So interesting news out of Burbank that Pat Sajak, beloved host of Wheel of Fortune since I remember watching TV and I'm not young enjoyed a margarita or six before hosting Wheel of Fortune.

Lots of questions here:
1) In the entertainment business, can being tipsy allow one to be more entertaining?
2) In a regular work place, can being tipsy allow one to be more creative, innovative, personable?
3) Does Vanna White enjoy tire treads over her back from the bus she was just thrown under?
4) Why the heck is Dan Le Batard breaking this news on an ESPN show?

Let's look at one thing at a time.

1) I say emphatically, "yes".  Word of mouth stories have tied actors like, oh, John Belushi, who might chug an entire bottle of Jack (and come out of it knowing foreign languages, apparently) to get in character to being a bit loaded on the set.  Other than the obvious problems with binge drinking, anything of it? I say "no".  If I were an actor, I wouldn't hesitate (contract allowing) to get a little loose before going in front of the lights.

2) Hmmm, slippery slope here.  I can handle my one or two or six (here's to you Pat) but the guy next to me may not.  He might fly off the handle and come at me when I ask why his report is late.  The gal next to him might break down in tears after a few if you mention something as simple as "your hair looks nice today" and she replies "pickles is gone, my cat is dead..."  Lost productivity having to listen to her go on and on for 30 minutes about a cat you could give a flip less about.  So I'm going to have to say "no".  For more information, this summary highlights the possiblities with beer at work.  You don't have to stretch the imagination for the liability involved, be it sexual harassment, imparted driving, workplace injury, etc.  Short story is that I could pull it off, a work force of 100 people will see problems.

3) Yeah, I'm pretty sure Vanna didn't want to have anything to do with this leaking.  I'm sure a publicist is working right now to disassociate herself from the comments of Pat and Pat alone.  I say as a disinterested (legally) but interested (from an adolescent male), I did not notice any evidence of stumbling or disorientation of her and turning those letters so she's innocent until proven guilty.

4) Those who follow sports are familiar with Dan Le Batard, a great sportswriter, a fill in for ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, and a wit from the show highlighted above.  Good catch, credit to his producers who found Sajak and thought this might be a story.  You figure CNN could have found this and made it a big story on one of their fledgling shows (like whoever that guy who isn't Larry King) but DLB got it!

All that being said, I think a glass of beer or wine with lunch (European style) should be more tolerated here stateside.

As a complete non-sequitor, does anyone else remember when former San Diego Chargers Kicker Rolf Benirschke hosted Wheel for some reason? What was that about????

Part 1: In which we get a brief introduction to a multi-part blog series (that will probably be abandoned after one post).

Good day to you, my friends. Today I'd like to take advantage of the skeleton crew that is left around here during football season to bring you a new blog series: "Dude, you going to teach that?" 

The premise is nearly almost self-explanatory. First I present to you a piece of work from the Internet, and then I dissect it. Hopefully, some sort of lesson emerges.

Part 2: In which we get the syllabus.

Instead of teaching you how to make delicious stuff to put in your mouth, today I will present a discourse on Deductive Reasoning. 

To truly extrapolate significant intelligence on this topic, we must consult the work of masters. The rise of social media has spawned a renaissance for pundits and curmudgeons. Just a quick aside, with this plenitude of enlightenment to be found on the Internet, I fully expect "street smarts" in the future to refer to the Information Superhighway and not actual streets. Fortunately, the Internet gives us access to an array of veritable savants on all things ever whispered in mankind's own collective head. 

Our featured post is titled "Houston's Diners", published on the highly-respected Internet outlet for eating thoughts, food.DrRicky.net. Since this class is real-time, I will present the text, unedited and in its entirety, in the body of this lesson.

In terms of my particular qualifications as a professor, I'm certainly no doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Just kidding, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but it wasn't last night. Just kidding, I only showed up in the lobby that morning for those delicious cinnamon rolls. 

