Top Dog

 

Taste Test Reveals Top Dog for Summer Grilling

(courtesy of Epicurious.com)

After a blind taste test of 13 hot dog brands, we discovered one good enough to eat without a bun—plus two other notable franks.

The ideal frank should be juicy, not mushy. It needs to be firm and have some snap when bitten into. It should have a robust flavor with a good balance of smoke and spice. Most importantly, it should be able to stand on its own, with or without condiments and buns.

To pin down this perfect dog we tasted 13 varieties available nationwide. All brands were all-beef (no pork blends) and fully cooked. Several were marketed as all-natural and/or organic.

Methodology: In a blind taste test, seven judges compared the flavor, consistency, and appearance of the hot dogs one at a time. All dogs were grilled at the same temperature until browned. (Some required more cooking time, since the thickness of the dogs varied.) We ranked them according to the Epicurious four-fork rating system (four being highest). One wiener was anointed our top pick, receiving 3 1/2 forks. Two runners-up would certainly find a spot on our grill.

 

Best Overall

Nathan's Beef Franks

 ($5.69 for 8-count pack)

Pros: "This dog has a smoky-sweet spiciness and is perfectly juicy," commented one taster. "I love how it's not mushy like Play-Doh; it has an unyielding consistency and a good wide girth," stated another.

One taster said it best: "I knew it was the winner when I tasted it cold and it was still appetizing."

Cons: A bit greasy.

Visit Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs on the web

 

First Runner-Up:

Thumann's Beef Frankfurters

($6.99 for 8-count pack; available in more than 38 states, check company Web site for details)

Pros: " There's a pickled sweet aroma, which I could taste in each bite," said one editor. "The neutral color and good, snappy skin made me feel like I was eating a classic New York City street 'furter."

Cons: A little on the skinny side.

Visit Thumman’s Deli Best on the web

 

Second Runner-Up:

Oscar Meyer Premium Beef Franks

($2.99 for 8-count pack)

Pros: "This pick has a very distinct taste," said one taster. "It's nicely seasoned with garlic and an intense smokiness that reminds me of beef jerky." Other judges found it not overly greasy and with just the right firm bite.

Cons: This dog was oddly red and the texture spongy.

Visit Oscar Meyer Beef Franks on the web

 

article courtesy of Epicurious

NBA Finalists

It’s that time of year
- Here are the 2012 Finalists…

The judges have their work cut out for them … as has always been the case, the books that have made it to this stage are the cream of the crop – take a look at the finalists….

 

Do you have a favorite?

post a comment with your favorite or send us an email

---

FICTION

FINALISTS:

Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her (Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group USA, Inc.)
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King (McSweeney's Books)
Louise Erdrich, The Round House (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds (Little, Brown and Company)

POETRY

FINALISTS:

David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (University of Chicago Press)
Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies (Southern Illinois University Press)
Tim Seibles, Fast Animal (Etruscan Press)
Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Susan Wheeler, Meme (University of Iowa Press)

NONFICTION

FINALISTS:

Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 (Doubleday)
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4 (Knopf)
Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas (Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press)
Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

FINALISTS:

William Alexander, Goblin Secrets (Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach (Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down (Balzer+Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Eliot Schrefer, Endangered (Scholastic)
Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
(Flash Point, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press)
New York (September 19, 2012) – The National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, will present its 2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Elmore Leonard in recognition of his outstanding achievement in fiction writing. For over five decades, Leonard’s westerns, crime novels, serialized novels, and stories have enthralled generations of readers. Author Martin Amis will present the Medal to Leonard at the 63rd National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani, Wall Street, in New York City on Wednesday, November 14, 2012. Television and radio host, political and pop culture commentator, journalist, and actor Faith Salie will host the event. Today’s announcement coincides with the announcement by The Library of America that it will publish a three-volume edition of Leonard’s crime novels in its esteemed series beginning in fall 2014. National Book Foundation Executive Director Harold Augenbraum said of the selection, “For a half-century, Elmore Leonard has produced vibrant literary work with an inimitable writing style. We are particularly pleased that as we at the National Book Foundation recognize his achievement, the Library of America—which publishes, and keeps permanently in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing—has announced that Leonard will join other great American authors in its literary pantheon.”
Also on that evening, the National Book Foundation will bestow its 2012 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, for his continuing efforts through the New York Times Book Review and online book coverage to ensure an ongoing conversation about books in American culture. While re-thinking and implementing innovative print and online initiatives at the Times, Sulzberger and the Times staff have shown their devotion to the coverage of books, whether by profiling authors and their work or reporting on literary culture as a whole. “It’s hard to overstate the impact of The New York Times on the discussion about books in America,” Augenbraum said. For well over a century, The New York Times has been central to America’s book culture.”
Leonard is the twenty-fifth recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which was created in 1988 to recognize a lifetime of literary achievement. Previous recipients include John Ashbery, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe. This year’s ceremony marks the eighth year that the Foundation has presented the Literarian Award, which was established in 2005 to recognize an individual whose work has enhanced the literary world during a lifetime of service. Previous recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, Terry Gross, Barney Rosset, Dave Eggers, Joan Ganz Cooney, and Mitchell Kaplan.
Nominations for these awards are made by former National Book Award Winners, Finalists, and Judges, as well as other writers and literary professionals from around the country. Final selections are made by the National Book Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The twenty Finalists for the National Book Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature were announced on Wednesday, October 10, 2012.

