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July 1. That’s the actual date that player registrations can take place in the Premier League. At least I think that’s the date but you’ll all correct me if I’m wrong and then we will all learn something. In the mean time teams and players can agree to whatever contracts that they want but the official registration date is July 1.

In the mean time, however, speculation about who is going where is in no way going to slow down and especially now that even the BBC are confirming that Real Madrid have confirmed that Carlo Ancelotti is the new manager of Los Blancos.

Thus ends the actual news segment of today’s post.

In non-news, speculation is hotting up that over the hunch that Real Madrid are going to buy all the players. Luis Suarez’ transfer to Real Madrid is imminent and that will kick off a transfer merry-go-round the likes of which this planet has never seen. I know that is a lot of speculation, but hear me out on this one.*

Ok, so the Isco Kid was supposed to go to Manchester City, but it turns out that Malaga’s owner would rather sell his best player to a Spanish club than to a club who will pay an absurd amount of money. Which should give us some insight into why Malaga are failing financially. So, Isco Kid is going to Real Madrid instead and Malaga are going to retire his #22 shirt. I kid you not.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid are also buying Gareth Bale. I just made that up. But because they are buying Bale, Isco, and Suarez, they are going to need some money! That’s where Higuain to Arsenal comes in to play!

YES. I could work for The Sun. Or Arsenal Not-news Review.

Anyway, here’s my favorite picture of Higuain with those two ladies he reportedly spent an evening with.

I like that one because “OHHHHHHH”.

See, this one below has no humor, it is just casual objectification, plus the male gaze, and… I’m trying to work in the new-ish phrase I keep hearing from people on campus “body police” but I can’t. Anyway, Higuain is the meat in a T&A sandwich which means that everyone here is just meat, or bread. Either way it’s gross, or delicious, but it’s not at all funny.

Can someone rework the “Sign da Ting” song so that it becomes “Higuain, Sign da Ting!”? And can it be played on a double-necked BC Rich Warlock?

Speaking of Theo Walcott

Theo Walcott bagged a brace… and got married to Melanie Slade, in a castle, with all of his best friends.

A good friend has suggested on twitter that I am just jealous. Nothing could be further from the truth. He’s a wealthy, talented, handsome young man who just married a beautiful woman whom he has loved for many many years at a wonderful ceremony in a castle with his very best friends. Meanwhile, I am a guy who writes a blog on his purple couch every morning.

I am living the dream.

Buy My Player: bad idea or worst idea ever? 

I can’t confirm this but, apparently, at least some sources are claiming that Bacary Sagna is involved in this thing called “BuyMyPlayer.com”.

Here’s how BuyMyPlayer is supposed to work:

1. You pick a team you support (say, Arsenal)
2. You pick a player you want to be on that team (say, Gareth Bale)
3. You “pledge” money toward his transfer, no actual money is going anywhere at this point, it’s sort of like a future except that you’re not really promising anything to anyone and no one is going to hold you to your promise — it’s a future for people with no future.
4. If BuyMyPlayer gets 10,000 people who “pledge” their “money” toward the transfer, they will then approach the club with this cockamamie bullshit transfer idea.
5. If the club agrees to this idiocy, THEN, the transfer will “go live”, meaning that they will announce the “swoop” and you will be asked to put your money where your fingers were and actually donate.
6. They aren’t clear where you are donating the money. If it’s to the club, to the player, to BuyMyRetirement.com, to a party, or to the Taliban.
7. I don’t know if this is even legal under FFP because it’s never going to happen. Never.

Anyway, I know this will tickle the populist funnybone that it’s “our club!” and touches on notions of “crowdsourcing” and “democratization” but I have to say that even the idea of this makes me ill. Maybe you’re the kind of guy/gal who thinks that multimillion dollar corporations deserve “donations” in order to pay other multimillionaires for the right to pay multimillionaires money to watch them kick a soccer ball real good.

Me? I’m classifying this under “sweet! Now that rich Hollywood types have managed to subvert the actual populist movements like kickstarter, why shouldn’t all the rich types get in on the action and find a way to get stupid people to give them money?”

10 suckers are born every minute.  

Qq

*One of you is going to take this seriously, please, stop.

(Photo: Don Hankins)

A new study by the University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo finds that couples who met online went on to have more fulfilling marriages than those who met offline. They also divorced at a lower percentage:

“These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself,” said the study’s lead author, John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.

The results were published in the paper, ”Marital Satisfaction and Breakups Differ Across Online and Offline Meeting Venues,” in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Meeting online has become an increasingly common way to find a partner, with opportunities arising through social networks, exchanges of email, instant messages, multi-player games and virtual worlds, in which people “live” on the site through avatars. The research shows that couples who met online were more likely to have higher marital satisfaction and lower rates of marital breakups than relationships that began in face-to-face meetings.

Marriage breakups were reported in about 6 percent of the people who met online, compared with 7.6 percent of the people who met offline. Marriages for people who met online reported a mean score of 5.64 on a satisfaction survey, compared with a score of 5.48 for people who met offline. The survey was based on questions about their happiness with their marriage and degree of affection, communication and love for each other.

For the study, Cacioppo led a team that examined the results of a representative sample of 19,131 people who responded to a survey by Harris Interactive about their marriages and satisfaction.

"YA SEE, WELL, I’D…FUCK ME."

