Photo by Troy Fields

Jus' Mac does mostly mac, and mostly does it well.

​Like it or leave it, restaurants specializing in macaroni and cheese -- that ultimate "white people comfort food," as my baffled brown friends call it -- are becoming increasingly popular across the United States. From Connecticut's J.B. Mack, which bills itself as "America's 1st Macaroni and Cheese Restaurant," to the world-famous S'MAC in Manhattan, the concept has never been more popular.

Such is the case with the subject of this week's cafe review, Jus' Mac. The mac 'n' cheese mecca on Yale has been such a success since opening in the Heights in October 2010, it's already opened a second location in Sugar Land. It's also added more than just macaroni and cheese to its menu: The restaurant offers an assortment of salads and panini, but still specializes in its namesake cheesy pasta dish.

Single-dish restaurants like this are on the rise in America after years of chains like The Cheesecake Factory and TGI Fridays, which try to cram roughly a thousand dishes onto each menu. In an article from Chow last year, Rebecca Flint Marx took a look at why these "one-trick ponies--places that specialize in one dish, albeit with multiple variations--aren't going away."

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Photo by Joanna O'Leary

The giant cupcake casts an impressive shadow.

​A few weeks ago, Katharine Shilcutt issued predictions for 2012 Houston food trends. Commenters wrote in with their own suggestions, including one from Stacy Zane:

I was just in NY and saw that Doughnut Plant. But something else I saw was Baked by Melissa - quarter-sized cupcakes! I know the last thing we need is another cupcake trend but I was really into them! They're so teeny tiny and you can sample a lot of flavors without feeling like a complete fat ass.

Stacy, you're right: the last thing we need is another cupcake trend. However, with regards to the rise of the "tiny cupcake," I respectfully disagree. In fact, I foresee the very opposite trend: Giant Cupcakes.

The giant cupcake is, of course, a contradiction in terms, as a cupcake by definition replicates a cake in smaller (cup) form. Enlarging this baked good is akin to making a large "shot," filling a pint glass of straight alcohol to quaff in one swallow instead of the standard one-and-a-half ounces.

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Photo by John Kiely

​I recently found myself on the quiet side of the glass partition from the McDonald's Playland at the new Ella location, in what I like to call the Old-Timers section, the place in just about every small-town McDonald's where retirees congregate.

Oak Forest is like a small town, just outside the Loop. I'd rather not call guys Old-Timers, but the man at the next table was dressed in a jumpsuit and a trucker hat, and started talking to me of old times. He'd just moved out of his house, which might explain the Humble Oil receipt he produced, from his Chevy pickup's first tank of gas, way back when.

"The price of a tank was the same as a gallon of gas today," he showed me. As I sidled toward the relative comfort of a roomful of screaming kids, O-T mentioned that original McDonald's adult meals are now Happy Meals. He didn't have a receipt for that, so I Googled it later.

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Please, don't cut me!

​Many holiday traditions are built around food. One of my family's traditions is lamb cake.

As far back as I can remember, lamb cake has been a part of our Easter festivities. It is always plain white cake, with cream-cheese frosting and green-dyed coconut grass. Even after my brothers and I had all grown up, the cake appeared. For a few years, with no children young enough to appreciate it and with no grandchildren yet in the picture, the cake took on a slightly less cartoonish bent. The pink frosted nose and ears disappeared, and the grass was no longer elaborately decorated with marzipan carrots and flowers. It was simple, with no adornment but white frosting gently brushed with a fork so as to resemble a woolen coat, but unmistakably a lamb.

It has always creeped me out. It wasn't so bad for those few faceless years, but when that little thing is cuted up as much as my mom can manage, its blue doe eyes peering up at me as I descend, knife in hand, to portion it out to a couple of excited children who were, only moments before, attempting to stroke the cake while cooing softly at its adorableness, it always gives me a little shiver. Perversely, I still look forward to that cake every year.

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​With the recent disasters that have occurred in Japan, we're all looking for a way to help out however we can. There are numerous benefits and texting campaigns that have successfully raised money for relief efforts.

Today Sprinkles Cupcakes is selling Red Cross Red Velvet cupcakes to benefit the Japan earthquake and Pacific tsunami relief efforts (the store closes at seven). Sprinkles had a similar promotion in 2010 for the Haiti Relief Fund, which raised $20,000 in a single day.

