International Beer Day: the world's best beers to try before you die

Nice to see the large selection of American beers. And even one from my neck of the woods, Rogue. Although I am not much a fan of the smoked variants.

Ten 'Italian' dishes that don't actually exist in Italy

As far as I can tell, all of us knew, it's the Italians who are nonplussed.

​More after the break.

High-Fat Mediterranean Diet Does Not Lead to Weight Gain

Healthy diets don't lead to weight gain, who could have guessed. 

It seems that the FDA can't catch a break. Nearly all of the FDA's advice for the past 50 years has been wrong, no reason to expect a change anytime soon. No reason to start listening to them now.

Here is one of my prior articles on the FDA and food.

Salt 

Maddogswif has been so busy for the past few years that we all but stopped throwing dinner parties. For years before that we threw lots of parties every year. I only remember a few parties with fewer than 12 guests most were much larger about 20, and a few were over 40. That actually takes a good amount of experience to get right. In a normal year we might have held 15 -20 dinner parties, a really good year perhaps 24, and on a few years we had to inform the wife that it is inappropriate to throw parties on back to back weekends for more than 2 weeks in a row. Since Maddog is the chief cook, dinner planner, mixologist, and bottle washer, it gets a bit grueling to host parties weekend after weekend. 

Simple backyard parties are the exception, especially if the menu is tight and simple, and kitchen cleanup and dishes are minimized.

We were over at Newmark's Door and noticed this very funny post:

"All The Comments on Every Recipe Blog"

Go read it. 

This pretty much is how the table conversation goes when we throw a party with specific guests. At first it was distracting, now I view it as some sort of surreal, improv comedy routine. I remember one time we were serving spaghetti and meatballs. This is a truly simple dish, and one of our guests asked if she could substitute tofu. It made me laugh out loud, but I countered with the recommendation to use cut in half fresh small (quarter sized) mozzarella balls. The idea we left her with was to separate the sauce, return 1/2 of the sauce to flame, add pasta, and toss to coat, add the halved mozzarella balls, toss again, plate, add meat balls, sauce the plate, and garnish with cheese, and chopped fresh parsley and basil.

Tofu? The texture is wrong for this. 

As the complexity of the dish increased, so would the complexity of the inane substitutions. For a while we became obsessed with seeing how far this could go. It didn't last long, the meal complexity drained quite a bit of the fun out of the prep time.

Anyway, we found the post amusing. 

Feds' 'War On Salt' Is Bad Policy Based On Bad Science

This is one of the most dangerous food related policies we have seen in decades. We've written on this before:

Salt is bad for you! Wait, it's good! Whut?

The FDA is always wrong

Chick-fil-A just fixed one of customers' top complaints

Smart phones what can't they do?

Why Starbucks is pumping nitrogen into its coffee

No, not that kind of nitro! Nitrogen, nitro, it gives drinks a smooth, rich mouth feel, we love it in dark rich porters, and stouts, we suspect we will love it in coffee.

'Overflowing urinals, uncovered drains and muddy carpets' - Harmony of the Seas cruise liner is a 'building site', claim irate passengers

. . . complete with overflowing urinals, muck, construction debris, and closed amenities.

Maddog can hear the announcement now. "Tonight for your dining pleasure, Hazmat of the Seas will be serving American Casserole." More about this later in a Maddog Story, which can be found below the fold.

This recipe comes from Maddog's grandmother.

1/2 Cup Butter
1 Cup Sugar, creamed with the butter
2 Eggs, beaten
3 Bananas, mashed, or blended with butter, sugar, and eggs
1 Teaspoon Soda, blended into mixture
1/2 Teaspoon Salt, blended into mixture
1 Teaspoon Vanilla, blended into mixture
1/2 Cup Sour Milk (add 1 Tablespoon Vinegar to sour the milk)
2 Cups Flour, mixed into mixture
Chopped Nuts to desired amount

Cream butter, and sugar, blend in eggs, mix throughly
Combine bananas, milk, sugar/eggs/butter mixture, dry ingredients, mix throughly

Bake 350˚ 1-hour, or until skewer inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pan 10 minutes, remove from pan onto wire rack to cool.

What are the best commercial hot sauces?

We did a blind taste test of popular hot sauces — here are the best ones​

In Maddog's pantry: Frank's, Sriracha, and a large selection of HOT habanero hot sauces.