• Seniors love, and I mean LOVE, Hampton Inn. Why? Unlimited free coffee whenever you want, multiple flavors, 24 hours a day. And I’m not even going to get into the free breakfast.
• I’m glad my mother doesn’t live anywhere near a Trader Joe’s because she would be bankrupt. When I took her, she had to literally restrain herself to not buy everything. Example: “What’s dukkah?” “I have no idea, Mom.” “Well, it looks like I’m buying it. [throws jar into the basket]”
• “Hey, Mom, do you want to go to [the name of a local restaurant that is unique that she would not have anything like it near where she lives]?” “Is there a Chili’s we could go to?”
• I don’t think of my mother as being old. I never have. While I would never classify her as “hip,” she never seemed out of touch with whatever zeitgeist you want to plug into. This is the first time she seemed, well, old. It didn’t make me worrisome or fearful. This is the first time I can remember not matching the metal image I have of her in my head. She’s still her, but an older version of her. I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet.

The UK is introducing a uniform system of front-of-package food labeling—voluntary of course.

The food industry hates it.  It’s got traffic-light colors, and we already know what that means in practice.  People tend not to buy red-labeled products.

That’s why trade associations are complaining that this system is too simplistic, misleading, and unscientific.

Worst of all, it will confuse consumers into not buying products that fit just fine into healthful diets.

Tch, tch.

Australia is introducing a star system to rate products.  Food companies don’t like that one either.

In the meantime, we’ve heard nothing about front-of-package labeling from our very own FDA since the Institute of Medicine released its recommendations in October 2011, and it looked like the FDA had given up on the idea in February 2012.

Front-of-package labels were on the early agenda for Let’s Move!

Maybe the European labeling initiatives will encourage the FDA to do so?

Name: Charlie Landel
Recipient: Ashley Keenan
Note: Happy Anniversary, Ashley! Hope you’re doing well! — Charlie

Custom Gift Description:

Hey, you guys probably get this a lot, but I’m looking for sort of a heart shaped arrangement, maybe made out of strawberries. And if across the front of it if you could write in blueberries, “I love you.” Also I wanted to know, if down the middle of the heart, you could just break it in half, so it looks cracked open. And if you guys could use pomegranate seeds to come out of the break, to sort of look like blood? Would that be possible?

I don’t know if pomegranate seeds mix well with strawberries and blueberries… I’ll let you worry about it, you’re the experts!

Then I wanted to know if on top of the heart, you could sort of build, maybe out of pineapple or something, a little female figurine. Large enough to be bigger than the heart, but not life sized! That would be too much fruit. Anyway, if you could build a small female figure, maybe wearing a wedding dress or something made out of white coconut, squatting over the heart, and taking a dump on it. I was thinking some melted chocolate might work.

I’m not sure if the chocolate will taste okay with the coconut and pineapple figurine or not, or if either of those will taste fine with the fruit heart underneath, but I’ll leave those decisions up to you guys. You’re the professional fruit arrangers. Not me.

Now next to the female figure taking a dump on the broken heart, I want another figure, but male this time. Have him wearing a tuxedo, maybe made out of raisins or something, and have him kneeling next to her on the ground, crying. I don’t know how to get the tears, but maybe use crystalized sugar. They will sparkle and make him look like a truly miserable and defeated man.

Again, if any of these fruits or sweets don’t compliment each other, please feel free to replace them with whatever you chose. You guys are the artists.

Next to the broken heart, I want another heart that isn’t broken. It is full and complete, and if you could write out on it THE NEW ME that would be great. On top of this one, I want the same male figure (built from pineapple), but happy this time. HE SHOULD NOT BE CRYING. Also he should look stronger, with more muscles. Have him wearing like a cool button down from J. Crew and slim fit jeans. If you can’t make that out of fruit, let me know and I will make them myself.

Next to the male figure, I want a female figure, but make this one really sexy looking and busty. You can make them out of raspberries or some fruit that is busty looking. Have her wearing a bikini or something and have her look in love with the male figure. Can you make love out of fruit? You guys are the best. I’m sure you can.

Also, I want a Porsche 911 Carrera made out of kiwi slices or something, next to all this. It should be a fast looking new Porsche. Make sure it looks like a Porsche. You can make the wheels with slices of banana or whatever works. Do bananas and kiwis taste good together? I don’t know. You guys decide. Also if you can make the car look happy too, that would be great. Everything should be happy.
Very, very happy.

Thanks!

The average wedding in the US cost nearly $28,000 in 2012, according a survey conducted by The Knot.

I’ll give you a minute to pick yourself up off of the floor after reading that figure.

Just to give you some perspective, $28,000 is about the same as a year of college at some schools or the cost of a pretty nice brand new car.

While you could spend that much on a wedding, you can just as easily not.

There are plenty of ways to cut costs on your wedding day, without having the event seem poorly planned or unexciting. Many of these ways to save on wedding day planning make use of modern day technology, such as smartphone apps and the internet, to help you cut costs.

Skip the Paper Invitations

Beautiful wedding invitations printed on paper can be costly. You need to pay to have them printed, then pay for postage for the invitations and the reply cards.

In today’s world, they can also be a bit of a inconvenience.

When my cousin got married two years ago, she had to send out her invitations twice because the post office lost them the first time. She ended up spending twice as much and the invited guests ended receiving two invitations in the end.

Instead of going the paper and mail route, one of the best ways to save on wedding invitations is to send them electronically.

Websites such as Evites let you send free invitations. If you have money in the budget for invitations, a website such as Glo offers monthly or yearly packages for your invitations.

Let Your Bridesmaids Rent Their Dresses

Nearly every woman has some ugly bridesmaid dress languishing in her closet.

