Weekend Edition Sunday

As you enter Cocktail Culture, an intoxicating exhibit of apparel, accoutrement and ephemera at the Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art, it's hard not to think of Billy Strayhorn's lyrics in his jazz standard "Lush Life":

I used to visit all those very gay places
those come-what-may places
where one relaxes on the axis of wheel of life
to get the feel of life
from jazz and cocktails

On-Air Challenge: You are given three words, starting with the letters T, O and P, and must come up with a fourth word that can follow the words and complete a familiar two-word phrase. For example, given the words "taste," "oral" and "paternity," the answer would be "test," as in "taste test," "oral test" and "paternity test."

Novelist Ann Patchet has a knack for taking her readers to completely new places. In 2002's Bel Canto, she blended terrorism and opera and now — several acclaimed books and almost a decade later — Patchett's out with a new novel about an Amazonian expedition.

State of Wonder follows medical researcher Marina Singh as she joins her former mentor in a search to discover a promising and valuable new drug in the Amazon. Patchett tells NPR's Jacki Lyden that she spent 10 days in the Amazon to get a feel for the book's setting.

Spaghetti and meatballs pretty much sum up the American take on southern Italian food. But the southern Italian island of Sicily is home to a cuisine that spans far beyond what we've come to know as the Italian staples.

So while visitors may be drawn to Sicily for its Greek and Roman ruins, the island is also a gastronomic destination, boasting a cuisine that is both surprisingly diverse and delicious.

Portuguese voters are going to the polls Sunday after months of economic and political disarray. Like Greece, Ireland and Spain, the country is mired in a spiraling debt crisis.

The new government will have to implement a tough austerity plan in exchange for a massive $112 billion international bailout. And the electorate's mood in Western Europe's poorest country is filled with anxiety over difficult times ahead.