---

63rd National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner

Faith Salie -

Host

Faith Salie is a television and national public radio host, political and pop culture commentator, interviewer, “ethics expert,” journalist, and actor, as well as a Rhodes Scholar, who’s been a standup comedian. She’s written for Oprah.com, Slate.com, and CNN.com and The Huffington Post. She was the host and co-executive producer of the national public radio show “Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie,” and is the co-host of a new public radio podcast, “Relations Show,” a slightly nerdy look at love, sex, and relationships.
faithsalie.com

---

---

TAKE A LOOK BACK AT PREVIOUS WINNERS

1980 pb^{[n 1]}
John Irving
The World According to Garp
1981 hard
Wright Morris
Plains Song: For Female Voices
1981 pb^{[n 1]}
John Cheever
The Stories of John Cheever
1982 hard
John Updike
Rabbit is Rich
1982 pb^{[n 1]}
William Maxwell
So Long, See You Tomorrow
1983 hard
Alice Walker
The Color Purple
1983 pb^{[n 1]}
Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
1984
Ellen Gilchrist
Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories
1985
Don DeLillo
White Noise
1986
E.L. Doctorow
World's Fair
1987
Larry Heinemann
Paco's Story
1988
Pete Dexter
Paris Trout
1989
John Casey
Spartina
1990
Charles Johnson
Middle Passage
1991
Norman Rush
Mating

1992
Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses

1993
E. Annie Proulx
The Shipping News


1994
William Gaddis
A Frolic of His Own
1995
Philip Roth
Sabbath's Theater
1996
Andrea Barrett
Ship Fever and Other Stories
1997
Charles Frazier
Cold Mountain
1998
Alice McDermott
Charming Billy
1999
Ha Jin
Waiting
2000
Susan Sontag
In America
2001
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections
2002
Julia Glass
Three Junes
2003
Shirley Hazzard
The Great Fire
2004
Lily Tuck
The News from Paraguay
2005
William T. Vollmann
Europe Central
2006
Richard Powers
The Echo Maker
2007
Denis Johnson
Tree of Smoke
2008
Peter Matthiessen
Shadow Country
2009
Colum McCann
Let the Great World Spin
2010
Jaimy Gordon
Lord of Misrule
2011
Jesmyn Ward
Salvage the Bones
NONFICTION TITLES -
1950
Ralph L. Rusk
The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (biog. Ralph Waldo Emerson)

1951
Newton Arvin
Herman Melville (biog. Herman Melville)

1952
Rachel Carson
The Sea Around Us
1953
Bernard A. DeVoto
The Course of Empire
1954
Bruce Catton
A Stillness at Appomattox (third of 3 vols)

1955
Joseph Wood Krutch
The Measure of Man
1956
Herbert Kubly
An American in Italy
1957
George F. Kennan
Russia Leaves the War
1958
Catherine Drinker Bowen
The Lion and the Throne (see Edward Coke)

1959
J. Christopher Herold
Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (biog. Madame de Staël)

1960
Richard Ellmann
James Joyce (biog. James Joyce)

1961
William L. Shirer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1962
Lewis Mumford
The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects
1963
Leon Edel
Henry James, volumes II and III (biog. Henry James)

1964
to
1983

For two decades beginning 1964 there were multiple nonfiction categories, initially Arts and Letters; History and Biography; and Science, Philosophy and Religion. See also Contemporary and General Nonfiction.

1984
Robert V. Remini
Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845
1985
J. Anthony Lukas
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
1986
Barry Lopez
Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
1987
Richard Rhodes
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
1988
Neil Sheehan
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
1989
Thomas L. Friedman
From Beirut to Jerusalem
1990
Ron Chernow
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
1991
Orlando Patterson
Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture
1992
Paul Monette
Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
1993
Gore Vidal
United States: Essays 1952-1992
1994
Sherwin B. Nuland
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
1995
Tina Rosenberg
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism
1996
James P. Carroll
An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us
1997
Joseph J. Ellis
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
1998
Edward Ball
Slaves in the Family
1999
John W. Dower
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
2000
Nathaniel Philbrick
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
2001
Andrew Solomon
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
2002
Robert A. Caro
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
2003
Carlos Eire
Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
2004
Kevin Boyle
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
2005
Joan Didion
2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
2006
Timothy Egan
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
2007
Tim Weiner
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
2008
Annette Gordon-Reed
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
2009
T.J. Stiles
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
2010
Patti Smith
Just Kids (memoir)
2011
Stephen Greenblatt
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

---

---

National Donut Day (June 3)

National Donut Day - Friday, June 3, 2011

Yes, it is true - the first Friday in june is National Donut Day. In 2009, thousands of independent shops joined the national chains in this Sweet Celebration. So, stop by the donut shop and get your favorite sweet treat! !

