It was a devil of a cold. A tickle gave way to a rasp, which was swallowed up by a tide of winter ick that proved impervious to pharmaceutical intervention. After two weeks of hacking, wheezing and Googling "cough with a squeak at the end," it was time for an exorcism.

It was time for soup.
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Talk about your Fat Tuesday!

We've sunk our teeth pretty deeply into Mardi Gras already, but New Orleans isn't the only float in the food parade.

Across the U.K., royals and hoi polloi alike flip pancakes in celebration of Shrove Tuesday. The Pennsylvania Dutch fry up fastnachts (a raised doughnut). Folks of Polish descent (and apparently, residents of Michigan) polish off plenty of pączki (extra-rich jelly or cream-filled doughnuts) with great, greasy abandon.
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Eggcellent story, but would you devil it, poach it or scramble it?

Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

The flu is still wreaking havoc across the country. Here’s how bad things have gotten in NYC: The Manhattan Soccer Club recently asked its young players not to high-five or fist-bump one another for fear of spreading germs. Players are allowed to touch elbows to signal their team spirit.

If you’ve already high-fived the wrong person and come down with the flu, there are ways to make yourself better. One is to get out your soup spoon and dig into a bowl of supremely satisfying soup. While there’s not hard, fast scientific research that soup can fight the flu - apart from the steam from hot soup possibly helping to clear out clogged noses - no doubt it will definitely make you feel comforted. Especially if your soup comes from one of the following places.
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Ashley Strickland is an associate producer at CNN.com. She likes cajoling recipes from athletes and studying up on food holidays. We ran this post in 2011, and it seemed painfully relevant this flu season.

After the “office funk” attacked for the third time this fall, I decided to take action. I needed to find an antioxidant powerhouse with the strength to fight off any and all germs and allergies. The usual suspects just weren’t cutting it and I needed a new weapon.

During my frantic search, I stumbled upon something with such a miraculous list of healthy ingredients, I couldn’t say no. And last week, I’m proud to say that green soup entered my life.

Get the recipe and the rest of the story

While you're frying up some eggs and bacon, we're cooking up something else: a way to celebrate today's food holiday.

Can you smell the excitement stirring? January is National Soup Month.

The cold weather that seems to grip most of the country at this time of year has a way of seeping into your bones to the point where nothing seems to help. And as the winter months wear on, and resolutions are made and broken, it gets harder and harder to find something that’s both warm and nutritious and easy to make. Fear not! I have the perfect solution: soup.
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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.

Editor's Note: James Oseland is the editor-in-chief of Saveur Magazine. The October issue is their 150th issue.

When we were putting together the list of 150 recipes that comprise our October issue, we were faced with a deceptively straightforward question: What is an essential recipe? What I've always said - and what was reaffirmed over and over again in the production of this issue - is that a classic recipe is one that that can completely withstand the test of time.

Classic recipes are also intensely representative of the place that they come from, something that these five recipes all particularly embody. But despite their strong sense of place, they're also versatile, dishes that would work on virtually any table. Plus, and this is perhaps the most important part, they're just friggin' delicious.
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I thought I knew how to make eggplant Parmesan (or ParmiGIANa if you're feeling especially Italian). Eggplant, a little breading, sauce, cheese – what can go wrong with that?

Then I met Chiara Lima. She's the bubbly Italian woman who taught the best way to make this traditional Italian favorite at Mamma Agata's Italian cooking class I recently took in Ravello, Italy.
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"No matter what else is served at a cocktail party, you will always find a tray of stuffed eggs," wrote James Beard, the so-called dean of American gastronomy, in his first cookbook, Hors D'oeuvre And Canapes.

The well-received appeal of these one-bite appetizers isn't limited to cocktail hour. They're also a superb addition to picnics and cookouts during the lazy, hazy days of summer.

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.

If you want to get a sense of the scale of Italian wine, you could do worse than to go to VinItaly, the annual wine-related trade fair in Verona, Italy. I was there a few days ago, along with, according to the VinItaly press office, more than 140,000 other people - roughly the population of Fort Collins, Colorado, if every inhabitant of Fort Collins were obsessed with Italian wine. Regardless, being in Italy means the opportunity to eat, regularly, platefuls of fantastic pasta.

Since I’ve got pasta on the mind - in fact, since I’m mostly composed of pasta at the moment - here are some thoughts about pairing wine (Italian wine, of course) with some classic pasta dishes. Of course, the actual pasta itself doesn’t make much difference: When it comes to wine-pairing, a rigatoni is a penne is an orecchiette. Pasta alone is the ultimate blank food canvas; what matters is the sauce.

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