I would not consider myself a wine connoisseur. My palate is amateurish at best, certainly not a supertaster, but compared with a mass of people it is better than average. It’s taken some time, lots of money and a heavy workload on my taste buds, nostrils and liver.

I can reasonably tell the difference between the most popular varietals - if you were, say, to put a glass of Viognier, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay and told me to tell which is which four out of five days I’d be able to and the same goes with reds. I’m discerning in my likes and dislikes, can sorta pair wine with foods and have reached a point where I know there is a significant difference between your mass produced dreck like Yellow Tail (the $5-7 bottle) and something tasty in the next price range ($12-18).

However, if you were to ask me to tell the difference between a $18 bottle and something more heady, something in the $35-50 range I would be hard pressed to offer what exactly the difference is. Or rather, why the supposed sophistication and quality of the more expensive bottle justifies it’s price. And in this sense I am like most wine drinkers.

My theory, not that original and backed up by a new study (pdf) in Journal of Wine Ecomonics, is that there isn’t a remarkable enough difference for most wine consumer’s palate to justify the splurge. If you stay in the $12-18 range both your wallet and your taste buds will benefit. You’ll be able to drink more, and thus, consume from a wider selection of wines than just Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Merlot and the big whites.  As a result you will learn more: you’ll be able to talk about other offbeat varietals with confidence.  And even though you will still feel like you know nothing when you talk about tannins, acidity, mouthful, front-forward fruit, after taste, hints of whatever (fill in with appropriate descriptor) you will impress others.

Most people, waiters included, are just faking it when it comes to wine tasting.  So do not be intimidated.

Damn that’s fast.  And kind of cool.  I’d like to use this method and shoot my hard-boiled egg at another person.  Sorry, but it’s true.

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It’s just about summer time and that means drinking loads more beer. They get lighter in character and they go down easier, almost quench that sweaty thirst in the back of the throat. Loads more Hefeweizens, outdoor brews. I’m just hoping one of the brewies out here in Oregon have something comparable to Allagash’s White. That’s the standard for any summer beer. Light, spicy, an incredible complex beer.

And thanks to All About Beer Magazine, beer lovers now have a list of the 125 places to grab a brew before you die. Like all lists this is just a primer and there are plenty of places omitted. I don’t think the order of the list matters so much as the places on them. They span the globe from Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Boston to Oregon.

“Beer drinkers are particular not only about what they drink, but also where they drink. We all have our favorite places to enjoy a cold one. Some are laid back and relaxing. Others are loud and rollicking. Because beer is such a social beverage, our favorite places to sip a brew are often where our friends gather, or a pub where you can make new friends almost from the minute you arrive.

All About Beer has been chronicling great watering holes for nearly three decades. In the process our writers have come up with a few favorite places of their own. The following list is an attempt to bring together the 125 best places in the world to have a beer. The Growler List, if you will. With any list of this sort, we fully expect it will cause some debate and even a few arguments. More art than science went into constructing this list, but we can assure you that having a beer at any location on this list is a special experience,” they write.

Personally, this list is as much about pilgrimage as it is about beer, it’s more a list of world destinations not to be missed. I’ve been to 18 of the places listed. Many of them in Boston, Portland (Maine and Ore.), Syracuse, NY, and scattered througout Europe. That’s not too shabby. I was hoping for at least half. But I’ve got the list and a lifetime to knock off some places.

I will offer two caveats. If you are going to put a beer on top of the Green Monster at Fenway Park on the list then you automatically have to include bleacher beers at Wrigley, right? Also, the best beer bar in the world wasn’t included and that’s a shame. If you ever make it to Ashville, NC stop by the Root Bar. When they say it looks like hell from outside but it’s heaven inside, well, that couldn’t be any truer. A gem of a beer bar if there ever was one.

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Miller’s Brew Blog is drawing the ire from several competitors, including industry giant Anheuser-Busch. The blog, run by 37 year-old industry reporter James Arndorfer has gotten several scoops since the sites incarnation, even beating publicity firms from rival companies.

“Brew Blog is the latest and perhaps most unlikely front in Miller’s drive to rattle Anheuser. Mr. Arndorfer tracks the St. Louis company’s every move, from earnings reports to management changes. He relishes revealing details of its products before Anheuser does.

Though Mr. Arndorfer covers other brewers, he’s ‘fixated on A-B,’ says Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily, an online newsletter. Mr. Arndorfer responds: ‘They’re the industry leader. And they’ve been making a lot of news.’”

And that’s fine if his blog wasn’t owned by a competing brewing company. There isn’t even a hint of propiety involved. Go easy on your own company and take shots at the competitor under the guise of “journalism.” Not exactly fair and balanced.

