​What's not to eat in Houston?

That's the question we pose in this week's cover story, "We Love Food." The answer -- in case you hadn't already guessed -- is very little. There is virtually no cuisine you can't find in Houston, and most of what you find is very good. With 8,000 restaurants and counting, we are spoiled for choice in this city.

We are also a sprawling metropolis in every sense of the phrase, meaning that being spoiled for choice in a city so large can make it difficult to seek out and find the best of the best. That's where we come in.

From Nigerian goat pepper soup to updated Salvadoran-American breakfast hybrids, from historic Nation of Islam desserts to Vietnamese waffles made with pandan grass, this week's cover story is our guide to some of the most interesting food in the city, one favorite dish at a time. There are 100 in all to choose from.

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​Fred Mueller was a promising Bellaire High student down in Galveston enjoying his first Mardi Gras.

He went off on a food run in his pick-up truck; when he got lost he made a u-turn on Seawall Boulevard. When he did his truck was smashed into by a motorcycle driven by Christopher Nooregard, a beloved longtime vet of the Jamaica Beach Volunteer Fire Department.

Initially, the cops said the accident was not Mueller's fault. Then they decided to press intoxicated manslaughter charges against him.

What followed was a tortuous nightmare crawl through the legal system that left bad feelings on all sides. Read this week's cover story, "A Wrong Turn," for the full tale.

Jackson and Herman Cain

​Responds is probably the wrong word to use when you consider the long rebuttal Jackson wrote regarding Gus Garcia-Roberts profile on the former SNL cast member that ran this week in Village Voice publications including the Houston Press.

Jackson claims that Garcia-Roberts wrote things that were false, but she went into the interview "knowing the liberal media would lie, exaggerate and denigrate." The full content of her response as well as Garcia-Roberts' response to her response is after the jump. You can read the entire blog post on the subject from Garcia-Roberts on the Miami New Times website.

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​In April 2010, Xavier Christopher Foster, a freshman at the historically black Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, walked into a private apartment for a Kappa Alpha Psi pledge meeting.

Instead of learning more about one of the nation's oldest African-American fraternities, he endured five hours of "near nonstop beatings, verbal and psychological abuse" at the hands of Kappas (a.k.a. Pretty Boys). The weapons of choice ranged from wood paddles to rods.

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​In 2010, event planner Sharon Johnson says that KTSU-FM 90.9 management sabotaged a trip she had put together for the 2010 New Orleans Jazz Festival. As a result, she may file a class-action suit "because it hurt me badly," Johnson tells Hair Balls.

Two years ago, Johnson organized a bus excursion for Houstonians to attend the jazz blowout in Louisiana. The package included round-trip fare, a room in a four-star hotel and entry to the festival grounds.

To pique additional interest, Johnson decided to pay KTSU for on-air advertisements, a strategy that worked. "Every time they ran the ads," says Johnson, "I received three to four calls from people who wanted to go."

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​A rancher on the verge of bankruptcy. A state on the verge of another devastating drought. A nation on the verge of a depleted beef supply. These are the stories told in this week's cover feature, Meat Market, which examines the many reasons -- from the hoof up -- that you'll be paying more for your meat in 2012.

The long and short of it is this: Cattle are incredibly inefficient animals. For every 20 pounds of feed you give them, they produce only one pound of flesh. That's 20 pounds of feed -- which could be corn, alfalfa or other such crops -- that could be used to feed human beings. And you have to own a lot of land in order to have a profitable ranch: A regular cow-calf operation requires three acres of land for each cow and her calf.

You can see, then, why the drought of 2011 was so devastating for Texas ranchers. Not only were their fields burned up -- and without fields in which to graze, you can't support cattle -- other crops were too. That means hay, cubes and all other types of feed were suddenly rendered in short supply. Prices soon skyrocketed and ranchers began to liquidate their herds as quickly as possible.

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Bell County Jail

Kirt Yarbrough Sr.: Sixteen-year vet molested girl born the year he joined the force, allegedly.

​ A month ago, the Houston Press brought you an in-depth story chronicling how cops nationwide have molested dozens of teenage police cadets who had enrolled in the Explorer Program, which is chartered through Boys Scouts of America subsidiary Learning for Life.

As if to drive home the veracity of our story, a Killeen cop was charged with sexual assault earlier this month after he allegedly had an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old female Explorer.

According to KXXV, Kirt Yarbrough Sr. was placed on administrative leave on January 4 and arrested on January 12 after an investigation by the Bell County District Attorney's office. Yarbrough, a 16-year veteran, posted his $100,000 bond the day of his arrest. The continuing investigation could result in the filing of additional charges, Killeen cops said in a press release.

KCEN dug up more lurid details over the weekend.

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​It hasn't been making a lot of waves here, given the excitement over the Texans' playoff games, but the NBA season has begun.

Of course, if you're a Rocket fan, you know what that means: A team not good enough for the playoffs but not bad enough to get a franchise pick in the draft.

Our Sean Pendergast assesses the 2012 team in this week's cover story, and predicts that not much will change:

They are the best of the non-playoff teams, the tallest midget, the perennial fourteenth selector in the NBA Draft. Too good to be terrible and bottom out, not good enough to make the playoffs, with ownership willing to spend and a razor-sharp management team, they are just blessed enough to be cursed.

Feel the excitement!! At least Pendergast's story, "NBA Purgatory," is entertaining, even if the Rockets generally aren't.

​Critics say that KTSU has a soul that's empty, its "Jazz In All Its Colors" now a potent hue of smooth-jazz wallpaper.

In this week's cover story (and accompanying sidebar by John Nova Lomax), current and former DJs of KTSU, as well as the station's lost listeners, talk about the so-called death of "The Choice" 90.9 FM, which will turn 40 years old in June.

Not only has KTSU lost its way by ditching straight-ahead jazz for commercially-geared smooth jazz, critics explain, but the people in charge have created a work environment that a former KTSU jock compares to a "concentration camp."

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​We like to think we are pretty hard to surprise. As the son of hard-living hippies who were close friends of people like Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt, I'd seen more by the time I was 12 than many of my peers have experienced up to this day. Since then, I've traveled the world and worked in journalism for close to 11 years.

Many years ago, a much older buddy of mine used to call me "The Sphinx," because he said I'd experienced so much and seemed so nonplussed by all that passed before me.

And yet this past year I spent trolling the Hair Balls crime wire was a year of shocks, astonishments and multiple befuddlings the likes of which I've never seen.

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