If the guys get to rent their tuxes, why do the women have to pay full price for a dress they will wear once?

Luckily, bridesmaid dress rental services are becoming an option.

Little Borrowed Dress is a company that specializes in bridesmaid dress rentals.

You pick the dresses you want your bridesmaids to wear a few months in advance. The bridesmaids receive the dress in the mail two weeks before your wedding.

The company will send two sizes for the price of one rental, just in case one dress doesn’t fit. After your wedding, the bridesmaids send the dresses back to the company.

Rent Your Rehearsal Dinner Dress

You not only want to look great for your wedding day, you also want to look great for the rehearsal dinner.

As with the bridesmaid’s dresses, you can rent a dress for yourself for the dinner.

Rent the Runway is a company that allows you to rent beautiful designer dresses and accessories. You pay around 75 percent less than the cost of purchasing the dress to borrow it for either four days or eight days.

A rental service is a great way to try out fun looks or try a new designer without paying the high price.

Who Needs a Wedding Planner?

Hiring a wedding planner will drive the price of your wedding way up.

A tech-savvy, modern way to DIY to save money is to download an app that helps you keep track of all the details of your wedding, from the vendors to the guest list.

Wedding Happy is an app for iPhone or iPad that lets you create tasks and plan your wedding without hiring another person. Even better, the app is free.

DJIY

Long gone are the days when hiring a DJ meant having someone bring in a few turntables and fancy sound equipment.

Many DJs work off of iPods or other MP3 players these days, which you most likely own yourself. Instead of paying a DJ by the hour, spend $1.99 to download My Wedding DJ , an app that runs on iPod Touch or iPhone.

With the app, you can program playlists for your entire wedding.

Be Your Own Florist

Flowers can add to the cost of your wedding considerably, especially if you choose fancy flowers from a high end florist.

For example, Calla lilies and peonies tend to cost twice or three times as much as roses or daisies.

One of the easiest ways to cut costs on your wedding day is to purchase cheaper flowers and arrange them yourself.

If you aren’t comfortable in your floral arranging skills, you can get an app for that. Florista isn’t free, but it will teach you a new skill you can use long after your wedding day is over.

Get Creative with the Meal

Do you need to serve your guests a formal, three-course meal on your wedding day?

The answer these days is no.

The meal you serve at your reception can be whatever you want.

If you are looking to cut costs, schedule your wedding for the middle of the day and have a cocktail hour themed reception.

You can still serve drinks, but instead of a formal meal, serve appetizers and snacks. You can also hold your reception in the afternoon and serve a lighter, cheaper lunch instead of a pricey dinner.

Buy Someone Else’s Wedding

Sadly, nearly a quarter of a million weddings are canceled every year.

The couples who planned those weddings might have already put down deposits on venues for the ceremony and reception.

If you want to save money, a service called Bridal Brokerage can help you find a reception venue, ceremony venue, or other vendors for a fraction of the original price.

When you work with the company, you agree to purchase the contract that another couple originally had.

They might not get the wedding they had dreamed of, but at least they’ll get some of their money back. And you’ll get a decent discount.

Kelly Anderson is a financial planner who blogs about financial advice you can use in your everyday life. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

From A Hamburger Today

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

It's time for another round of The Food Lab. Got a suggestion for an upcoming topic? Email Kenji here, and he'll do his best to answer your queries in a future post. Become a fan of The Food Lab on Facebook or follow it on Twitter for play-by-plays on future kitchen tests and recipe experiments.

I've been on a Greek yogurt sauce kick recently. It's something that I tend to slip into when the summer comes and I'm looking for something that's cooling, easy to make, and darn tasty to boot. That it goes on just about anything—as a dip for raw vegetables or pita, as a sauce for roasted meats, as a dressing for hearty salads, a rub for grilled corn, and yes, as a sauce for burgers—makes it all the more easy to slip into the trap of making a batch each week and applying it willy-nillilly. It's a trap I really don't mind falling into.

At it's most basic, the sauce I make is a riff on my white sauce recipe, originally designed as a clone of the famous New York halal-cart chicken and rice condiment. A basic mix of thick Greek yogurt with a touch of mayonnaise, garlic, and some sort of acid, it's easy to modify to suit your needs. For this particular version, I felt it needed a bit more of a punchy, salty kick to stand up to the burger, so I added crumbled feta and plenty of black pepper. The feta also helps it to stay put on top of the burger a bit better.

You'll find yourself wanting to put this on everything, if you haven't already finished it off with a spoon by the light of the refrigerator door, that is.

For freshness and crunch factor, I went with some sliced onions and a simple relish made with diced cucumbers and tomatoes. The trick is to salt them in advance and let them drain, concentrating their flavor and seasoning them deeply. A splash of lemon juice adds a bit of brightness to the mix.

Get The Recipe

Burgers with Creamy Feta Sauce and Tomato-Cucumber Relish »

More Burger Toppings!

• Pepperoni Garlic Bread Burgers
• Poutine Burgers
• Muffuletta Burgers
• Barbecue Bacon Burgers
• Korean Barbecue Kim-Cheese Burgers
• Quadruple Chili Cheeseburgers
• Hot Hawaiian Burgers

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter and Pinterest while you're at it!

Good-looking maps used to be the domain of experts. That’s been changing quite a bit in the last few years, and it’s easier than ever now for developers to access mapping data (the recent State of the Map US conference was a great place to hear about this). Never content to leave well enough alone, we thought we’d kick this sideways a bit and make it easy for the rest of us to make some great stuff.