I’m willing to be if you asked Miller they would claim the Brew Blog is just that - a blog. Not a new media platform. But for anyone 35 and under, blog are mini-media companies. There are traditional media companies like the Wall Street Journal or The NY Times and new media like Daily Kos or Gawker Media. And though this may just seem like the rivalry between Miller and Bud upping the ante, the ramifications go much deeper.

Not so crazy about the blog is Mr. Schuhmacher, the editor and publisher of Beer Business Daily. Mr. Schuhmacher, who charges $440 a year for his publication, declines to say how many subscribers he has. “I tell Miller you’re subsidizing a free publication, and it hurts the trade press,” he says. “But they don’t care.”

Mr. Schuhmacher became angry when Miller bought ads to run alongside Google searches for the keywords “Harry Schuhmacher” and “Beer Business Daily” to drive visitors to Brew Blog. The brewer took the ads down after he complained.

Mr. Schuhmacher adds that he writes fewer positive pieces about Miller than he once did because he knows Brew Blog will always publish the same stories. On a recent evening, a Miller spokesman suggested he write about one of its newer brews, a lemonade-flavored wheat beer called Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy.

“I said, ‘You know what, give it to Brew Blog,’” Mr. Schuhmacher says.

And that’s the real problem when other journalistic endeavors just give up.

It’s going down man! Today marks the day that the Titanic sunk in 1912. Coincidentally, it also marks the day that Fenway Park in Boston opened. So yah for that.

For some reason this was a point of concern for Red Sox fans, as if a divine Calvinism marked us from the coincidence of those two events. But whatever. That all changed I guess in 2004 and Sawx fans forgot about today. Well today, but 96 years ago today. Whatever, you know what I mean.

Still, it bears mentioning. So think about Jack and Rose today as they went down. In celebration, Cooking Monster took a look at the last meal, if you will, of first-class passengers. The meal was actually served on April 14th, but you know it’s like a Christmas Eve/Christmas sort of thing.

They had a ten course meal for crying out loud, including wine pairings and after dinner cigars. Amongst the elicacies were oysters, foie gras, Waldord pudding, squab, filet mignon, lamb with mint sauce, salmon and consumme olga.

I guess you get what you pay for. Though no one probably bought their ticket with a side of death.

Also: I love this fake trailer for the sequel to Titanic. The best is that it splices footage from Demolition Man and Con Air.

When he’s not getting down on the dance floor in a gangster’s paradise after taking a fantastic voyage or teaching kids to count (hell, he was the original 1-2-3-4 long before Feist co-opted him), washed up rap star - and we use the term star loosely - Coolio likes to cook with his peeps out on his deck.

In that way he’s a lot like you or I. Where we diverge from Coolio, however, is quickly thereafter. Coolio can’t really cook and his posse is waaaay funnier and waaaay more awesomer than our investment banker friends. Cuz they would never dress up in costume to help you during your cooking show.

Shaka zulu! Here Coolio and the gang, which does include grown men dressed as stuffed animals and women dressed up like pirates teach us the hidden value of shrimps, seasoned salt, malt liquor and lemon rinds.

The lyrical breakdown to “Gangster’s Paradise” has never been more apropos. “Everybody’s running, something something something / what’s going on in the kitchen? / but I don’t know what’s cooking / they say I’ve got to learn but no one’s here to teach me”

Thankfully, Coolio took heed to break the vicious cycle.

Full warning, this may be the dumbest and funniest shit you’ll watch all week. Especially for the line “you have to coagulate your fish” or “some barbecue sauce slid in me today” or “watch this kitchen pimp! I can rub the grill.”

If SNL still had a pulse this would have been a skit on their show at some point.

Yeah, who’s laughing now. Some guy snatched up the rights to Pizza.com waaaaay back when the internet first started and people thought domain names would be a good investment.There were plenty of people who sniggered at him. And now after selling the domain at auction he’s gonna role around naked in a pile of money.

$2.6 million to be exact.

Apparently, though it wasn’t a good investment for the company that bought pizza.com. Why? Well, this person eloquates (did I just make that word up?) it better than I could.

Frankly, I’m not sure if the person who just ponied up over two and a half million bucks has even heard of Search Engine Optimization, but I can only assume that they haven’t. First off, if you want your site to come up in google when people search for pizza, then for a whole lot less than $2.6 million, I know a good source that could help market your website and improve your search results.

It’s almost as if this person thought that this was actually 2000 and (some) people still used AOL keywords. Or if there weren’t even a search engine market in general- like people just type in random URLs looking for things. In fact, people do search. Google first, then Yahoo, then… well, it really doesn’t matter. People are searching for what they want. And searching for pizza isn’t going to get you pizza.com unless the content behind it is SEOd correctly.