At the very least, I have read the work cited in this syllabus. I also have a thesaurus open so I can appear really, really sharp astute. 

Part 3: In which we break down our subject piece.

Any doctor worth his proverbial salt wastes no time getting to the point. 

In a recent survey by Zagat (now a property of Google)

*sigh* The Googlization of America continues. At least Yelp retains its credibility by remaining independent. I Bing'ed the details of the Zagat acquisition, and I think it is possible that Google merely took over the lease at Zagat's vacated office space. It was also not clear after my research whether the "recent survey" was a Google Doc form.

revealed that Houstonians dine out more often than any other city in the US. 

YEAH!!

Some seem to think that this is something to be bragged about.

Oh, um... For the record, that "some" refers to Eater Houston, a blog dedicated to all things dining related in Houston. Even though this is precisely the kind of news I would expect to see on Eater, let's do a quick sanity check.

1. It ain't bragging if it's true
2. The Zagat survey proved* Houstonians dine out more often than any other city in the US.
3. Therefore, Eater was reporting fact and not bragging.

*probably needs reference, but

Why is that?

Doc likes softballs. 

If there's anything I've observed about local dining out habits is that these diners tend to go to the same narrow range of restaurants, all of whom tend to offer very similar dishes.

We will break here so you can wrap your heads around this astute observation. 

Diners eat what they like – AND – Diners go to restaurants that serve what they like.

Curb those feelings of self-doubt and let those ideas marinate while I toss a few more things on the fire. Diners also all drink similar beverages (always Diet Coke or Bud Light). These diners also all tend to wear similar clothes. When is the last time you saw a 3-piece suit at Applebees? I rest my case.

Moreover, people tend to order the exact same dish with every visit. I believe the latter part is true of most American restaurant patrons.

Except Houstonians order a lot more combination fajitas and frozen margaritas with salt than the average American restaurant patron. Fact.

These habitual systems fuel the burgeoning monotony of the dining scene in Houston.

Really? Fajita jokes aside, everything about the statement above is completely invalid. The reality is that Houston is home to a world-class dining scene. Houston offers both traditional and progressive interpretations of Texas Gulf Coast cuisine, Tex-Mex cuisine, and a plateful of restaurants that represent Houston's melting pot of cultures.

If diners in Houston go to the same restaurants serving the same food, then how do restaurants in areas along Airline, Washington, Bellaire, Long Point, or Westheimer survive? How does Houston even have five great food streets/districts? Furthermore, why can I easily find someone who would duel to the death over replacing one the streets mentioned above with their favorite food street?

Our diversity stems from the number of different ways one can put toppings on a hamburger, or the minutiae of smoking brisket.

Dr. Ricky is thoroughly connected to Houston's food scene, so this smarmy, faux intellectual statement must be leading us to some sharp-witted deduction.

Ubiquitous blogging idioms be damned!!

And at the end of the day,

Eh. Never mind.

familiarity often trumps flavor at the checkout receipt.

The assertion here is that things that taste different taste better? Whoa there, el doctor. 

Let's take a moment to review. Dr. Ricky has established that the average Houstonian diner does not meet his culinary imprimatur because she isn't adventurous enough. Caught in the blast zone of that bombshell was Eater Houston, a website dedicated to dining that "bragged about" Houstonians eating out more than any other U.S. city -- according to a Google study.


What are the details of said study? I'm glad I asked. (I like softballs too.)

Zagat's recently released its 2012 America's Top Restaurants Survey for their newest guide. The survey was based on the votes of over 156,000 "food lovers" dining out in 45 major markets. Just for reference, the Houston metropolitan area alone has almost 6,000,000 residents, so the survey was far from comprehensive and most likely not very scientific (e.g. votes from "food lovers"). The study concluded that the average food lover in these top 45 markets ate 3.1 meals that came from a restaurant per week. These results do not differentiate between type or time of meal, as far as I could make out. 