We call it Map Stack. It's a bit like Instagram for maps.

The maps.stamen.com project was designed to let people easily use Open Street Map data in their own applications, and to provide well-designed map styles that would raise the bar for what people expect from open data. We're taking this a step further now, with http://mapstack.stamen.com/. Map Stack is about putting your creativity on the map, making it radically simpler to design your own map styles, without having to know any code, sign up for anything, install any software, or do any typing. We provide different parts of the map stack: backgrounds, roads, labels, and satellite imagery and straightforward controls for manipulating things like color, opacity and masking.

Watercolor punched through by satellite imagery from MapBox.

You don't need to sign up for anything, know how to code, or know much about cartography to make great looking maps. You just need to decide where in the world you want to go, a web browser, and about five minutes.

So now you can make all kinds of cool maps — say, this map of the Pentagon (which appears aglow with all the PRISM data flowing through it) — in no time:

Opening Hours?

We’d originally talked about calling the project the “map sandwich,” since it’s all about the stacking of layers of maps. You know, like a sandwich! The first WhereCamp DC used a sandwich as its logo and the idea stuck. From there we went to “delicatessen,” 'cause that's where you go to have your sandwiches made. (We went through lots of names - “mappuccino kundalini” was a favorite for a while.)

The deli name went away but the idea of a neighborhood, brick-and-mortar shop with regular hours stayed. We’ve decided, for the sake of Seth’s sanity, that Map Stack will be open for business Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST until we can sort out what kind of infrastructure the project will need given the level of interest we’re seeing. You can tweet us during those hours with questions or give us a shout out to show off your smorgastrata at: http://twitter.com/mapstackStamen.

In its first day, viewers to the site generated about 10GB of map tiles—there are 10GB of new maps in the world! Which is great, but that’s a lot of tiles. We’re not getting paid for this—yet—and part of the project is figuring out what the business model might be.

A few initial ideas: we might offer the map backgrounds as a hosted service, we might sell prints (like we do via Soft Cities, 20x200 (sadly down but apparently coming back soon), and as of today, DODOcase), we might integrate it with Pinterest or Twitter or Facebook better (there’s a conversation about this very thing happening on Twitter right now)—we’re not sure. One thing we do know is that the best way to find this information out is to release projects into the wild, so!

Here are some examples, a short menu of maps that we and others have worked up to get you started. You can also view a gallery of images that people are creating here. Enjoy!

• View Project

Look out – communists are infiltrating the country with nefarious plans to sterilize our men, steal our women and convert children! Dramatic and overwrought, anti-communist ads and propaganda from the Cold War era attempted to inspire loyalty to democracy and fear of the atomic bomb-wielding enemy – and at the same time, somehow soothe Americans’ concerns about the possibility of ‘total destruction.’ These 15 examples include ads for everything from telephone services to milk, as well as pamphlets, comic books and films.

After Total War Can Come Total Living

(image via: wikis.nyu.edu)

Would this poster make you feel any better about the possibility of total nuclear annihilation? The government distributed propaganda like this during the Cold War to soothe the fears of U.S. citizens after the military strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) Doctrine was put into place, which proclaimed that if either the United States or the Soviet Union dropped a bomb, the other would drop one in retaliation, continuing until both countries were destroyed.

Sure I Want to Fight Communism – But How?

(image via: brynmawrcollections.org)

The average citizen couldn’t exactly go out and ‘fight communism’ in any real way, but they were given plenty of small ways to support the cause. The public was asked to donate “truth dollars” to support causes like Radio Free Europe, which aimed to “keep up the morale of the Communist-ruled peoples, and express the kinship of the free nations, with the captive peoples.”

If Russia Should Win

(image via: doninmass.com)

“If Russia and the Communists should win the next world war, many American men would be sterilized. In case the Communists should conquer, our women would be helpless beneath the boots of the Asiatic Russians.”

Take a Good Look

(image via: michigan civil defense)

“Take a good look,” urges this advertisement, alongside an image of an undressed woman protecting her modesty. But it’s not really the woman that the Federal Sign and Signal Corporation wants you to notice. They’re just using her to call your attention to their air raid warning signal. “Other matters may have taken your attention, but few if any can be more important.”

Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?

(image via: the society pages)

This advertisement might seem like a joke, but it’s a real vintage Scot Tissue ad that first appeared in the 1930s. “Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort,” it reads.

Next Page:
The Red Menace 15 Vintage Anti Communist Ads Propaganda

[Photographs: Deborah Mele]

This classic Italian dish is said to have been named for coal miners around Rome, because the black specks of pepper resemble coal dust. Carbonara contains just a few ingredients and takes mere minutes to prepare; when properly executed, it's rich, creamy, and truly satisfying. But it's not quite as simple as all that.

Traditionalists will tell you that Spaghetti alla Carbonara should contain eggs, cheese, black pepper, a diced cured pork product, and nothing else. But plenty of carbonara recipes out there call for dry white wine, heavy cream, and even garlic—though, of course, purists would never use them in an "authentic" preparation.

I was initially taught—by an Italian friend, no less—to make my carbonara with both a little white wine and a dash of heavy cream. In the time since, I've found that these two ingredients really aren't necessary to creating a sublimely delicious dish of creamy egg pasta. Spaghetti Carbonara has been a family favorite in my own home since my children were small, and I've tinkered with it for years, first eliminating the wine, then the cream, and finally learning that the real trick is to gently warm your eggs before adding them to the pasta, ensuring that they lightly coat each strand in their velvety sauce.

