[Update 7:30 p.m. 8/3/11 - Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation, a Springdale, Ark. establishment, is recalling approximately 36 million pounds of ground turkey products that may be contaminated with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Heidelberg, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. The FSIS provides these recommendations for preventing Salmonellosis]

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5@5 is a daily, food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Don’t know goat cheese from gouda? Or Comté from Camembert? Well, you certainly don’t have to have a culinary degree to put together a simple yet tasteful cheese plate. After all, the extent of the kitchen aptitude required is how well you can unwrap and place things on a platter.

But if you're still worried about making an asiago of yourself at your next gathering, Cathy Strange, the global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market, has some tips to get you on your way to cheese pairing success.

A Beginners' Guide to Assembling a Cheese Plate: Cathy Strange
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The long road to compromise over America's debt ceiling was paved with harsh words, hard work and, of course, takeout dinners.

Beyond the headlines and the partisan attacks were the real people doing the work of governing - and working up quite an appetite. And those folks feeding the hungry mouths on Capitol Hill kept things moving. As one 18-hour day rolled into another, takeout kept people going.

"Pizza seems to be the food of choice when they are arguing," Ron Neumeyer, part owner of Armand's Pizza franchise in Washington D.C. explained to CNN’s Lisa Desjardins. Guys like Neumeyer, those veteran caterers of late-night policy debates, know to keep an eye on the news because intractable debate means an uptick in orders.

Still, this time, they noticed something different.

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Sink your teeth into today's top stories from around the globe.

• One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor: Level of drunkness by the numbers. - Wall Street Journal

• Waste too much food? Here's five food-saving tips. - Miami Herald

• A look back at the trailblazing elBulli restaurant, which closed its doors this past weekend. - TIME

• Tom Colicchio may have turned down 'Top Chef' three times, but now it's the meal that keeps on giving. - Variety

• A nifty trick to remove kernels from a corncob. - Bon Appétit

In the midst of the debt ceiling debates, four-term Missouri Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver took to Twitter to express his deep disgust with the terms of the deal, Tweeting in quick succession:

"This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see."

"This debt deal is antithetical to everything the great religions of the world teach, which is take care of the poor, aged, vulnerable."

"Still, I do not want to see the economy fall into an abyss. Which is what would happen if we were to default."

All matter for serious, substantive discussion to be sure, but we kept going back to that sandwich part. What's in a Satan sandwich? Deviled ham? Goat horn peppers? Marmite? (Surely that is not the foodstuff of the angels.)
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Eatocracy's Managing Editor Kat Kinsman attempts to vegetable garden on a roof deck in Brooklyn, NY in USDA Hardiness Zone 6b. Feel free to taunt, advise or encourage her efforts as this series progresses.

This morning, I stood on my roof deck and made my African Guinea Flint corn have sex with itself.

Some folks knit, ride dirt bikes or collect small, disturbingly lifelike figurines of a baby Lord Voldemort. I get my kicks from raising heirloom vegetables.

The process isn't always quite so hands-on. Mostly, it's just a matter of sticking seeds or shoots in dirt, fertilizing, watering and presto - potatoes, tomatoes and radishes as far as the eye can see. And if you have the acreage, corn would probably not require the services of a social director.
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While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

What would you do-oo-ooooo for an ice cream sandwich? - August 2 is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day.

The next time you hear that familiar jingle-jangle of the neighborhood ice cream man coming down the street, treat it like a food truck and get your lunch on. There's nothing like an ice cream sandwich for the second most important meal of the day!

It seems culinary experimentalists have been sliding slabs of ice cream in between chocolate wafers for quite a while. Photographic evidence shows ice cream sandwich stands on the Jersey Shore beginning in 1905 - with no Snooki poofs in sight.
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Consider the daily Coffee Klatsch post as your VIP lounge – the primary comments thread for readers who'd like to chat about topics not related to the articles we're running. That way, everyone knows where to find each other, and each post's comments section remains on topic.
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