Texans were the Charlie Sheen of this survey, with four cities locking down the top slots of the survey for meals eaten from a restaurant per week: Houston (4.0), Austin (3.8), Dallas/Ft. Worth (3.6), and San Antonio (3.5). 

With that inscrutable science, we continue with the post.

But the necessary consequence here is that Houstonians tend to cook less often at home.

OK Stop. The deductive argument presented here is that since Houstonians eat out (or get take out) more than the average American, than they are cooking less at home. The statement sounds reasonable on the surface, but let's evaluate the significance of that logical statement. Ignoring the most important meal of the day, the Taco Bell 4^th Meal, a monotonous diner eats 21 meals in a week. The average Zagatian fooder eats nearly 18 of those at home. The average Houstonian Zagatian fooder, with his burgeoning waistline eats only 17 of those 21 meals at home, a difference of less than 5%.

• Math check: 5% > 0%
• Therefore, the doctor's conclusion seems sound.

But is there an important lesson to be extracted from those numbers? Once again:

But the necessary consequence here is that Houstonians tend to cook less often at home. And this should be recognized as a sad matter.

Wait, should it?

Irrelevant conclusions < Tim Tebow < Sound Logic 

Maybe Dr. Ricky's premise would be sound if every meal eaten at home was a home prepared meal. What if I make a frozen pot pie for dinner? Ramen noodle? How sad is that? What if I bought a bowl of pho at a local restaurant and my neighbor made a PB&J? 

Does this make Dr. Ricky cry?

Back to the Zagat study, can we even make the assumption that the average diner eats at home for 17.9 meals and the average Houstonian eats at home for 17.0 meals? 

The study only addresses meals away from the home, not the balance of the other meals. Do the people in the study eat only two meals a day? Did they eat at Dr. Ricky's house? It is simply not sound logic to assume that the number of meals the participants in the study cooked at home. Remember, we are talking about less than a 5% difference between Houston and the average for these other meals. All the study states is that, based on the votes of over 156,000 food lovers dining out in 45 major markets, Houstonians responded that they ate out on average 4.0 meals a week compared to 3.1 for the average of the entire survey. Where in the survey does it address cooking at home?

There's a true and essential skill to cooking - it's the art of finding flavor amidst compromise, a balance of knowing enough of the science of chemistry and microbiology to apply heat and time to raw ingredients, to bring forth a transformation worthy of one's palate, discriminating or otherwise.

What a fascinating bit of misdirection and sophistry here. A Criss Angel just got its wings. 

In the first part of his post, Dr. Ricky scolded diners for not eating adventurous enough when they ate out. Now, we are being scolded for not understanding the art and science of cooking in our homes! Nice one.

But wait, there's more…

And above all, it's about taking responsibility for the outcome, something that Texans, and all Americans, for that matter, are supposed to take pride in. And even the humblest of cooks are better equipped to appreciate the vision and efforts of a fellow cook by their very exposure to the craft.

What the smell? And this is how the doctor's little game of inception ends. I'm convinced that Dr. Ricky wanted to chastise Houston diners, wrote this revelation, and just backed into the fluff at the beginning. Certainly he didn't have logic over for dinner that night.

Perhaps I got lost in the "essential skill" of this confusery and don't know "enough of the science" to be "discriminating or otherwise," but at its best, Dr. Ricky's post served a proper outlet for him to unleash his distaste for Eater Houston and the average diner. 

At worst, this is a shipload of scrap. 

Part 4: In which we are presented a completely unrelated anecdote.

The other day I was driving in the museum district around midday. After a slight bend in the road, about 100 feet away, I noticed an oncoming car. The driver, a soccer mom in a Chevy Traverse, was in the midst of a huge face contorting yawn. 

I understand there to be many theories on science of yawning. However, if there's anything I've observed about yawning, it is that they are terribly contagious. If a person even hears a yawn, they often have to yawn themselves. The theory even holds true with animal yawns.