Some like the flavor of whole eggs, while others feel using just the yolks is best; I tend to discard the whites, but it's really a matter of personal preference. As a rule, I use about half a yolk per person (or serving).

[Photographs: Deborah Mele]

Here in Umbria, I use diced guanciale—an unsmoked Italian bacon prepared with pig's jowl—but if you can't find it locally, you can use pancetta or bacon in its place. As for cheese, Pecorino Romano is typically used in carbonara. However, I often incorporate an equal portion of Parmesan or Grana Padano, since the Pecorino is quite sharp on its own. And though the black pepper may seem like an insignificant ingredient, it helps cut through some of the richness and really brings the pasta to life. It's best to use fresh black peppercorns, crushed with a mortar and pestle or coarsely ground in a pepper mill.

A variation of Pasta carbonara using fresh pasta along with sliced artichokes. An olive oil-poached egg tops the pasta before serving. [Photographs: Deborah Mele]

Though not customary, I sometimes toss baby peas, tender strands of asparagus, or sliced artichokes into the pasta before serving. If you want to make this dish into a hearty main course, you can top each bowl of pasta with an egg that's been fried or poached in olive oil. When you cut into the egg, the yolk will run into the pasta, intensifying its creamy texture and flavor.

Get The Recipe!

Pasta alla Carbonara »

About the Author: Deborah Mele is the owner of Italian Food Forever, an Italian recipe blog, as well as Recipe Rebuild, a healthy recipe blog she shares with her daughter Christy, an RD. Deborah lives 6 months a year in Umbria, Italy where she oversees her guest house Il Casale di Mele.

Hummingbird hits UK cinemas on Friday 28^th June and to celebrate, we’ve got 5 pairs of tickets to give away to the UK Premiere, attended by Jason Statham himself!

Starring Jason Statham (Parker, Safe, Killer Elite, The Expendables, Crank, Bank Job, Transporter), with BAFTA award winner Vicky McClure, Agata Buzek and Benedict Wong (Prometheus), Hummingbird marks the directorial debut of Oscar® nominated screenwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things), from his own original screenplay.

Living homeless after going on the run from a military court-martial, Joey Jones (Statham) is a damaged ex-special forces soldier trapped in London’s criminal underworld. But when opportunity enables him to assume another man’s identity, he is transformed into an avenging angel.

All you need to do for the chance to win is answer the following question:

In which city is Hummingbird set?

For more on Hummingbird, visit https://www.facebook.com/HummingbirdMovieUK

Terms & Conditions

• Competition closes June 14th, midday
• Entrants must be 15 or over and resident in the UK. Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult
• Prize for each main winner is one (1) pair of tickets to the UK premiere of Hummingbird in London on 17^th June 2013. Entrants must be free to attend from 6pm on the day of the event
• Travel and accommodation are not included
• In the unlikely event that the premiere is cancelled, no alternative event will be arranged
• There is no cash or other alternative to the prize stated and the prize is not transferable and no part or parts of the prize may be substituted for other benefits, items or additions
• Winners will be picked and contacted by the site.
• Winners name, contact number and address will be passed to a third party provider for delivery
• If the winner fails to respond within 24 hours of notification, they will be deemed void and an alternative winner will be contacted
• The Editor's decision is final and binding on the entrants. No correspondence will be entered into

Belle Vista player Jose Jimenez is a new hate figure for animal rights activists in Argentina.

A shocking incident played out last weekend in a lower league match in Tucuman between San Juan and Bella Vista, as a pitch invading dog received horrific treatment after getting onto the surface in the middle of the game.

Having entered the field and laid down on the grass, Belle Vista’s Jimenez took it upon himself to eject the canine in a brutal fashion.

The footballer grabbed the dog by it’s neck, and proceeded to try and hurl it over the metal fencing like he was tossing away a rotten banana skin.

But the dog never made it over the barrier: instead it crashed into the separation parameter and bounced back onto the pitch.

After his shocking behaviour, San Jose fans and supporters showered abused on Belle Vista’s Jose Jimenez, and as a result the referee sent the player off for his cruelty to the animal.

Watch the shocking footage below.

[Photograph: Sydney Oland]

Though these oat-based yeast pancakes may appear lacy and delicate, they're actually quite satisfying and substantial. They're traditionally stuffed with savory ingredient like eggs, sausage, and ham, but they can also be loaded with syrup and filled with jam. Originally made popular in the North Staffordshire area of England, these cakes were once sold from kitchen windows to passersby on the street as fast food. Although increasingly uncommon, there are still manufactures that make and distribute oat pancakes to larger chains and supermarkets.

If you're serving these pancakes as a hearty breakfast or lunch, I suggest filling them with softly cooked apples and bits of sausage. For a light supper, top them with something rich; I like to throw in sautéed mushrooms cooked in butter.

Get The Recipe!

Oatcakes »

About the author: Sydney Oland lives in Somerville, Mass. Find more information at sydneyoland.com (or read eatingnosetotail.com)

From Sweets

[Photograph: Stacy Newgent]

When the summer heat cranks lemonade cravings to Pavlovian levels, try these jelly squares from Bakeless Sweets. They're a delightfully jiggly version of the drink itself, made earthy with the addition of fresh basil.

Tips: If you're harvesting leaves from your own basil plant, use the large lower leaves for steeping, and the tiny, tender top leaves for garnish.

Tweaks: The recipe specifies using pulp-free orange juice to keep from clouding the jelly. Take the same care with the lemons; strain the pulp from the juice before adding to the basil leaves to steep. It's a simple extra step that makes an already simple recipe foolproof.

