Crazybananas

Taking pictures of food is a fun way to share with friends and family what you ate.

We are all guilty of whipping out our phones to snap a photo of our food at dinner, then making it look artsy and hipster before uploading it to Instagram for all our friends to see, secretly hoping they will be jealous of the delicious meal we are about to consume.

While many restaurants are banning customers from snapping photographs of food while in the dining room due to the obnoxious distraction it causes, a researcher believes this trend of instagramming pictures of food needs to stop for a different reason.

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Texans love their homegrown restaurants and grocery stores, and the affinity that people feel for San Antonio-based H-E-B is easily matched (if not surpassed) by the cult of Whataburger. The best thing to come out of Corpus Christi aside from Selena (a.k.a. the Mexican Madonna), Whataburger inspires the sort of passion in Texans that In-n-Out evokes in those silly, silly Californians.

It's only natural, then, that two such beloved food purveyors would come together on a project guaranteed to endear both to fast food-loving Texans for all eternity.

It was announced a few weeks back that Whataburger would soon be selling its Fancy Ketchup, Spicy Ketchup and Original Mustard in H-E-B stores across the state. To anyone unfamiliar with the burger chain's condiments, let's just say they're pretty popular.

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Photo by Joshua Justice

Trent Brooks, pitmaster and owner of Brooks Place BBQ, earned a well-deserved spot on the list.

The last time Texas Monthly released its list of the 50 best barbecue joints in Texas was 2008. During that five-year interim, a lot has changed. Namely, the Austin-based magazine now boasts its very own barbecue editor -- the only publication anywhere to have a single person devoted to the cuisine.

That barbecue editor is Daniel Vaughn, the much-discussed and highly respected former barbecue blogger who's noted for two fairly amazing accomplishments as of late: First is his book, The Prophets of Smoked Meat, which is the debut title under Anthony Bourdain's line of books for publishing company Ecco.

The second accomplishment is driving more than 10,000 miles for that book as well as for Texas Monthly's latest barbecue guide. Indeed, between Vaughn and longtime food editor Pat Sharpe, the team covered an accumulated 33,168 miles and visited 658 places across the state before deciding on the final 50.

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When HB 1139 -- also known as the Bake Sale Bill -- was signed into law in June 2011 by Governor Rick Perry, it set a precedent in Texas for so-called Cottage Food Bills that allow small, independent bakers and other culinary artisans to make and sell food from their homes.

Former Houston Press food critic Robb Walsh profiled the "pirate bakers," canners and tamale-makers who fought to have greater freedoms in selling their goods in his feature "Come and Bake It" in February 2011 -- just a few short months before the bill was finally passed.

"Bake sales and homemade tamales are only two of a long list of beloved Texas food traditions that health authorities are stamping out," Walsh wrote of the dark days before the State of Texas saw the light.

"Your tax dollars are also helping eradicate the dewberry jam, mayhaw and muscadine jellies, and other preserves that were once sold at farm stands," Walsh continued. "To the disappointment of many budding local food entrepreneurs, homemade food products may not be sold at farmers' markets either."

Not only has that changed, now the state is allowing even more goods to be brought to farmers markets -- and it should be easier now, too.

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How many times have you thought, "I'm in the mood for a Whopper but I don't want to drive all the way to Burger King?" Probably not that often. But in case you have -- Burger King to the rescue.

Last week, Burger King announced its installment of a Burger King delivery service that started in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is now in parts of Houston. Washington D.C. was the first metro area to receive the delivery service, and several Houston areas are the second to join the list. Get ready for speedy Burger King delivery cars competing with the likes of Jimmy Johns and the multitude of pizza delivery vehicles.

Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco apparently have the most loyal customers, according to Burger King. Therefore, those locations received delivery service first.

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Photo by Chase Steely

Timmy Chan's suffers no fools.

According to a lawsuit filed on April 25, Houston restaurant chain Timmy Chan's lost 80 percent of its business after a photo of a rat fetus in a dish of fried rice was posted to Houston Hip Hop News's Facebook page.

Although Houston Hip Hop News claimed that the rat was found in a Timmy Chan's order, a cursory Internet search revealed that the photo had been circulating across the Internet for years. Each time it popped up, it was attributed to some poor Chinese restaurant in some random city.

As a result, Timmy Chan's is now suing Houston Hip Hop News -- but the lawsuit doesn't stop there. It also names Facebook and Houston Hip Hop News's website domain provider, Go Daddy, as co-defendants in the case.

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Photo by Michael Shum

Mayor Annise Parker talked food trucks and more in yesterday's live chat.

Mayor Annise Parker may be with the times on certain issues -- she's certainly adept at social media, for one -- but the City of Houston's current food truck ordinance isn't one of them.

Parker participated in a live online chat via CultureMap yesterday afternoon frm 1 to 2 p.m., part of her continuing campaign to be more accessible to Houstonians (her last live chat was via the Houston Chronicle back in October).

Predictably, one of the questions posed by an Internet denizen was on the status of the current food truck ordinance, which its opponents claim is too restrictive and biased against mobile food units in favor of brick-and-mortar restaurants. Last fall, City of Houston sustainability director Laura Spanjian proposed changes to that before a City Council that was, shall we say, less than versed on the topic of food trucks.

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Photo courtesy of Scott Beale

The bacteria from beer pong balls transfers into the beer throughout the game.

It's the classic college party game. Whether you've played beer pong or not, you are familiar with the simple concept -- throw ping-pong balls across a table in hopes of landing them in cups of beer on your opponent's side, so he or she has to drink it. The more your opponent has to drink, the closer you get to winning, and if he has to consume all the cups on his side, then you win.

Recently, the Associated Press reported that a study at Clemson University
revealed beer pong balls may carry bacteria that are harmful to the body. Shocking news, I tell you.

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Things I Want, Part I: a bacon-and-coffee-scented candle from @theyankeecandle called "RISE AND SHINE, BITCHES."

— Katharine Shilcutt (@kshilcutt) April 12, 2013

Occasionally, Twitter has the seemingly magical powers of a wishing well. Just a couple of Fridays ago, I dropped a penny into the Twitter well and wished for a bacon- and coffee-scented candle from Yankee Candle. And now, through the magic of the Internet, that wish has [mostly] come true.

The Massachusetts-based candle company is releasing two new candles on May 13: MMM, Bacon! and Movie Night. As the name would imply, MMM, Bacon! is bacon-scented, while the Movie Night candle smells of fresh, buttered popcorn.

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I'm honestly not even sure this isn't Photoshopped.

The Original Timmy Chan's on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (a.k.a. Timmy Chan's Chicken & Rice) may have only been inspected by the City of Houston Health Department once since November 2010, but that inspection didn't turn up anything that we'd call remotely offensive. And that Timmy Chan's on MLK almost certainly didn't serve a customer a rat fetus in their fried rice, as several news outlets were reporting this week.

The image above has been floating around the Internet for many weeks now, and each time it pops up on Facebook or a news outlet's Web site, it's attributed to a different restaurant in a different city. The fried rice with complimentary rat fetus was most recently attributed to a Chinese food court stand in a Lafayette mall earlier in April, and before that to Park City Chinese Food in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as the photo worked its way west across the country.

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