So you won't be surprised to read after that car passed me, I too began a monster, eye squinting yawn. As I was completing my yawn, a car passed me in the same direction of the Chevy Traverse I originally spotted.

Then it hit me. Had I passed through a mysterious zone, a perpetual field, fueled by the invisible power of the yawn? Did I pass my yawn to the new car? Had cars been passing that yawn back and forth for hours before I drove through that area? How long did the perpetual yawn zone stay alive? Could there be other similar perpetual yawning zones in the city? The World? The Universe? Was this discovery significant? 

I'm no philosopher, but probably.

 

By Gomer McHomer

In putting together the consummate ice chest beer collection for the big game, Sebastian Farce needed a remarkable beer. Commonly known as a craft beer gadabout and a clever spinster, Sebastian is credited with coining the phrase “America’s Beer.”

Independence Brewing Company’s co-owners Rob and Amy Cartwright resisted the title early on because they felt like demand for the beer would quickly exceed the brewery’s capacity (and humbleness, of course). But every waking thought finds its way to a publishing media nowadays, so delighted or not, the moniker was retweeted, favorited, and liked many thousands of times over.

It is Independence Brewing’s passion that they instill in every drop of beer that helped justify them as “America’s Beer,” while the entire brewery team made sure the beer drinkers would find it at notable local restaurants, bars, and grocery stores.

Love it or hate it, a person’s beer of choice is one of the most polarizing topics in the United States. Even when the number of breweries in the U.S. fell below one hundred in the 1980s, Americans still possessed an unquenchable desire for the hops and high quality two-row malts. That’s why I laugh when people refer to Budweiser as the “King of Beers” or how interesting a person is for drinking Dos Equis. Is Bud Light really “America’s Beer”? Yes. On opposite day.

I don’t think Jack Buddrinker even knows the swill in his Hypercolor dispenser box in the fridge is made from 30% corn. But it’s cheap and it gets the job done. Your Bud and Miller light beer fans will go so far as plan their night around what bar carries their favorite shaped bottles. And when you talk to them in the lavatory, you’ll find that most of them just drink what their Daddy drank.

It’s different with Independence Brewing. Ask a beer nerd studying the shelves at Whip In or the D&Q and they’ll talk your ear off about Convict Hill Stout or the fabulous Brewluminati series. It’s immeasurable the amount of Independence Brewing fanatics roaming the within the borders of the United States and beyond. And that’s exactly why Independence remains incontrovertibly the true “America’s Beer.”

Fear not, disenfranchised beer drinkers. This Saturday, October 22nd, Independence Brewing Company celebrates their seventh anniversary at their brewery in Austin, TX. Admission is free, but it would be careless of me not to recommend that you bring $12 for the commemorative anniversary glass. Join beautiful people just like yourself, possibly Sebastian mentioned above, and this scribe at the brewery from 4-8pm. Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World, so you can bet there will be some of that there too.

Tonight I was feeling fine, sipping some purple wine, and thought I'd opine, about the ags on here. Gig.

"Give UT My Notice"
(Parody of Give Judy My Notice by Ben Folds)

UT
Why won't you respect the honor we swore?
We love/hate you
You don't care do you?
But UT
We can't stay your little bro
Not with our ego
So we gots to go

And we regard you as our rival, dear
And you don't even notice that we're here

Give UT my notice

I know we always called you tu (ha ha ha)
It's funny (whoop!), and you get grumpy
But UT
We ain't gon' be y'all b!tch anymore
Our daddy ain't Dodds
So we out the door

SEC grass is just so much greener
So we'll suck like a vacuum cleaner

Give UT my notice
Give UT my notice

UT, mug down with us one last time
They've passed back the command
Not that you'd understand
I think we have had a darn good fling
And now just one more thing

Horns down
We're going to keep that around
Because it's just part of us
We Aggies can obsess

And we're not running 'cause of your network
And we are running 'cause of your network

Give UT my notice
Give UT my notice
Give UT my notice
Give UT my notice
My notice

original song

Have you ever loved a beer for more than what was just in the glass? Have you ever felt connected to a restaurant because of the owner's story, the ambiance, or something memorable that happened in your life while you were there? Like the fifth taste, umami, some things take on a deeper meaning based on a combination of flavors. And like umami, the impression can be difficult to describe.

