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Mother's Day is this Sunday - have you made reservations for Mom?

Cru: A Wine Bar (9595 Six Pines Dr., Suite 650 in The Woodlands) is putting on a three-course brunch, with offerings including brown-butter poached sea scallops, eggs Benedict, pan-seared ahi tuna and roasted duck breast, not to mention more than 300 wines. ($27.95.)

Fleming's Steakhouse and Wine Bar's (2405 West Alabama) three-course brunch offers a choice of filet mignon benedict, crab cake benedict, bone-in ham steak, and roasted turkey crêpes ($10.95.)

Hotel ZaZa's Monarch Restaurant (5701 Main) is offering up an enormous brunch buffet in honor of Mom. ($65.)

And both The Tasting Room Uptown Park (1101-18 Uptown Park) and Max's Wine Dive (4720 Washington) are offering all moms 20 percent off all wine purchases during Sunday brunch, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

I boiled the hamburger in beer in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove, adding five pinches of salt and three squirts of mustard along the way. It was the only “loosemeats sandwich” in the hamburger book and my daughter and I wanted to try something different – different at least for people like us who’ve never been to Marshalltown, Iowa where Taylor’s Maid-Rite makes “a sloppy joe without the slop.”

Actually, put between two pieces of bread with plenty of pickles it was great. Just like a lot of the other slightly more traditional burgers look to be in this ode to that most American of meals.

For two years George Motz drove around the country, eating burgers. (His wife is a vegetarian, he delights in telling us.) He’s written up 100 of his favorites and although recipes are few – Taylor’s being one of the few places not keeping secrets and secret sauces – just reading about these places and the hamburgers they serve makes for true entertainment.

As an undergraduate, I had a very serious love affair with my school’s cafeteria. It was the perfect place to gossip and watch the rotation of meals from breakfast to lunch and from lunch to dinner. Often I would make my way through several full days at Kline Commons, starting with the make-your-own Belgium waffles and troughs of molded eggs, and moving on to the iceberg lettuce salad bar and burgers, finishing with a plate of nachos or re-creating the morning with the ever-popular breakfast for dinner. Since then, I have often dreamed of spending the day at a restaurant in this fashion.

Recently the Internet in my apartment went out, and I felt this was the perfect time to try my experiment. There were two requirements - one, the restaurant had to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and two, there had to be Internet access available.

The two places around the corner from my house competing as healthy and healthier were the obvious choices. Let me start by saying that I have the same concerns about the word “healthy” in my eating as I do a PG-13 rating in most movies: good, maybe; great, not likely. In order to find out once and for all, I put down my Cheetos and went to work.

All right, so you might not actually want to bring your date to this event, but it could make a future evening hawt. Martha Hopkins will be appearing at Central Market on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. to promote The New InterCourses: an aphrodisiac cookbook. The book includes plenty of food porn, not to mention recipes using ingredients that will get you in the mood, like chocolate, asparagus, chiles, coffee, basil, grapes, strawberries, honey, artichokes, black beans, oysters, rosemary, edible flowers, pine nuts, avocados, libations/alcohol, and figs.

The book even recommends recipes based on the season, time of day, or stage of the relationship. Not sure if we're buying that last part, but bring on the oysters and, um, the libations/alcohol.And by the way, you can find many of those ingredients - fresher than fresh - at the Midtown Farmers Market at Monica Pope's t'afia each Saturday.

Mother's Day is right around the corner (May 11), and if you're looking for the ultimate food and wine experience for dear old Mom, don't miss this: the Dom Perignon Buffet Brunch at the Marriott Westchase (2900 Briarpark Drive).

The restaurant is offering limitless glasses of Dom Perignon champagne, served in gorgeous stemware with their own twin holders, for $99.95. (Have you priced a bottle of Dom recently?) Everything on the buffet is first class, from the three types of caviar to the incredible handmade desserts.

$99.95 too expensive? You can still get the same incredible food and limitless glasses of Chandon champagne for $35.95. After a couple glasses, she'll never notice the difference. -- Paul Galvani

The Houston International Festival is here, and it's not just about the music and performances either - don't forget the food. Sample the cuisines of Africa at the H-E-B Cultural Stage, where celebrity and local chefs will be doing cooking demonstrations several times a day. There will also be food from more than 50 of Houston's restaurants and caterers, offering a tempting array of international cuisines. For information, visit www.ifest.org.

Today, as you might've guessed from the title, is National Licorice Day. Now we know Red Vines and Twizzlers and the like technically don't make use of the licorice plant, but we almost got sick eating three boxes of Red Vines before lunch the other day, so we gotta give the red stuff its due. (Plus we just kinda like the photo.)