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Lemonade Jelly with Basil »

As always with our Bake the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Bakeless Sweets to give away.

[Photograph: Frances Janisch]

Like many big city serious eaters, I enjoy probably more than my fair share of ramen. Until this week, all of these sips and slurps were at restaurants or food trucks; even though I cook almost everything for myself, ramen has always seemed like a dish best left to experts with plenty of time to tend a long-simmered broth. However, when I opened up Hiroko Shimbo's new cookbook, Hiroko's American Kitchen, and saw not one, but two recipes for the noodle soup, I knew I needed to give it a shot.

Granted, Shimbo's ramen broth takes a bit of a shortcut. Instead of simmering bones to make stock, she combines fragrant, umami-laced dashi with store-bought chicken stock (use homemade if you've got it stashed of course). By simmering it with aromatics and a generous slab of pork belly, she infuses the dish with extra meatiness. Later, she combines the broth with a secondary pork cooking liquid made from soy, sake, and mirin (again, full of porky goodness). These steps make for deeply flavored broth without too much effort. (Yes, there is still an overnight rest, and the matter of making dashi, but neither of these are dealbreakers.) Slices of the pork and an excellent soy-cured egg are the key toppings for the ramen, making for a complete meal.

Why I picked this recipe: Do I really need to provide a reason for making ramen without spending 12 straight hours at the stove?

What worked: While there'd be no mistaking this broth for a long-simmered tontosu, the deep savoriness of the dashi and braised pork belly adds wonderful dimension to the broth. And the soy-cured eggs are a creamy and salty treat of their own.

What didn't: Taste-wise, I could've done without the cabbage, but it did add a nice burst of color to the finished dish.

Suggested tweaks: I had some seaweed salad sitting around in my fridge, so I tossed that into the final bowl. It was a nice touch.

As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Hiroko's American Kitchen to give away this week.

About the author: Kate Williams is a freelance writer and personal chef living in Berkeley, CA. She is a contributor to The Oxford American and Berkeleyside NOSH, and she blogs at cookingwolves.wordpress.com.

By Nick Harris

From A Hamburger Today

[Photographs: Todd Brock]

So a hamburger reviewer walks into a Jewish deli...

It may sound like the set-up for a groaner of a punch line, but the laugh's on you if you discount the burgers at The General Muir based solely on its more traditional and expected menu items. Yes, matzoh ball soup, Reubens, and 14-ounce piled-high pastrami sandwiches stream steadily out of the kitchen, but I'm ready to call The General Muir's burgers among the city's best.

That shouldn't come as a surprise, really. The Emory Point restaurant, open since early 2013, was born of excellent stock within the local burger scene. The story goes that Jennifer and Ben Johnson, husband-and-wife restaurant co-owners, wanted to open up a new place with Shelley Sweet, GM at their West Egg Cafe—a spot that, not coincidentally, does a mighty fine burger. They joined forces with chef Todd Ginsberg, who had been looking to start a true-blue delicatessen that paid homage to his East Coast roots. And it just so happens that Ginsberg is the genius who created Bocado's famed burger. So you could argue that an exceptional burger was programmed into The General Muir's DNA from the very beginning.

Lineage is a major theme at The General Muir, which gets its name from the transport ship that brought Jennifer's mother and grandparents—Holocaust survivors—to New York in 1949. Old photos of the vessel and framed portraits of the ownership's relatives adorn the subway tile walls and give off an authentically warm and familial vibe. But don't be lulled into thinking it's some sleepy mom-and-pop joint; with a primo location next to Emory University and the CDC, this place literally buzzes, especially at lunchtime.

That's when the Double Burger Stack ($8.75) comes out to play. In between thin twin patties is a layer of shaved onion. Over the top patty, American, pickles, and lettuce are all nestled under a pillowy onion roll. Russian dressing is the wackiest thing here, adding a tangy zip under the bottom burger.

It's simple, to be sure. But, like Ginsberg's Bocado burger, that's the beauty. Every element shines and explodes with flavor. Take a look at the crust on that craggly, loose meat and tell me that's not the sexiest thing you've seen all day. A perfect melt on the cheese. Pickles aren't my thing, but these will delight sweet-and-sour fans. The onions, after some griddle time of their own, get one of the patties plopped on top just long enough to absorb some of that telltale flavor and then are left between the patties to permeate the tasty beef.

The fries are very, very good: deep brown, skin-on, and flecked with big grains of salt. You get a nice-sized portion with ketchup for four bucks...

...But upgrading them to the poutine is a must. An extra two dollars gets you gravy, cheese curds, and parsley. Five more on top of that brings out TGM's big guns: huge chunks of chopped pastrami. Tender and succulent, they elevate this side into a phenomenal meal all its own. It's already been featured on a few local publications' food bucket lists, and I hope I'm not pulling back the curtain too far on my inner whackjobness by admitting that I've actually woke up dreaming about The General Muir's poutine since trying it.

You'd expect a New York-style deli to have good pastrami. You'd expect a great deli's pastrami to be great. But you might not expect them to slap it on an already-stellar burger and offer it as a dinner-only treat. Simply called The Burger ($14 with fries), this creation by Ginsberg debuted in just the last month or so and features the house-cured and -smoked pastrami, Gruyère, caramelized onions, Russian dressing, and pickles under the same onion roll.

Again, the numerous pickles overpowered my palate. Removing them improved the burger for me, personally. All the better to let that pastrami shine, I say. The stuff had to be almost a quarter of an inch thick, and it provided the burger with an awesome, meaty chew that bacon just can't quite match.

