Nepenthe

Abv.- Alcohol by Volume, the amount or percentage of alcohol by volume in wine, beer, or spirits. Anjou- A wine region of France in the Western Loire around the town of Angers that became known in the 1500-1600's for sweet wine production. The white Cote de Layon is known as the best of these, there are also the Rosé d'Anjou and the red Cabernet d'Anjou. Sweet wine is now only a small percentage of the wine produced in this region. Appellation- geographical areas that are certified and have regulations governing the wines made there. Asti- a town and province in Piemonte/Piedmont, Italy known for sweet and sparkling wines. Asti Spumante- A sweet sparkling wine made in Asti with 7-9.5% abv and high carbonation, 3.5-4 atmospheres of pressure, produced from moscato bianco grapes. Aszú- A tokaji wine Ausbruch- an Austrian wine style very similar to Aszú and developed at the same time. Made with a combination of botrytized and regular grapes. Auslese- See German Labeling...

Walk into the cheese section of any market, especially at an upscale gourmet-type store, and you are going to see a tremendous variety of cheeses available. And that selection doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of the number of cheeses that are out there. It can be difficult to figure out the differences between each product until you've tried all of them, but here is a quick guide to cheese terminology that might help you sort through the basic types of cheese. Fresh - High moisture cheeses that have not been aged, like cottage cheese, cream cheese, feta, mascarpone and ricotta. Soft-Ripened - These have hard rinds and soft interiors, like brie and camembert. They often have edible rinds made by "spraying the cheese with Penicillium candidum mold before a brief aging period." Semi-Soft - Cheeses that are neither hard, nor runny, but that are high in moisture and creamy in texture, like Monterey Jack, fontina or havarti. They are often easy to gra...

A is for Alinea The US foodie bible, Gourmet, voted Alinea in Chicago the best restaurant in America, a remarkable achievement for its 30-year-old chef, Grant Achatz, given that it had been open for only a year. Alinea is famed not simply for the inventive dishes on its 24-course tasting menus, but also for the ways in which they are presented. Ingredients come to the table impaled on hyper-thin metal prongs, created by the restaurant's consultant sculptor, or dangling from what appear to be chrome executive toys. A piece of lamb arrives buried beneath smouldering eucalyptus leaves, and a single ravioli has a liquid centre that is the very essence of truffle. www.alinea-restaurant.com B is for Heston Blumenthal The Man as far as this country is concerned. Prior to opening the Fat Duck in 1995, Blumenthal had spent only a week in a professional kitchen, at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons. Today he has three Michelin stars. His friend and fellow chef, the great Fe...

Não sou nada. Nunca serei nada. Não posso querer ser nada. À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo. Je ne suis rien. Jamais je ne serai rien. Je ne puis vouloir être rien. Cela dit, je porte en moi tous les rêves du monde. No soy nada. Nunca seré nada. No puedo querer ser nada. Además, tengo en mí todos los sueños del mundo. Non sono niente. Non sarò mai niente. Non posso voler essere niente. A parte questo, ho in me tutti i sogni del mondo. I am nothing. Never shall be anything. Cannot will to be anything. This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world. Traduções de: Armand Guibert, Ramiro Fonte, Neva Cerantola, Jonathan Griffin.

1. Pele has always hated his nickname, which he says sounds like "baby-talk in Portuguese". More details 2. There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. More details 3. Urban birds have developed a short, fast "rap style" of singing, different from their rural counterparts. More details 4. Bristol is the least anti-social place in England, says the National Audit Office. More details 5. Standard-sized condoms are too big for most Indian men. More details 6. The late Alan "Fluff" Freeman, famous as a DJ, had trained as an opera singer. More details 7. The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions. More details 8. There are 6.5 million sets of fingerprints on file in the UK. More details 9. Fathers tend to determine the height of their child, mothers their weight. More details 10. Panspermia is the idea that life on Earth originated on another planet. More detail [ ...

HOLLYWOOD has turned them into the cartoon stars of the film Happy Feet, but the real life story of the rockhopper penguin is not such a happy tale, scientists have discovered. Millions of the birds are disappearing in a "sinister and astonishing" phenomenon that is baffling biologists. In just six years their numbers have fallen from 600,000 to 420,000 in the Falkland Islands - one of its few remaining strongholds - according to the latest survey by Falklands Conservation. The decline equates to a drop of about 30 per cent, although the Falklands population is thought to have dipped by about 85 per cent since 1932, when there were more than 1.5 million birds. It is thought that global warming may be behind its decline, as warmer seas are less productive and the penguins may not be able to find enough food to eat, but researchers admit they have not yet established the reasons. Dr Geoff Hilton, an RSPB biologist who has studied the species, said: "It's actually q...

"Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. 'Wretch,' I cried, 'thy God hath lent thee- by these angels he hath sent thee Respite- respite and nepenthe , from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!' Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.' " [The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe]

Christmas came early for fans of the Harry Potter series this year, with the revelation of the title of the long-awaited seventh book. The final instalment of the adventures of the boy wizard who, has captured the imagination of children (and adults) the world over, will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The announcement, which was made on the website of JK Rowling's UK publisher, Bloomsbury, puts an end to months of internet speculation, with guesses ranging from Harry Potter and the Pyramids of Furmat to Harry Potter and the Graveyard of Memories. The actual title, however, gives little away; doubtless the rumour mills will now go into overdrive debating what exactly "deathly hallows", which have not featured in any of the previous Potter books, may be. Kes Nielsen, head of book-buying at Amazon.co.uk, reported a surge of activity in the site's Harry Potter store, following the announcement. "This is the first piece of the jigsaw in the final part...

The grilled sardines lying on my plate are much larger than the stunted little things packed in tins which go by the same name in the U.S., and their eye sockets stare up at the ceiling, where hanging light fixtures are shaped like gourds. The aroma of sardines led me here, the scent sharp at first as it hit the nose (perhaps too sharp), until the smoky complexities took over, akin—at least for me—to a bouquet of wine. I take another sip from my glass of vinho verde and peer up at the small square of the TV perched on a high shelf beside the restaurant's open door. The screen displays a smaller green rectangle of a soccer pitch, with the even smaller figures of the players racing back and forth. Across the table in this typically narrow and crowded Lisbon tasca (mirroring the long and narrow streets of the Bairro Alto, an appealing neighborhood mix of funky shops and clothes drying on balconies), my 19-year-old ponytailed son, Nathaniel, sits enthralled by the beginning of this W...

Illustrated by Pedro Proença, he of the Oceanarium causeway ;)

This four-bedroom home is located in Belvedere, California and the deck offers views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco. The new home has a contemporary style and is designed for indoor and outdoor living where the sliding doors disappear into wall pockets and a glass roof skylight in the dining room retracts for dining by starlight. Honduran mahogany crown and base moldings, Italian style plastered walls, limestone floors, onyx and marble in bathrooms and kitchen are part of the luxury feel this home. I t is listed at $8.8 million .You can also check out the house in Zillow where their "zestimate" is a bit lower than the asking price. After the jump, fruity coffee tables are just part of the owner's unique collection of furniture.

In 1996 there was a lighthouse for sale in Burnham-on-Sea, and as a reporter I was sent to cover it - it was rumoured someone famous might be buying it. When it didn't reach its reserve at auction, curiosity got the better of me. I got the keys and went with my fiancee to look at it. It was an empty shell. Just a 110ft chimney with eight floors linked by vertical steel ladders. It had no water. No toilet. It's a very beautiful piece of architecture. It has a copper roof, huge granite floors and 6ft-thick walls, like a castle. People died building it. We bought it, but with no idea how much it would cost to turn it into a dwelling, and no planning permission. We were young and stupid and in love with each other and the building. Initially the romantic dream was to bring up our kids and live in the lighthouse. But the bureaucracy and the difficulty took a bit of the gloss off. It took nearly 10 years to complete. Trying to make a granite tower comply with 21st-century building re...

Homaro Cantu, executive chef of Chicago's Moto restaurant, isn't afraid to try new things -- and neither are his patrons. From maple squash cake to a lychee rigatoni fruit plate, Cantu's concoctions are entirely inventive. Like many of his contemporaries--including Wylie Dufresne at New York's WD-50 and Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray, England--Cantu, a self-proclaimed gadgets geek who, in his spare time, reconstructs electrical equipment like combustible engines and remote-controlled cars, pays close attention to the science of cooking to create food that people have to "see to believe." For example, one dish requires the use of liquid nitrogen to create an illusion of melting cheese out of grated mango. And many of Cantu’s courses are prepared with a Class IV Laser, which cooks the food at record speeds. Of course, Cantu's main objective is still superior taste. But why all the hullabaloo for a few savory bites? Are diners more obsessed with ...

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing any tourist is the inability to communicate. I think we've all made fools out of ourselves trying to act out "train station," "subway," "potato" or hundreds of other things we desperately need but can't seem to find when exploring foreign lands. If computer science professor Alex Waibel has his way, this problem will cease to exist within the next decade. The Carnegie Mellon University professor is working on a variety of gadgets which seek to automatically translate the spoken word. The coolest of the inventions is the yet to be released, translation goggles. This nifty device translates everything strange foreign people are saying to you in strange foreign lands and prints it out on a tiny screen on the glasses for you to read. This will be a godsend for travelers but also a curse. Now when the locals curse you under their breath for being hloupý , loco or a dummkopf , you will finally understand what ...

Y oga is the Survivor of the culture wars: unbloodied, unmuddied, unbothered by the media’s slings and arrows, its leotard still as pristine as its reputation. Everybody loves yoga; sixteen and a half million Americans practice it regularly, and twenty-five million more say they will try it this year. If you’ve been awake and breathing air in the twenty-first century, you already know that this Hindu practice of health and spirituality has long ago moved on from the toe-ring set. Yoga is American; it has graced the cover of Time twice, acquired the approval of A-list celebrities like Madonna, Sting, and Jennifer Aniston, and is still the go-to trend story for editors and reporters, who produce an average of eight yoga stories a day in the English-speaking world. Journalists love yoga because it fits perfectly into the narratives of everyday life. "Yoga Joins the Treatments for Kids with Disabilities," reported the Evansville Courier & Press this summer. "Yoga...