Local purists might chose to celebrate this momentous holiday with dried root from Té House of Tea or a whip from The Chocolate Bar, but we're heading to the nearest corner store to get a wonderfully heavy tummy all over again. -- Keith Plocek

The Bayou City Farmers’ Market, in the parking lot behind 3000 Richmond, is my favorite Saturday morning hang-out. There's live music, Katz's coffee and free samples from Susan Holle, a cheesemaker from Sealy who goes by the name of Cheesygirl.

There's a craft table for kids — on a recent Saturday, the ankle-biters were potting free tomato plants. They also had some ducks and chickens to pet.

I always buy some yard eggs and a sack of fresh produce (sorrel, beets and chard, most recently). Strawberries looked good. Flowers and herbs are a bargain.

Click here for a slideshow. – Robb Walsh

Kevin Munz doesnt do anything small. After making his fortune with his enormous pawn shops, he decided: Big it is. His new restaurant, Cullen's Upscale American Grill, (11500 Space Center Blvd., 713-481-3463), is 38,000 square feet. That's not a typo -- it's 38,000 square feet, ten times the size of your average restaurant. Munz has spent two-and-a-half years and more than $10 million on the place, and the result is extravagance previously unknown to the Bay Area. Think Vegas and then some. The main dining room seats 250; in total, the place can accommodate 700. It's got 11 banquet rooms and an all-glass private dining room suspended from the ceiling. There's a live music stage and a ballroom.

Travis St. is number 2 on Good Magazine's recently published list of "America's Tastiest Streets." Breakfast Klub, t'afia, Cali Sandwich and Treebeard's are among the recommended stops. Roosevelt Avenue, Queens, a street famous for its taquerias and ethnic eateries, ranked number 1. -- Robb Walsh

Almost ten years after it opened in 1997, the original Bombay Brasserie at Richmond and Sage burned down -- and for a short while, so did the dreams of owner Narin Seghal. This was his first restaurant, but lucky for Houston, it wasn't his last. Soon after the fire, Seghal opened a Bombay Brasserie in Rice Village, and now he's opening a second location in a brand new center on the West Loop (3005 West Loop South). By 2010, Seghal hopes to have five restaurants in the Houston area. "I wanted to bring a touch of India to America, in the food we serve," he says. "For most Americans, curry means curry powder, and it's smelly. In India, curry is really the gravy or sauce, so we wanted to educate consumers to this, and to the fact that in India there is a great diversity of flavors and dishes."

David Wildbur, the owner of the just-opened Sage (2221 Alabama), originally wanted to call the romantic restaurant The Garden Inn. But when he went down to the TABC to obtain his liquor license, he discovered that the name "was taken, so, on the spur of the moment I decided to call it Sage." Why Sage? "You know the song 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme'? Well, I like that song and besides, sage has a double meaning." Sage it is.

I have fulfilled a lifelong dream.

For years now, I have secretly envied those fortunate few who man the tortilla stations at Mexican restaurants. What could be more fulfilling than playing with dough all day? Could there be a more therapeutic job? I have longed to sink my fingers into a balled-up, uncooked tortilla. I have wondered what it would feel like to mold it, roll it, cook it, eat it — fresh off the whatchamacallit.

I am also inept at cooking.

And so, armed only with my dream and my handicap, I contacted the original Ninfa’s on Navigation and asked to shadow a tortilla maker during a low-volume shift. Miraculously, General Manager Heath Beeman agreed.

Last week we gave you five ideas for tomorrow, a.k.a. the ulimate date night. Here's one last option, though; it was so obscene, it couldn't be ignored.

Got a spare $14,000 lying around? Then the Hilton Americas (1600 Lamar) has a Valentine's deal for you. This package includes limo service to the hotel, a deluxe suite, champagne upon arrival, a three-course meal finished with chocolates and cordials, breakfast the next morning, three dozen roses, his and hers Baume & Mercier watches, a hot air balloon ride and a two-hour spa package. Sign us up...after we win the lottery. -- Paul Galvani

IHOP is serving up free short stacks until 10 p.m. today in honor of National Pancake Day.

According to the folks at IHOP (and why would they lie?), “National Pancake Day dates back several centuries to when the English prepped for fasting during Lent. Strict rules prohibited the eating of all dairy products during Lent, so pancakes were made to use up the supply of eggs, milk, butter and other dairy products…hence the name Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday.”

Of course, Fat Tuesday was last week, but apparently IHOP didn’t want you to get distracted from Super Tuesday, so the festivities were postponed till today. Here’s hoping you didn’t give up dairy for Lent. – Keith Plocek