Both burgers at The General Muir were messy affairs—the Russian dressing in particular made for some slipping and sliding—but the components of both burgers are so good that you'll find yourself scrabbling after all the bits and pieces of shrapnel.

Whether you go for the Double Burger Stack at lunch or The Burger at dinner, these are true top-tier cheeseburgers. From a Jewish deli. In Atlanta. And that's no joke. (Just remember to add the poutine.)

About the Author: Todd Brock lives the glamorous life of a stay-at-home freelance writer in the suburbs of Atlanta. Besides being paid to eat cheeseburgers for AHT, pizzas for Slice, and desserts for Sweets, he's written and produced over 1,000 hours of television and penned Building Chicken Coops for Dummies. When he grows up, he wants to be either the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys or the drummer for The Gaslight Anthem. Or both.

From Sweets

[Photograph: @sstiavetti]

I love cake, but I have a serious aversion to bad cake. What do I mean by bad cake? Too-sweet cake. Too-dry cake. Boring cake. Uninspired cake. Cake that tastes like every other cake from cake mixes and bad grocery store bakeries.

Some people believe that any cake can be good, just for the sheer fact that it's cake. I'm not like that. For me, bad cake is the worst.

I'm always tinkering with recipes trying to make them more interesting. Sometimes that involves reducing the amount of sugar, changing up the type of fat used, or adding other ingredients that the average person might not think to put in a cake. This cake is a great example of that aesthetic.

I've dubbed this gorgeously rich, moist cake The Dark Knight, as it's a tall, glowering tower of chocolate intensity. A generous blast of dark roast coffee and a touch of milk makes for a gently bitter tone, while a smidge of cayenne adds mystique without turning up the heat. Packed with dates for extra tenderness, it's nearly impossible to ruin this cake unless you a) seriously over bake it, or b) overmix it. Be watchful when baking and mixing, and you're sure to have a masterpiece on your hands.

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The Dark Knight Cake (Triple Chocolate Layer Cake) »

About the author: Stephanie Stiavetti is a writer and cookbook author in San Francisco. Her food blog, The Culinary Life, is a repository for all things comfort food related, from savory dinners to transcendental desserts. She also publishes a monthly culinary newsletter full of stories, review, and helpful tips. Stephanie's cookbook, Melt: the Art of Macaroni and Cheese, celebrates America's favorite dish by recreating it with specialty cheeses. Available for preorder now.

From Drinks

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Ask a Cicerone: The Best Beers to Drink with Burgers

Editor's Note: Ask a what? A Certified Cicerone^® is a beer expert who has passed a particular certification exam administered by the Craft Beer Institute. You can think of them as beer sommeliers: these folks have demonstrated significant beer knowledge and tasting skill, plus professional skills in beer sales and service. Got a beer-related query for the experts? Ask away in the comments section!

Burgers are a passion for us here at Serious Eats, and we make 'em year round. But it seems like summer's the ideal season for enjoying a burger on the grill, and grilling is even more fun with a beer in hand.

Sure, we could just grab whatever brews happen to be in the fridge, but if we're stocking up, what should we buy? Which beers go well with a cheddar cheeseburger? What about burgers with mustard? Grilled onions? Mushrooms? Hot peppers? We asked our crew of beer experts for their favorite burger-friendly beers, the ultimate pairing for a summer day. Here's what they had to say.

Looking for summer drinking inspiration? Follow Serious Eats: Drinks on Pinterest.

Juventus Stole my Higuain Pasta

90g of Durum Semolina Flour*
90g of All Purpose Flour
2 eggs
pinch of salt

Making pasta is one of the easiest things you can do. In fact, it’s easier than writing an article on how Juventus are “swooping” for Higuain and going to steal him from Arsenal.

First, don’t be offput by the weighted measurements. I include that for people who need ratios (like me!). Pasta is forgiving, you will use more or less flour depending on the wet ingredients.

90g of flour is about a half cup. So, take a 1/2 cup of semolina and 1/2 cup of AP flour and sift together along with a pinch of salt. It’s not really important to get an exact measurement on the flour because the eggs you use will have different volumes of liquid. Err on the side of more flour.

Put your flour in a pile and make a well in the middle. Then crack in two eggs like this:

Get in there and make a mess! I start by breaking the yolks and then incorporating the flour into the liquid. Just like a transfer rumor, you add more flour or less flour as needed until the dough starts to form into a ball – then you kick it in the balls! I have a bench scraper in case the dough sticks to the board.

Knead that dough on a floured board until smooth. Too dry? get your hands wet and knead some more. Too wet? More flour!

Form into a disk, cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 30-60 minutes.

Now, grab a helper and smush that disk down a bit. Here I have a five year old in a ballet outfit.

Now start rolling the dough in a pasta machine on the largest setting. (My helper took the picture).

And pass the dough through a few times with increasingly smaller settings. You may want to cut the dough in half after you get to about a 3.

After I got the dough to a 4, my helper and I used the cutter to make Angel Hair. Then we let it rest for a few minutes while we got the salted water up to a boil. Boiled the pasta for a few minutes and served with butter, salt, pepper, and Romano cheese.

Oh and peas and steaks.

Obviously, that’s a kid’s plate. Mine was bigger.

Hey, I played football for 2 hours, I was hungry.

Oh, and I’ll give you my steak recipe if Arsenal sign an Argentinian – Steak Higuain. It’s a slow cooked steak, but it’s really juicy.