What's your favorite donut??

History:
National Doughnut Day started in 1938^[1] as a fund raiser for the Chicago Salvation Army. Their goal was to help the needy during the Great Depression, and to honor the Salvation Army Volunteers of World War I, who served doughnuts to soldiers.

The original Salvation Army Doughnut was first served by Salvation Army in 1917. During WWI, Salvation Army "lassies" were sent to the front lines of Europe. These brave volunteers made home cooked foods, and provided a morale boost to the troops. Often, the doughnuts were cooked in oil inside the of the metal helmet of an American soldier. The American infantrymen were commonly called doughboys. Salvation Army lassies were the only women outside of military personnel allowed to visit the front lines. Lt. Colonel Helen Purviance is considered the Salvation Army's "first doughnut girl".

Note: The word "Doughnut" is often shortened to "Donut. So, if you see the term National Donut Day, its the same day.

Quick Pick: The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

 

The Castaways
Elin Hilderbrand
ISBN 10: 1600246222
ISBN 13: 9781600246227

Hachette Audio
Read by Katie Hale

Unabridged 11CDs/13hrs

A Summer read that is good anytime of year! A copy of this audio book will take you away from whatever is bothering you and transport you to the beautiful shoreline – where you can live vicariously through an endearing cast of characters that will not soon be forgotten.

Description

Greg and Tess MacAvoy are one of four prominent Nantucket couples who count each other as best friends. As pillars of their close-knit community, the MacAvoys, Kapenashes, Drakes, and Wheelers are important to their friends and neighbors, and especially to each other. But just before the beginning of another idyllic summer, Greg and Tess are killed when their boat capsizes during an anniversary sail. As the warm weather approaches and the island mourns their loss, nothing can prepare the MacAvoy's closest friends for what will be revealed.

Author Cassandra Clare Discusses Her Audiobooks

Watch a short video of Cassandra Clare talk about the Clockwork Angel audiobook and narrator Jennifer Ehle

By: Cassandra Clare  • Narrated by: Jennifer Ehle










http://www.simonandschuster.com/

---

Also available from

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, David McCullough, returns with his latest addition to an impressive historical series…. The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris “is an enthralling, inspiring – and until now, untold –story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.

The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker

  
 The Bride Collector
Ted Dekker
Read by John Glover
ISBN-13: 9781607881872
ISBN-10: 160788187X
Hachette Audiio
Hardcover, 448 Pages
ISBN: 1599951967
ISBN: 978-1599951966
Fiction/Suspense-Thriller/Mystery
Visit the author’s website

FBI Special Agent Brad Raines matches wits with a serial killer unlike any other in Ted Dekker’s The Bride Collector.
Determined to terrorize, murder and display seven beautiful brides He has no desire to maim or disfigure his victims… No…with this killer…perfection is the key. He manipulates the bodies leaving only the slightest trace of twisted presence.
To understand and hopefully stop the serial killer, terrorizing Denver, Agent Raines turns to the Center for Well-being and Intelligence. Within the walls of this psychiatric hospital we are introduced to several interesting, caring and highly intelligent characters. But it’s Paradise Founder, a shy, agoraphobic patient with a deep seated fear of men, that could help solve this case with the touch of her hand. Detective Raines is drawn to Paradise, like a moth to a flame.
The Bride Collector brews to a steady boil, with each action leading towards the inevitable confrontation between good and evil. Although the pace is slower than that of most psychological thrillers, the personality of this story is multi-tiered, in that most every thing veils a secondary meaning. What is perfection? How do you define crazy?

Happy Reading!
RJ

  

 

BURIED SECRETS trailer

Have you "met" Nick Heller?  Nick Heller is the charismatic, smooth talking, take no prisoners, lead character in Joseph Finder's new suspense-thriller series. Vanished, the first book in the series, kept readers on the edge of their seats and glued to the pages right up to the stunning, cliff hanger ending. Which left us anxiously awaiting the second book... Well the wait is almost over -

Buried Secrets will be in stores, June 21, 2011!! So if you haven't read Vanished, grab a copy and get hooked on the hottest new thriller series in years!