Destiny seems to dictate that the karmic consequence of something being so awesome is that it will come to an abrupt end. The father of modern microbreweries will sell out. That cooking savant creating magic in some obscure kitchen will leave. That musician changing the Universe with every note will off himself.

1560 The Game in Houston had radio umami. They were local and independent both in business structure and in business practice. In hindsight, I admit that we could all sense that the glory days of the station were in the rear view mirror. However, when Lance Zierlein announced he was leaving, it got real.

If you've ever watched your favorite establishment give rise to something remarkable and then destroy itself, then you probably felt like this (but only never bothered to make a video -- and drop that many f-bombs):

Mom. Earmuffs.

R.I.P. 1560 The Game. Double Rods. I don't recognize you anymore.

Follow Jay Dirt on Twitter for any future rants

I always target the football cookie.

Hello football fanatics, casual sports fans, drinking enthusiasts, and web crawling bots from porn sites! You look good. It's great to be home, and when I say home, I mean football season.

This is beautiful. I am really proud to get to speak with you today. Readers, we are at the dawning of the kickoff of the finest part of the twelvemonth. I understand how you feel. It is always darkest before the dawn, but the future is near, y'all. Today we stand up tall, knowing that, depending on when you are reading this message, football season is more or less a month away. I am proud to be writing this letter to you about our mutual standing.

I speak to you today as a football fan, as a guy that knows his way around a Google Docs spreadsheet, and as a Dad... a Dad who put TVs in all the other rooms in the house so the kids won't have an excuse to watch mine, among other things of course. I am just a casual, everyday fan with four TVs tuned to football programming in my living room every weekend. My parents, aunts, cousins, in-laws , sister, wife -- all dead to me when Northwestern kicks off against Purdue at 11:00 AM on a Saturday.

I recon I'm trying to let you know that I'm dedicated to the cause. At the end of the day, I will promise stuff, and nothing is more binding than a promise. Between you and me, I run the best, most funnest football season companion game you will find anywhere on this awesome, but slowly wilting Earth. I'm not just saying, but I'm literally just saying.

Some of you missed our plea last year, and this communication is to convince you to sign up and play with me. Truth be told, that is what I'm trying to do here. I assure you that joining the Pickem-Football 2011 family doesn't hurt in any way. Hey folks, it may even save your life! Unfortunately, not everyone understands the long term benefits of joining us at Pickem-Football. Some people don't even believe it will save their lives. No, some people choose to continue down their path of unenlightenment. Some of those people may even try to prove to me they are enlightened without Pickem-Football. Merriam-Webster.com defines enlightenment as "the act or means of enlightening." Need I say more?

I want to use another word. Solidarity. I looked it up and it means a unity based on common interests. Pickem-Football is like Solidarity+™. We are good people with varied interests that get together around a common game and make the World a better place. Pickem-Football is like a movement. A movement of genuine Solidarity+™.

I write this letter to you because I know in my heart that the Internet is where real integrity can be found. And courage. Football season is quite long, and it requires sacrifice and moral incorruptibility. Pledging yourself to Pickem-Football will protect you from other forces that may seek to leach away your free time, like YouTube related videos or the dishes. We will protect you from destruction, unless destruction is necessary for us to achieve our goals as a league, wherein you may be tasked with carrying out a significant portion of the destruction. This communication will be done discretely and not through your corporate email.

Make no mistake, readers. You are winning. You are a beautiful (I'm talking on the inside, nothing creepy), veracious, and courageous individual. Sure, we are chock full of yous here at Pickem-Football, but I firmly believe that you can't have too much of a good thing. (Except pancakes. Seriously, has anyone ever made it through a full stack?)
Now, I know exactly what you are asking yourself.

