable Care Act.

Biden was even ahead of the administration's position on same-sex marriage.

"We literally saved this country from moving from a great recession into a depression," he said in his speech Thursday. "And we established that progressive government did and does have a role in the economic health and well being of the American people."

On foreign policy, Biden has been a key player for decades dating back to his days in the Senate — he showcased those credentials as he explained why he was late to his Netroots speech.

It turns out he was on the phone, getting details about the Malaysia Airlines plane crash from the president of Ukraine.

"I was on the phone for a better part of a half an hour with President Poroshenko, and I've been in contact with our president as well as our national security team," he said.

Biden has more than just experience. His political style is one-of-a-kind.

He's known to give it to you straight. No filler.

It's exactly what people say they want in presidential candidate. But here, among the party's progressive wing, that candidate ain't Joe Biden.

Outside the main ballroom, where Biden spoke the day before, the group Ready for Warren is hard at work. They are passing out hats and signs trying to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a White House run.

Another group that backs former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a party last night.

There was nothing like that for Biden.

Gabriela Lemus says she's been working in the progressive movement for years. She talks of the vice president almost like they are related.

"Uncle Joe ... yeah. That's what we lovingly call him," she said. "He's our uncle. I look at it from a familial term. Like he's part of the family, you know."

Lemus says Biden's been a good adviser to the president. But she admits that as a potential candidate, Biden just isn't resonating with her.

"Maybe sometimes if it's too familiar, you kind of overlook it even if it is the right person," she said.

That's not the case for Rick Massell. He says there are many reasons why Biden shouldn't be the party's nominee in 2016.

The main reason? Too many gaffes, he says.

"Maybe I'm being too hard on the guy, maybe it does make him more human and maybe we should have someone that is more human, but he also misspeaks a lot. I don't know if you can ever overcome that," said Massell.

Sandra Kurtz, on the other hand, says she's glad the vice president came to Netroots.

Kurtz says he's got the right experience on both foreign and domestic issues but she's just not quite sure what to make of a potential Biden run. And then it hits her — she's got the perfect job for him.

"For Joe? I don't know, I'd personally like to see him as VP for life, but that's just me," she laughs.

The election is still a long way off. The vice president hasn't announced any plans for 2016 just yet.

But if Biden is doing his due diligence — kicking the tires on what would be his third run at the White House — he's still got quite a bit of work to do to excite the Democrat base.

The Senate is expected to vote on a temporary transportation spending bill later this week — with an emphasis on the word temporary.

The bill would keep highway funding flowing through May of next year, and avert a looming infrastructure crisis. Without congressional action, the highway trust fund would run out of cash in August.

The short-term fix follows a familiar pattern. It goes something like this:

First, panic erupts because the government is going to shut down — or a program is going to run out of money — or a tax will automatically rise. Whatever it is, without congressional action, something really terrible will happen.

Then, just when it seems like there's no hope, a deal emerges. Often it's a bipartisan solution, not a big one, and not a permanent fix. A temporary one, for a few weeks or a few months.

Then when the next deadline draws near, the countdown clocks come out once again.

It's All Politics

Temporary Fix For Highway Money Is Well-Traveled Road

As part of a series called "My Big Break," All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers.

Shaun Thompson, better known as Shaun T, is the man behind the fast-paced, strenuous fitness programs Insanity, Focus T25 and Hip Hop Abs. He got his start as a choreographer. The story of his big break begins with someone breaking him down.

Thompson says he was in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship for "four years too long." When he got his first big choreography job in his home state of New Jersey, his partner was not supportive.

"After the show, I mean, people wanted my autograph, and I was really no one," says Thompson. "My partner at the time said, 'You'll never be a professional dancer so you can immediately delete that dream from your head.' "

That was the final straw in the relationship.

"No one out there is going to stop me from living the life that I want to live," says Thompson. "I gained up enough strength to leave that relationship."

A friend invited him to come to Los Angeles for a vacation at his beach house. His friend had one demand: He wanted Thompson to get some headshots taken before making the trip.

"Let me tell you, those abs were poppin' on those shots," Thompson says.

When he got to Los Angeles, he checked out a dance school in North Hollywood and found out about an audition for a new dance agency that was happening around the corner.

With his headshots in his car, Thompson decided to go in.

"I was frickin' living in these dance moves. I was like, 'I don't care what happens. They're gonna remember me even thought I don't live here,' " he says.

Out of hundreds of people auditioning, seven men and five women were left at the end of the cuts. Thompson was one of them. The judges said they would contact the dancers in a couple weeks if the agency was interested.

"I literally left there like, 'Whatever, this doesn't really matter. I don't even really care,' " he says.

He returned home to New Jersey and two weeks later, found out that audition would change his life.

"I was at the laundry mat, with my pocket full of quarters, when I got the phone call that the agency wanted me to move to LA to pursue a career in dance," Thompson says.

When he moved to LA, he was teaching workout dance classes at the gym, in between auditions and dance gigs. His classes got really popular.

"My big break came when a friend called me and said, 'Hey, there's this company called Beach Body that wants you to see if you can develop a project with them,' " Thompson says.

Thompson had a two-hour meeting with Beach Body, which produces many popular in-home fitness workouts, and left with a contract for his first video, Hip Hop Abs.

The Insanity Workout