What in the world could the Pizza.com website possibly contain that makes it that valuable? Phone numbers to local pizza places? Google maps does that. Menus to local pizza places? Grubhub or DiningOut do that. All the information on how to make pizza? There are numerous cooking sites out there. The history of pizza? Wikipedia, I guess, but who cares?

My argument here is that there isn’t anything that Pizza.com could host that could be worth that investment. If I want pizza, I will a) go to the website of my favorite chain for delivery (btw, I ordered online from Dominos last weekend and then tracked my cheesy bread through the process. It was life alteringly cool.) b) search for local pizza spots or c) go to Nino’s on Charles St and have a $2 slice in 2 minutes. I won’t go to pizza.com.

Also, the author goes on to say that domain names no longer matter at this stage of the internet. If your content or business model is good then it doesn’t matter what you call your company.

Fad diets come and go, but when you’re in college, just out of, or broke, or well, let’s face - plain ass cheap, it’s impossible to eat a great meal on a shoe string budget. But recently there’s been a move to change all that. NPR first shed some light on going gourmet for only 99 cents about a week ago.

Unless, that is, you shop at the 99¢ Only Stores. There are more than 200 of them throughout the West — not to mention other bargain variations like the Dollar Store — true to their name, everything costs exactly 99 cents.

Christiane Jory thoroughly embraces this fact in her book, The 99¢ Only Stores Cookbook. The idea may sound silly, but the book is filled with recipes for gourmet items like gruyere beignets, salmon souffle and Pinot Noir poached pear tarts. Many of the recipes have been adapted from culinary classics like the Joy of Cooking and the Moosewood Cookbook.

Sure, we’ve all sustained on Ramen but can 99 cent food possibly taste any good? It’s hard to say, because I haven’t sunk that low. Yet. It’s not unfathomable that I would sink that low. The NPR article goes on to explain how Jory sunk that low (obvs. it involves wine!) and lived to tell about it.

Taking Jory’s notion one step forward, the NYT’s food critic Henry Alford decided to conduct a week long experiment culminating in a bargain basement dinner party. He used ingredients purchased only from 99 cent stores throughout Manhattan.

The four friends I served dinner to included two who had shopped for food at 99-cent stores and two who had not. Guests were met with an antipasto tray — pepperoncini, olives, artichoke hearts, crackers, very greasy salami and a hockey puck of Brie that I had softened by baking.

Disparate nibbling yielded several polite, neutral comments. My guests stared off into the mid-distance as if in the throes of Art Appreciation. But the compliments started flying when I served my chilled pear soup — nothing more than a mixture of Goya and Kern’s pear nectars that I served in beautiful Chinese bowls with star anise floating on top. (Mark: “I feel like I’m at a chic restaurant.” Heather: “I’ve cleaned my bowl.”)

Of particular note, is that Alford has to use some cooking ingenuity. Since the inventory at many of these 99 cent stores is constantly in flux there’s more improvisation cooking.

Forced into using whatever ingredients are on hand to prepare something delicious is in a word, stressful.

It’s a method perfected by our ancestors and sadly, lost in the modern world of microwave dinners and pop top soup bowls.

As for that experiment’s legacy?

I will continue to serve my “pear soup.” I will continue to worship at the altar of Goya’s dulce de leche wafers. I will continue to make my pea soup using frozen peas, particularly as the recipe I devised is so wonderfully easy. (Slice and sauté an onion. Add 3 cups chicken stock, a 1-pound bag of frozen peas, 1/3 cup oats, 1/8 teaspoon cardamom, some salt and pepper. Bring to boil. Purée in blender.)

But more important, I will continue to look for incredible value. As I’m sure the folks at Jack’s know, bargain-hunting can be addictive.

Consider the Web site for the national chain 99¢ Only Store, which proudly displays an Andreas Gursky photograph of endless rows of candy and canned goods called “99 Cents,” taken at a franchise in Hollywood. The Web site informs us, “This photograph recently sold for over $1,999,999!”

One man’s penny is another man’s dollar.

Truer words my friend, truer words.

Also: Chef Eric Ripert lays out some delicous recipes using this old school on the cheap method. Check out the slide show to see how it was all done here.

One of the things I like about Bobby Flay, the Food Network Chef, is that more than any of the other celebrity chefs, is that he actually seems to like food. He wants to celebrate it and acknowledge the role that great food and a great meal can play in our lives. Whether it’s grilling out in the backyard or travelling the country to lightheartedly compete against unknown chefs (that he almost never seems to win on Throwdown is kinda irritating), it’s always an enthusiastic approach.

Now he’s gearing up for yet another show to debut this summer, circa July. Grill It! seems to be a combination of his previous two shows, Boy Meets Grill and Throwdown, however, this isn’t any sort of competition. Flay is hoping to find the best grillers the country has to offer to highlight all the unique recipes and techniques out there.