You: "I'm intimately familiar with myself, but I want to know more about this game."

Me: "First of all, that isn't a question. But second, I thought you would never ask."

Every week of the regular football season I will email and post on Pickem-Football.com a Google Docs form containing:

• 15 NCAA football games and odds (you pick against the spread)
  
• Every NFL football game (usu. 14-16 games, you pick straight up)
  
• For NCAA and NFL games, there will be some optional bonus questions. While these won't increase your Pick'em score, they are collected and used in the post season games. I dole out bonus points for weekly winners, people you pay their entry fee early, and some other random stuff I make up along the way.

We also continue on after the season with an NCAA Bowl Challenge Contest and an NFL Playoff Contest. Folks, that is over five months of football picking. Do you know what our government will waste in those five months? Trillions. Maybe. I really don't know. I do know that Pickem-Football will cost you a measly $25 (payable anytime throughout the season). My friends, nothing is more fiscally responsible than signing up for five months of meaningful life for around $0.16/day. (Meaningful life is not available at any price during the baseball season.)

You: "Wait -- what?"

Me: "I'll recap."

The Games:

1. NCAA Pick'em
   
   1. 15 games picked per week, my selections
      
   2. Players score one point per correct pick
      
   3. Games are picked against the spread (I provide the odds and they are fixed when the card is posted)
      
   4. Example card
      
   5. The player with the most points when the season is over wins
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 25% pot, 2^nd Place 10% of pot (Total = 35% pot)
      
2. NFL Pick'em
   1. Every NFL game is on the card, usually 14-16 games per week
      
   2. Players score one point per correct pick
      
   3. Games are picked straight up (no spread)
      
   4. Example card
      
   5. The player with the most points when the season is over wins
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 25% pot, 2^nd Place 10% of pot (Total = 35% pot)
      
3. NCAA Bowl Pick'em Challenge
   1. A confidence pool style game that includes every bowl game and incorporates your accumulated bonus points from the NCAA Pick'em contest
      
   2. The Bowl Pick'em Challenge card is emailed as a spreadsheet
      
   3. All picks are due before the bowl games begin
      
   4. The player with the most points wins
      
   5. Example (blog post)
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 15% pot
      
4. NFL Playoff Pick'em
   1. A Vegas style wagering format that includes all playoff games
      
   2. The NFL Playoff Pick'em cards are emailed in spreadsheet format weekly during the playoffs
      
   3. Points are "wagered"
      
   4. Picks are against the spread
      
   5. Example (blog post)
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 15% pot
      

100% of what comes in goes out to the people. What do you think of that, Teabaggers?

To wrap up. Courage. Solidarity. Destruction. Pancakes. America.

Joining starts here! Joining starts now! I guarantee the only thing you will regret is that you didn't just skip all the way to the bottom of this letter and CLICK THIS REGISTRATION LINK.

God bless you all, and God bless Football!

When I discovered recently that The Ferm got a shout out on Eating Our Words, the Houston Press' food blog, I was like -- WHAT THA H!?!

Quote-unquote avid readers of The Ferm are probably familiar with SirRon's sobering attempts at getting published on Eating Our Words. But if you are not, after reading my post (of course), try to figure out which story is more affecting, the first or the second.

Vaughn S. Gregg has higher aspirations than just being the internationally recognized creative chef on an obscure drinking blog with absentee leadership. Yes ma'am I do. But instead of a clichéd harangue against the city's only major news and entertainment weekly as brash and freewheeling as Houston itself, I've decided to share with you guys the pieces that I actually wrote and sent to the Houston Press offices. I'm all about good food and not so much about copyrights and statutes of limitations. However, our big stick here at The Ferm is a lawyer, so Mr. Smokeypants can just apply the strike-through tag on this post if he feels I've broken any blogging laws.

The first piece I sent earlier this year was on the Top 3 chain restaurants in Houston, TX. Comments are appreciated. Ladies, please use my soft taco recipe post to leave your digits.

