Everybody knows what food and drinks are -- without them, we wouldn’t last long.  More interestingly, though, humans have spent a long time trying to make eating and drinking fun and not just necessary.  Whether it’s bartenders learning to create a perfect cocktail or gourmet chefs competing for the chance to be screamed at on reality television, the creation of food and drink is an art with a lot of science behind it.  A great way to spend a day is to go on a wine-tasting tour, visiting multiple vineyards while sampling all the tasty varieties (and, the vineyards hope, bringing a few bottles home with you). For those of us with less class and smaller budgets, you can always go to Costco and sample all the free food bites at various tasting stations.

A kind of modern replacement for a cookbook, this text is a collection of “infographics” -- posters designed to convey information about a single topic.  Whether you’re cooking, eating, mixing drinks, or drinking them, there’s going to be an infographic in this book that will help you out. Handy visual references for classification and quantification of ingredients, fun factoids, and tasteful layouts abound.  You won’t just use it to prepare dishes and drinks, but also to plan the whole party or fancy dinner by verifying what from column A goes best with your pick in column B. Focusing on illustration rather than lots of reading, t’s a literal feast for your eyes.

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