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

Avast, mateys! What, you say Talk Like A Pirate Day was yesterday? Well, you can still enjoy rum drinks, as today is National Rum Punch Day.

Continue drinking like a pirate, as notorious brigands such as Captain Avery and John Rackham have been depicted as fond of punch, Welsh pirate William Davis sold his wife for some punch, and Edward Low once forced a captive at gunpoint to share a bowl of punch.
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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.

That’s right, it’s September 19, which means it is International Talk Like a Pirate Day once again. In fact, it is the 10th annual Talk Like a Pirate Day, which was brought to the world's attention by a Dave Barry column published a decade ago and which has been gaining followers ever since.
 
And a fine idea it is, too. A world full of people walking around and saying things like “Arrrrrrrrr!” and “Avast, ye ill-bred offspring of a sea hag and a kipper” would certainly be an interesting state of affairs, and, more to the point, we’d all be standing around drinking rum.
 
White rum is excellent as a mixer, especially in a classic daiquiri. (A cocktail I’ve been drinking all summer: 2 ounces white rum, 1 teaspoon sugar, juice from one-half of a juicy lime; dissolve sugar in lime juice, add rum, shake over ice, serve up. Avoid blenders.) As with margaritas and tequila, the quality of the spirit does make a huge difference in the cocktail. Then there are dark, aged rums, which are strangely underpriced compared to single malt Scotch, say, and ideal served neat, or with a single ice cube.

Here are some top choices:
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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.

Whether gazing over the Riviera or simply enjoying the sunshine on the tiniest patch of grass you could find, a breezy - and boozy - summer drink is always a charming companion.

Todd Lipman, the Beverage Director at the Boston Harbor Hotel, has selected a few of his favorite hot-weather refreshers to quench your thirst, whatever your locale.

Refreshing Summer Cocktails: Todd Lipman
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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.

Today we set our sights south of the border, and concentrate on a great spirit that’s often maligned. Happy National Tequila Day!

Tequila (the spirit, not Pee-Wee Herman’s favorite jam) is made in and around the state of Jalisco in Mexico, from the blue agave plant. Blue agaves are related to asparagus, and these succulent plants are pollinated by bats and grow at high altitudes. When the plant is twelve years old, the piña - the pine-cone-shaped heart of the agave plant after the sharp leaves are stripped away - is cooked and then mashed, and the resulting pulp is fermented and distilled.
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It's hot. It's really hot. It's offensively, ickily, dangerously hot, and you need to hydrate.

First up, there's water. Chug, chug, chug. But not everyone is keen on plain old, boring old water, and I'm not here to be a judgmental schmuck about that. All I'm saying is that you should introduce some H20 into your body several times a day in the midst of this heat, and there are ways to make that less deadly dull.
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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.

“Then comes the zenith of man’s pleasure. Then comes the julep - the mint julep. Who has not tasted one has lived in vain...it is the very dream of drinks, the vision of sweet quaffings.”

May 30 is National Mint Julep Day, so let’s celebrate by deploying this appreciation of the julep published in the Lexington Herald in the late 1800s by Kentucky colonel Joshua Soule Smith.

A julep - from the Persian word julâb, meaning “rosewater” - is a drink in which liquor and syrup are poured over crushed ice, often with mint. There are so many ways to make your mint julep, and entire books have been written about julep lore and variations. (People fight duels over this stuff. Careful how you proclaim your preferred recipe.)
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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.

Spring is in the air, which means you're either gamboling in the grassy fields (or your nearest urban park) and looking for love, or else you're sneezing your head off and wishing one of those gamboling twerps would just trip over a rock or something. Regardless, you need a drink.
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"The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry Martini you always shake to waltz time." - William Powell as Nick Charles in 'The Thin Man'

There are few Hollywood romances greater than the one between Nick and Nora Charles and their cocktail bar. 'The Thin Man,' the film in which the fictional lovers were featured, was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1935. While it achieved none of them, the characters' deep devotion to elegant tippling won a place in cocktail fetishists' hearts for the rest of eternity.

As part of their 31 Days of Oscar celebration, the experts at Turner Classic Movies have pored over award-winning films to find the ones that best celebrated the art of imbibing - and shared recipes for classic cocktails so you can get a little Oscar buzz of your own at home.

TCM's Favorite Film Cocktails
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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.

Looks like it's going to be another tequila sunrise because today is National Margarita Day!

Grab yourself a cold glass of this cocktail, drop in a lime wedge and with a little imagination, you could be on your favorite beach!

A margarita is essentially tequila mixed with orange-flavored liqueur and lime or lemon juice with salt lining the rim of the glass. You can slurp it down shaken with ice, on the rocks, blended with ice into a frozen slushee-esque sipper or straight up.
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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: Jeff Faile is the bar manager of Fiola in Washington, D.C.

Before I was lucky enough to meet my wife and get out of the rat race otherwise known as the dating game, I dreaded Valentine’s Day. I hated being on the other side of the bar while all the happy couples celebrated their love, rubbing my face in it. Each February 14, I’ll admit it, I was bitter.

Looking back on it, there’s nothing wrong with it. To really appreciate finding “the one,” you have to experience the bad. So, let’s be bitter together.

Five Bitter Drinks for Valentine's Day
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