---

Houston's Ultimate Top 3 - Chain Restaurants

1. Sweet Tomatoes
2. Grimaldi’s
3. Chuy’s

What a treat to have the opportunity to opine above the comment section level, an opportunity that is no doubt the culmination of our hard work down there (and a possible sign of the apocalypse). We should celebrate with a margarita from Chuy’s. We can love this place and not feel like we are part of the cult. When we want to feel like family, we get a pie at Grimaldi’s. If we close our eyes, the franchised version tastes almost exactly like all those pies we ate under the Brooklyn Bridge, except we don’t have to pay in cash in the suburban replicas. Sometimes we eat healthy, but only sometimes. At Sweet Tomato, it is your choice. We can tell you your life story by reading the salad you built. Grab a monthly BOGO coupon and we’ll be your plus one. You can figure us out too, that is if you can see our salad behind our four soups, two pastas, and muffin pile.

Prior to my honeymoon in the Southern Caribbean near the turn of the millennium, I'm not sure I had ever tasted a rum punch. During the island tours, I quickly became accustomed – and fond – of this Caribbean staple. It seemed like no lunch, tour, swim, museum visit, or mountain hike started or finished (or started and finished) without being offered a glass. If I had known then that rum punch recipes were so divergent, I would have pressed a local for their secret.

"Classic" rum punch recipes range from having bitters, simple syrups, fruit punch, and/or sodas. I found many recipes that called for orange juice, but all of my iterations attempting to recreate the Southern Caribbean variation fell short. To be sure, the key ingredient is the use of high quality Caribbean dark rum. In my opinion, no better rum exists that the ones made at Mount Gay. Their rum is so good you could mix it in your Bacardi to make it taste better. My next major breakthrough came when I abandoned orange juice and instead used guava and mango nectars. Eureka! 

Many years removed, I honestly don't know how close this recipe is to that once familiar Southern Caribbean drink. My recipe is unique and tasteful though, so please enjoy my interpretation of the rum punch. 

---

Southern Caribbean Rum Punch (Tribute)

---

yield:
~½ pitcher

ingredients:
Punch:
2 11.3 oz cans guava nectar
1 11.3 oz can mango nectar
1 11.3 oz can "bartender's choice" nectar (any flavor; I suggest an orange blend, banana blend, or another mango)
1 6 oz can pineapple juice
2 tbsp lime juice
½ cup canned coconut cream (e.g. Coco Lopez), stir well before measuring

At serving:
Mount Gay Sugar Cane Rum (or other dark Caribbean rum)
Sweetened coconut flakes
Ground nutmeg
Lime wedge (optional)

preparation:
Combine coconut cream, pineapple juice, lime juice, and nectars in a blender (note: some of the nectars can be left out if pitcher is full). Blend until coconut is well mixed (several 2 second pulses should do it). Pour into a large pitcher. Add any remaining juices (if some were left out of the blender). Mix well. Serve or cover and refrigerate (can be prepared a day ahead).

serving:
Fill a 12 ounce glass with ice. Pour a shot of rum over the ice. Top the glass off with the punch mix and stir. Garnish with a pinch of coconut flakes, ground nutmeg, and a few drops of lime juice or a lime slice. Salud!

As we outlined in our United States of Beer Project kickoff post, we are assembling the definitive list of breweries to represent each of the 50 states. Anyone can toss a name out and argue its relationship with a state, but we at The Ferm are only interested in cold, hard facts. Each representative has been selected after exhaustive research and extensive number crunching. As a refresher, below are the guidelines:

• The goal is to identify a single representative brewery from each state. Brewpubs are not specifically excluded, but to be a state representative, the brewpub must have significant distribution in the state.
• To be eligible as a state's representative, a brewery must brew beer in that state.
• If a brewery makes beer in more than one state, the brewery can only be named representative of one state.
• Only active breweries are eligible.

