Houston Blog

Photo by Robb Walsh

Rare hamburgers are considered dangerous by food safety experts. You can take your own chances with a burger cooked medium-rare, but you better think twice before you serve any burger cooked to less than 160 degrees F to others, as I was recently warned by microbiologist. When I said I thought it was okay because I ground my own beef, she laughed and asked me how often I sterilized my meat grinder and what kind of bleach solution I used on my cutting board.

I was about to give up, until she mentioned irradiated ground beef. If you buy irradiated ground beef and don't contaminate it, you could eat a rare burger safely, she said. So where do you find irradiated ground beef in Houston?

Photos by Nikki Metzgar

First, there was whipped cream. Then, there was cheese. Now, it's pancake (or waffle) batter being sprayed out of aerosol cans. God-fearing people everywhere are trembling as technology pushes us ever closer to experiencing breakfast as nature never intended.

We tried Batter Blaster for ourselves. The batter was thick and slower to ooze out of the can than whipped cream, which increased the ick factor. As it cooked, a lot more bubbles rose to the top than with homemade batter. The finished pancakes weren't really fluffier since they were so thin, but they were very light. The flavor was a bit off - it was so salty, a generous portion of syrup couldn't cover the taste.

Photo by Robb Walsh

Zevia Natural Cola is the first of the new stevia-sweetened diet soft drinks I've tasted. There is also a Zevia diet root beer and a diet lemon-lime. No doubt you've heard of stevia, the newly approved natural sweetener that's 300 times sweeter than sugar, with no calories. Stevia isn't a chemical like aspartame, sucralose, and the rest. It comes from a plant that's also known as sweetleaf. The new sweetener takes some getting used to.

The flavor of Zevia Natural Cola is pretty good at first -- the problem is it won't go away. I had a glass of it ten minutes ago, and I still can't get the taste out of my mouth. I tried adding a squeeze of lime to the glass to increase the acid a little, but that didn't work. I tried sucking on a lime wedge. That didn't work either. I'm thinking the only way to get rid of the aftertaste of the diet soft drink is to eat a bag of potato chips.

Photos by Blake Whitaker

Preparation is key

Imagine a catastrophic hurricane has severed communication with the outside world. You're thirsty, but the water coming out of the tap is contaminated. Society has devolved into lawlessness, and your neighbors have stolen your bottled water by torchlight. The bars are probably closed.

But you're not worried -- you've got the LifePack Emergency Water Filter! The device uses a two-bag osmosis system and a shot of something lemon-lime-flavored to turn dirty water into "drink." The box claims you can use it to make anything except seawater and antifreeze potable. Sewage and industrial waste are "not recommended." Really -- you can fill the bag with Port Arthur's finest ditch water, then pee in it, and, after filtration, the resulting concoction merits only the sort of warning you'd give someone who's about to pair a steak with white wine.

But we weren't about to endorse the Emergency Water Filter without confirming that it's capable of satisfying your post-disaster hydration needs. After all, the kit isn't cheap -- about $35 at most camping places. (LifePack sent it to us for free, unsolicited.) To determine its effectiveness, the Houston Press Filtration Testing Committee -- or four staff members who enjoy putting off real work to drink out of something that looks like a colostomy bag -- settled on first filtering duck pond water from Hermann Park.

Photos by J.C. Reid

Pretty. But is it pretty tasty?

What if our relationship to food was not one of physical necessity?

What if we consumed food not for corporeal nourishment but solely for pleasure and intellectual stimulation, much as a music lover consumes a symphony or as an art lover consumes a painting?

What would food look like, feel like, smell like, sound like, and most importantly taste like, in such a circumstance?

Fortunately for the food-obsessed among us who lay awake at night pondering such questions, a culinary movement known by the blanket term molecular gastronomy (MG for short) has evolved over the last 20 years to answer such imponderables. In recent years the movement has gained considerable momentum with the near-universal recognition of two MG practitioners as the "best restaurants in the world": El Bulli in Spain and The Fat Duck in the UK. The success and adulation showered upon these twin pillars of the MG movement have spawned a number of high-profile MG restaurant launches in the US -- Alinea and Moto in Chicago, wd~50 and Tailor in New York City, minibar in Washington D.C., and The Bazaar in Los Angeles.