So whether you’re a primo tailgater or a professional smoker, Flay wants you to send in a two or three-minute clip of you doing your thing on your grill. He wants to see the story behind the recipe as you show the audience how to prepare it.

So shoot your video and upload it and maybe you’ll become the next BBQ pit master. The deadline is April 10 and there are only a few videos on their now.

Another day, another couple of new cooking shows debut on The Food Network. None of them sound particularly enticing, however.

From a press release (yeah we know it’s lazy but this doesn’t deserve our time to go original):

COOKING FOR REAL

Premieres: Sunday, April 6^th at 10:30AM ET/PT

With an understanding of everyday life and that real people deserve down-to-earth delicious meals, Sunny Anderson serves up solutions for easy-to-prepare, fantastic-tasting menus. Sunny’s fresh, uncomplicated approach to classic comfort foods, along with her passion for interpreting the flavors from her unique travels, brings a bright style to delectable, down-home dishes. Every recipe is designed with an eye toward real life budgets, easy-to-find ingredients and time saving tips to make preparation a breeze. From her spicy yet sweet Shrimp Pot Pie from New Orleans, her favorite bistro-inspired Wilted Green Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette, or her mouth-watering take on Germany’s finest, Baked Apple with Crisp Topping, Sunny elevates the everyday meal in Cooking for Real!

ABOUT SUNNY ANDERSON:

Growing up traveling the world as an Army brat, Sunny indulged in many local cuisines. When she joined the Air Force, she continued her culinary world travels and also discovered she had a desire to explore music, becoming an award-winning military radio host and news reporter. Sunny continued her broadcast career playing radio host at stations in New Orleans, Montgomery, Detroit, and finally, in New York at hip-hop radio powerhouse, HOT 97. Sunny also served as Food & Lifestyle Editor at Hip Hop Weekly Magazine and previously ran her own catering company, Sunny’s Delicious Dishes. She debuted on Food Network back in 2005 as a special guest on Emeril Live, and in 2007, Sunny co-hosted Food Network’s series of specials, Gotta Get It.

CHIC & EASY

Premieres: Sunday, May 18^th at 10:30AM ET/PT

Whether it’s a ladies-only soiree, a posh picnic, or big movie night, Mary Nolan proves that successful entertaining results from mouth-watering menus and stylish, welcoming atmospheres. Her exciting twists on the traditional create entertaining delights like Stilton-Stuffed Dates, Sweet and Smoky Popcorn, and Chocolate Cheesecake Cupcakes with Ganache Frosting. Whether highlighting her practical approach to using local produce, showcasing a single splurge ingredient, or impressing guests with a unique flea-market find, she always offers crowd-pleasing and affordable solutions to make memorable entertaining Chic & Easy.

ABOUT MARY NOLAN:

Born and raised in Davenport, Iowa, Mary Nolan was inspired by a creative and food-loving family who exposed her to hands-on epicurean adventures including working on her grandparents’ rural farms, preparing meals, and culinary-focused vacations. While studying journalism at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mary enrolled in nutrition and food science courses and began catering bridal showers and parties. Spending a semester in Italy provided yet another source of inspiration for Mary’s cooking. After graduating from college, Mary moved to New York City to become an assistant at premier culinary magazine, Gourmet where she eventually became an advertising copywriter. Dedicated to sharing her fresh perspective and passion for accessibly chic entertaining, Mary is currently attending The Institute of Culinary Education.

SECRETS OF A RESTAURANT CHEF

Premieres: Sunday, June 29^th at 10:30AM ET/PT

With extensive experience as a top restaurant chef and a lifelong passion for food, Anne Burrell takes the mystery (and apprehension) out of the professional kitchen and highlights the practical techniques necessary to create delicious at-home meals. Based on her love for rustic food with simple ingredients and intense flavors, Anne prepares surprisingly achievable dishes such as Herb-Crusted Leg of Lamb with Roasted Fennel, Artichoke, and Red Bliss Potatoes and Brined Grilled Pork Chops with Parmesan Polenta, Sautéed Swiss Chard and Bacon. With stand-out recipes perfect for a party but easy enough for an everyday meal, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef will make the viewer’s dinner table the hottest reservation in town.

ABOUT ANNE BURRELL:

Now serving as Executive Chef at New York hot-spot Centro Vinoteca, Anne Burrell has always stood out in the restaurant business for her remarkable culinary talent, bold and creative dishes, and her trademark spiky blond hair. After training at New York’s Culinary Institute of America and Italy’s Culinary Institute for Foreigners, she gained hands-on experience at notable New York restaurants including Felidia, Savoy, Lumi, and Italian Wine Merchants. Anne can also be spotted battling on Food Network’s