Qq

*Semolina flour causes confusion because it is known by a variety of names (durum flour, semolina flour, pasta flour) and can be a bit of a pain to find. The problem is that the term “semolina” is both a grind of grains and the common term for durum semolina. For example cream of wheat (the cereal) is a semolina grind but I wouldn’t use that here. What you want is durum semolina.  I found a brand at Amazon which I like quite a bit. Feel free to try this recipe with nothing but all purpose flour.

[Photograph: Jessica Leibowitz]

There are countless good ways to cook a steak. So long as you start with good, high quality meat, season it properly, don't overcook it, and get a good sear on it, you can't really go wrong. But if your goal is the ultimate in tenderness and juiciness, a steak with a crisp, crackling, dark brown crust that cuts open to reveal flesh that's perfectly pink from edge to edge, then you're going to want to cook your steak sous-vide.

The method—sealing your meat in a water-tight plastic bag, cooking it in a water bath held at a very precise low temperature, then searing it at the end—produces meat that is more evenly cooked and juicier than you can get by any conventional methods. And while home sous-vide equipment is becoming more and more common, it's still in someone please buy this for me for my birthday or maybe as a wedding gift territory.

But there's an alternative! Back in 2010, I showed you a method for how to turn a regular old beer cooler into a sous-vide cooker. Well, we liked the idea so much that we've gone and turned it into a full on video.

Watch the video or read the transcript to see how you can cook the best, most consistently foolproof steaks of your life, all in a $30 beer cooler.

Watch the Video!

[Video: Jessica Leibowitz]

Transcript

Here's the full transcript, in case you're hiding behind the curtain waiting for Old Man Wilkin's to reveal himself as the swamp monster that's been terrorizing the local fairgrounds:

So long as you're starting with high quality beef, cooking a good steak is as easy as throwing it on the grill or searing it in a hot skillet. But if you want perfect steak, and I'm talking steak with a rich, brown crackling crust and a medium-rare core that extends all the way from edge to edge, then you need to take your technique to the next level.

Now traditional methods like broiling, grilling or searing in a skillet leave you with one problem: your steak develops a temperature gradient inside it. So while the very center of the meat might be a perfect medium rare, as you move towards the outer layers it becomes more and more cooked until you reach the edges, which have the dry, chewy texture of well-done meat. So the question is, how do you minimize this overcooking?

So here's the thing: the more gently you cook your food, the smaller that temperature gradient inside is going to be. So for instance, if you cook a steak in a 500 degree oven, you're going to develop a pretty thick band of grey meat inside. Cook that same steak in a 250 degree oven, and that grey band shrinks significantly.

Now you may have heard of a concept called sous-vide cooking, and the idea here is to take that low-temperature cooking to the extreme. With sous-vide cooking, you place your steak inside a sealed plastic bag and then put that plastic bag in a water bath held at the exact temperature that you want to serve your steak at. Say 130 degrees for medium rare. About 45 minutes later, you take your steak out of that bag and it's perfectly evenly cooked from edge to edge with no temperature gradient and no danger of overcooking.

The problem is that sous-vide equipment is really expensive. But there's an alternative: a regular old $30 beer cooler. Even though a cooler is designed to keep cool things cool, it's equally good at keeping hot things hot. So all you've got to do is fill it up with hot water, adjust the temperature with boiling water or cold water, and then place your bagged meat inside it to cook. So long as you start a few degrees higher in order to compensate for the heat loss when you add your meat, it should be able to maintain its temperature for the 45 minutes required to cook most steaks, pork chops, lamb chops, chicken or fish.

You can cook your meat either in a cryovac-style bag or in a regular heavy duty zipper lock bag. In order to get the air out of a zipper lock bag, put your meat inside it, zip it up most of the way, and then slowly lower it into the water, sealing it just as the air is forced out.

You've probably noticed one glaring problem: your steak develops no crust or color. You're gonna have to add this after it comes out of the cooler. Now you can do this on a grill if you want to cook outside, but my personal favorite way is to finish it in a cast-iron skillet. Just heat up some oil over the highest-possible heat while you carefully dry the outside of the steak in order to help it brown faster. Season the steak generously with salt and pepper and once the oil starts smoking, add the steak to the pan along with a couple of pats of butter. Cook the steak just until it's browned on both sides, about a minute or two, and then to finish it off, hold it up vertically with tongs in order to get the edges.

The beauty of this method is total flexibility in terms of timing. Once your steak comes up to temperature inside the cooler, you can let it sit there for up to a few hours longer without worrying that it's going to overcook. Your steak is going to be hot and ready to sear as soon as you are ready to eat.

You want to up your game even further? Then get yourself one of these guys. By combining the intense heat of a propane torch with a cast iron skillet, you can get a steakhouse quality char in a matter of moments. Just make sure that you shut off your smoke detectors first.

It may take a little bit more time, but if you are willing to put in the effort, this is the best quality steak you can get at home.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Editor's note: Each Saturday morning we bring you a Sunday Brunch recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.

[Photograph: Sydney Oland]

Everyone should have a couple of quick bread recipes in their repertoire. And this one is a classic: basic beer bread with the added bonus of bacon, cheddar, and thyme. As with all great recipes, this one is totally customizable to your taste—a few quickly sautéed chilies and sweet peppers, a few kernels of corn, or some sliced chives all make great additions. Just make sure to not fall into the trap of loading on too many extras.

About the author: Sydney Oland lives in Somerville, Mass. Find more information at sydneyoland.com (or read eatingnosetotail.com)