Welcome back to Eating Our Words' weekly round-up, where we separate the wheat from the chaff and then have Robb Walsh make us a bitchin' spiced blackberry chaffshake.
We started off the week with some gourmet-style pig face. That picture looks kind of incredible. It makes us imagine eating a bacon-flavored sea urchin. So in other words, it's awesome, like Hostess cupcakes, which are still going strong after 90 years. They go great with a 124-year-old Dr Pepper.
Robb bid goodbye to famous foodie magazine Gourmet, while Sarah Rufka enjoyed pretty much everything but the coffee at Coffee Groundz. Mr. Walsh also stuffed a whole lot of mango love into just one post, and E. Ting sat down for an R. Ticulate chat with chef - no wait, cook - Chuck Krauthamer, who wins the award for "Surname Best Suited For a Wrestler During World War II."
Robb let everyone know that you can get the famous Filipino pastry hopia baboy right here in Houston, because he is trying to kill us. It is lard stuffed with lard. No, that is not hyperbole, it is literally lard stuffed with lard. It makes a Monte Cristo look like a tofu pita. It has enough cholesterol to kill Superman. Serving hopia baboy to war prisoners is prohibited under the Geneva convention.
Lone Star Saloon has a drink called the Green Demon that we want right now, and chef Rick Bayless is now a rock star of the food community after his win on Top Chef Masters.
Katharine Shilcutt attended the Woodford Reserve Manhattan Experience, a mixed-drinks contest, and the winner was: bacon and bourbon. It would be way more impressive if it weren't so damned obvious. In other contest news, Margaret Downing interviewed the winner of the Potato Innovation Recipe contest, William "Trey" Smith. In true Rice-alum style, he got around to his assignment at the last minute and still managed to blow everyone away. Rice students: screwing up the curve for everyone else since 1912.
Everyone's coming down with one of the many flues that are going around. A friend of ours just came down with bilby flu, and we can tell you, it's no laughing matter, but that didn't stop us. To ease your pain, Katharine provided the five greatest under-the-weather comfort foods. What, no Twinkie-wiener sandwich?
We were sent a cookbook by a former public health nurse who eschews fat and oils in favor of lots and lots of sugar in her dessert recipes. We cooked up a bunch of them and they were actually even better than the originals. No, wait, sorry... we accidentally had our browser on the tab where we were reading about those red velvet Twinkies. The fatless, oil-less desserts sucked. Of course they did. Go read about them -- our staff members are very funny when given bad food.
Paul Knight spent $13 at Brothers Taco House, and Katharine enjoyed Houston's best croissant for breakfast. J.C. listed the top five creepiest Halloween candies, and we can only imagine the IV bag full of fake candy blood we caw in CVS wasn't included because J.C. has not yet seen it. It made us shudder all the way home.
Nikki Metzgar pondered whether or not Houston restaurants should be forced to post calories counts next to their food items, while Robb mourned the last bit of his sourdough culture (which he named), contracted swine flu (seriously, everyone's doing it), and spun into madness. Get well soon, Robb! Get really, really well.
Finally, Katharine went to Ekko's Deli and Café Pita + for the gyros, but stayed for the man-candy.
