Patriot Ledger News Service says it's almost embarrassingly easy, as long as you observe a few basics. As Jack Bishop puts it, "never has so much been written about such simple food. (And) much of what has been written is wrong.'' Here are Bishop's own basics: Forget about commercial fresh pasta, he suggests. In Italy it's made at home for special occasions and used the same day or bought, equally fresh, from the local pasta shop.

Instead, buy good quality imported or domestic dried pasta. Taste-test several brands to find your favourite.

The classic rule of thumb for choosing the right shape pasta is: the thicker the sauce, the bigger the pasta.

For chunky, hearty sauces use large open shells or wide tubular shapes like rigatoni that best trap the chunks. Long thin shapes like linguini or spaghetti go well with smooth sauces or those with relatively small vegetable chunks.

Wide long noodles (like fettucini or tagliatelle) work well with creamy sauces. Short tubular shapes (like penne or small ziti) are good for sauces with small to medium pieces of vegetables; farfalle or small shells are good with such sauces too.

Ignore cooking times on pasta boxes. Begin tasting after thin noodles have cooked for four or five minutes and after curly shapes have cooked for seven or eight minutes.

Drain cooked pasta well. Don't rinse it. Serve from warmed bowls. Sauce pasta quickly (the process should take no more than two minutes) and lightly -- pasta swimming in sauce is an American, not an Italian, tradition.

Here are the top three beers in each of six categories as rated by a panel of experts for Consumer Reports magazine. Brewers of the major national brands are noted.

"Craft'' beers are fuller-bodied brews typically marketed as speciality beers; their distribution is noted. Country of origin is noted for imports.

Regular and Ice Beers 1. Old Milwaukee (Stroh) 2. Stroh's (Stroh) 3. Red Dog (Miller) Light Beers 1. Michelob Light (Anheuser-Busch) 2. Bud Light (Anheuser-Busch) 3. Natural Light (Anheuser-Busch) Non-alcoholic Beers 1. Sharp's (Miller) 2. Coors Cutter (Coors) 3. Kingsbury (G. Heileman) Imported Lagers 1. Molson Golden (Canada) 2. Labatt Blue (Canada) 3. Foster's (Australian brand, but beer sold in US brewed Canada) Craft Ales 1. Samuel Adams Boston Ale (national) 2. Sierra Nevada Pale (40 states) 3. Full Sail Amber (West) Craft Lagers 1. Brooklyn Brand (New York) 2. Leinenkugel's Red (national) 3. Samuel Adams Boston Lager (national) Feel like a nice cup of tea? You may want one soon. According to a report in this week's issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who are tea drinkers have a lower risk of digestive system and urinary tract cancers than non-tea drinkers.

"This study suggests that tea, one of the most popular beverages consumed worldwide, may protect against some cancers in post-menopausal women,'' reported study author Dr. Wei Zheng, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.

However, "no appreciable association of tea drinking was found with melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, or cancers of the pancreas, lung, breast, uterine corpus or ovary,'' Zheng said.

In the study, 35,369 women between the ages of 55 and 69 filled out questionnaires about tea-consumption habits, in addition to other lifestyle factors, such as diet, physical activity and smoking status.

"Overall, about 41.7 percent of women reported drinking non-herbal tea at least once a week, and 17.3 percent drank tea daily,'' according to Zheng.

"Only 8.6 percent of women reported drinking two or more cups of tea a day.'' The tea drinkers didn't have a lower risk of all cancers. But those who drank more than two cups a day were 32 percent less likely to have cancers of the mouth, oesophagus, stomach, colon, and rectum. They were also 60 percent less likely to have cancers of the urinary tract than those who never or seldom drank tea. And more of the beverage was apparently better. Four or more cups of tea per day lowered the risk of such cancers by 63 percent.

"In contrast, coffee drinking was not found to be related to the risk of these cancers,'' Zheng said.