Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Wine and Chinese food tends to promote a strange response among wine writers, which can be summed up as “pair Chinese food with off-dry Riesling. Or Gewürztraminer.”

Well, fine, but isn’t that sort of like saying “pair French food with white Burgundy” or “pair Italian food with a red wine?” Last I heard, Chinese cuisine had enormous regional variety and a culinary tradition that extends back, oh, a few thousand years or so. (In 2005, archeologists discovered the remains of some 4,000 year old noodles near the Yellow River; those are some mighty old noodles.)

Now, Americanized Chinese food, that’s a more recent invention - safe to say the folks who made those noodles four millennia ago weren’t chowing down on plates of General Tso’s Chicken. Regardless, here are some pairing suggestions for dishes from both the traditional and not-so realms.
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Sink your teeth into today's top stories from around the globe.

• Joey Chestnut savors a new world record after guzzling down two gallons of chili in six minutes. - WJLA

• Forget the baker's dozen, these 12 lessons from notable chefs are much sweeter. - Sydney Morning Herald

• Robbing a bank can certainly work up an appetite. Note to future criminals: just don't go to the pizza parlor across the street. - Toronto Sun

• Lights! Camera! Doughnut! A day in the life of a tabletop director. - New York Times

• A peek into the seed-saving vault. - Wired

• The rising demand for caterpillar fungus, aka "the Viagra Of The Himalayas." - NPR

What is it about big events involving food and drink that end with media reports telling us how much was actually consumed during the event? It’s the sort of information that people "eat up."

For example, every year in the United States, we’re fed the news about who ate the most hot dogs in the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island. This year’s winner, Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut, ate his way through 62 hot dogs - and buns - in the allotted time of only 10 minutes. That’s over six hot dogs a minute! In the women’s division, the champ chomped her way through 40 hot dogs.

Last week, as every year, we were treated to another annual tradition - something I’d like to call “Oktoberfest by the numbers.” It’s when we get to digest all sorts of fascinating statistics following the end of the world’s largest beer festival, which also happens to serve a lot of food.
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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.

Just like heaven! October 10 is National Angel Food Cake Day.

Leave it to the good old U.S.A. to be the home of this simply divine dessert. We've been proud of our angel food cake creation since it's debut in the late 19th century, and rightfully so.
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