The cupcakes are Southern-style red velvet chocolate cake with thick cream cheese frosting. A hundred percent of the proceeds from the sale of these cupcakes will benefit the American Red Cross relief efforts. Stop by and provide a little help during these troubled times.

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prnewswire.com

It's beautiful because it's thin.

​Diet soda in a thinner can. A visual reflection of the body you're working towards or looking to maintain by cutting out empty calories. Hey, it makes sense. So why is there so much controversy surrounding Diet Pepsi's new "Skinny Can"?

Well, for one, that's not exactly the marketing pitch used to announce the debut last week. The press release reads: "In celebration of beautiful, confident women, Diet Pepsi presents the taller, sassier new Skinny Can at New York's Fall 2011 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Feb. 10-17." Jill Beraud, Chief Marketing Officer, PepsiCo, adds, "Our slim, attractive new can is the perfect complement to today's most stylish looks, and we're excited to throw its coming-out party during the biggest celebration of innovative design in the world."

And it goes on like that for a while, repeatedly referring to the Skinny Can as "attractive," often partnered with the word "slim" (words that seem to be interchangeable in the entertainment and fashion industry), and sparking debate among critics.

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modomatic

​I love eggs. I would eat them in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here, there, and everywhere - if they weren't loaded with cholesterol.

But earlier this week the USDA released surprising findings from a recent nutritional re-evaluation, reporting that modern-day eggs are healthier than previously believed.

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freddy

​According to a 2009 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 1 percent of adolescents ate as many servings of fruit and vegetables as recommended by the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It sounds shocking, but then again, I'm fairly certain I could stand to eat a piece of lettuce or two now and then. The difference is, I have a choice. As we reported last week, more than 70 percent of students enrolled in HISD's breakfast and lunch program eat for free or at a reduced rate due to economic hardship, making the meals they get at school their primary source of nutrition for the better part of the year.

Statistics like these, and new stricter federal regulations on food in schools, have spurred a nationwide movement to clean up the lunch line. Today Austin-based Whole Foods Market jumped on the bandwagon, announced it will be awarding more than 500 free salad bars in schools across the United States through the Salad Bar Project, "a campaign created to help empower schools to increase their students' lunchtime consumption of fruits and vegetables."

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LarryB08

So healthful...and expensive.

​Little. Blue. Packs a powerful punch.

No, we're not talking Viagra, we're referring to the blueberry. King on the list of "superfoods," blueberries are chock full of cancer cell inhibitors and anti-inflammatory agents. In addition, recent research has found the tiny fruit effective in lowering brain damage from stroke, preventing cell replication of the hepatitis C virus, lowering cholesterol, alleviating the symptoms of depression, and enhancing memory in older adults - the kind of hype that translates into marketing gold for major food manufacturers.

However, last week award-winning investigative journalist Mike Adams (also known as "The Food Ranger") released a report for Natural News's FoodInvestigations.com exposing the deceptive labeling practices employed by General Mills, Kellogg's, Betty Crocker, and Target brand foods in regards to their blueberry products. What he found? Most contained little to no blueberries at all.

What the hell? If those blue-colored bits floating around in our cereal and lurking in our muffins aren't blueberries, then what are they? According to Adams, many times what American consumers perceive as a blueberry is actually a combination of artificial colors derived from petrochemicals (most commonly Red #40, and Blue #1 or #2), hydrogenated oils, and sugars - ingredients more often associated with causing cancer than preventing it.

A few examples highlighted in the report:

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You'll never know what gets you in Texas

Between tainted peanuts and fatal spinach, we feel like there have been a lot of Texas food scares lately. But it's the stuff we don't hear about that gave Texas a failing grade in a new study of how states report icky food outbreaks.

If you live in Texas and eat food, you will probably die, or at least become violently ill. That's what we're taking away from a study that gives the Lone Star state an "F" in reporting outbreaks of foodborne illness.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest studied ten years' worth of CDC data and decided that the more reporting of such outbreaks a state has, the more likely it is to have a swift-acting, effective public health system.

Because Texas only reported an average of one outbreak per one million people, we apparently blow. Our fellow flunkies in the back row include Arizona, Arkansas, Nevada, Indiana and Kentucky, and eight others. Wyoming, home to a few dozen people and a shitload of cattle, got an "A."

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