Just to be clear, I'm merely an emotionless arbiter in these selections. I first aggregate brewery data from several sources. An Excel formula then computes the score automatically. My own input came only from the scoring formula creation, which I calibrated using several states where I was particularly familiar with the breweries located within.

If you take exception to any of the selections or think I unfairly excluded a brewery (or brewpub), please hit me up in the comment section or on Twitter (@theferm) and I'll get you the score of the brewery in question. 

We pride ourselves at The Ferm on hard work and harder drinking. Let's do this. Cheers!
 

Click me if you like bigger things

Current Shilcutt-Norris Map Divergence Factor: 0.30
6/20

MORE>> (Individual States results after the jump)

A few weeks ago Houston Press food blogger extraordinaire Katharine Shilcutt wittingly dropped a proverbial deuce on the American beer drinker. In her post titled The United States of Beer, Katharine rather subjectively assigned each state an official beer. Her intentions were relatively innocuous, but her uneven attempt to rush the post's publication by peppering the U.S. map with whimsical selections energized the nation's beer drinking pantywadders (200+ comments!).

This was not the first time the food blog published a half-hearted post and then hid behind guise of just "having a laugh." I wonder if their editor would be as supportive of a post that jacked around with where to find good Mongolian hot pot? If the Houston Texans decided to play without cleats for a quarter, how do you think that would go over with their fans? If Nicholas Cage stopped caring about the movies he agreed to make, then what? I'm just saying, our big stick, Mr. Smokeypants, doesn't let us get away with weak journalism our site, and I've never seen a dime from the blog.

We at The Ferm are not asserting that blogs, and more specifically The Houston Press' food blog Eating Our Words, must be serious all the time. We are only suggesting that if you are getting paid to publish your work, that it be well thought out, researched, and written as if you even care that your name is on the piece. (I hope EOW blogger Kevin Shalin doesn't mind me stealing his words in that previous sentence, but there is a pretty good chance all Houston Press people stopped reading in the second paragraph anyway.)

Speaking of serious, if you are aware of someone who takes drinking more seriously than we do, I would sincerely like to know. We also tend to look at the world through practical glasses, so we understand an accurate beer map of the United States probably looks more like an election map.

"That looks about right. Print it!" - Mr. Smokeypants

Apologies to my beer nerds, but let's get really real. The craft beer segment represents only about 5% of the total U.S. beer market. What does that mean? It means Budweiser is truly the King, or President if you will, of beers. Budweiser, Miller Lite, or Coors may pick up a few electoral votes, but Bud Light is probably every state's official beer. But where is the fun in that map?

"Yes, that one looks right. Print it!" - Mr. Smokeypants

After some hard core brainstorming, we have come up with a concept that falls somewhere in between the schizophrenic Houston Press beer map and the monotony of the factual map. Katharine's idea was actually kind of ingenious, however it was executed by a foodie/journalist/musician-type instead of a lawyer/engineer/rocket scientist-type.

That is where we can contribute. What Katharine's map project needed was some rules. Some formulae. Some science. That kind of concept is right in our wheelhouse.

• Pronouncement: Katharine's list muddled beers and breweries. We will assign breweries to a state. It is reasonable to assume that a brewery's flagship beer would be the de facto beer representative for the state.
  
• Rule #1: For any state, the brewery representative must be brewed in said state. Rule #1b: If a brewery makes beer in more than one state, the brewery can only be named representative of one state.
  
• Example Formula: y = 29.936ln(x) How do you like them apples? (I don't trust the Internets enough to give out all our brewery ranking secrets.)
  
• Science: Wikipedia says science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Yeah, we got that.
  

Budweiser is overwhelmingly the people's popular choice for a national brewery. Don't be angry at us. You elected them without checking their proof of residence first. This post hereby kicks off The Ferm's own United States of Beer project. We will be rolling out each of the states' representatives over the next several weeks months. Stay thirsty tuned my friends.

Click map to jump to post with the states' selections