Trends

Does anything capture the flavor of summer quite so perfectly as a popsicle? Chances are, just the thought of a treacly, neon-red line of strawberry-flavored melt dribbling down your chin takes you back to some perfect summer evening of your childhood. Throw in some fireflies and a pair of flip-flops, and you're twelve again.

As Nation's Restaurant News reports, this summer seems to be marking a resurgence of the popsicle -- but this time they're coming from restaurants, not ice cream trucks, and the flavors are for grown-up palates.

In New York, these run the gamut from the Latin-inspired, such as tamarind-chile and mango-pineapple spiked with chile de arbol (Ofrenda Cocina Mexicana) and sweet corn and caramel popcorn (Rosa Mexicano), to Asian treats, such as calamansi, mago lassi and Thai coffee (Rickshaw Dumpling Bar). In Las Vegas, guests at the Mandarin Oriental can order lemon-thyme, raspberry tea-passion fruit and watermelon-lemongrass pops poolside.

Read more after the jump...

Ballparks are always working on getting people in their seats. Lately they're reaching their fans through their stomachs with all-you-can-eat concessions -- a never-ending supply of nachos, hot dogs, popcorn and soda. These tickets cost around 50 percent more, usually ranging from around thirty to fifty bucks -- although they can run up to the two-hundred-dollar mark, according to USA Today -- and the trend has hit dozens of arenas, stadiums, and tracks.

At least one fan interviewed by Sports Illustrated is all for it. Matthew Cavalier recently took in an Orioles game at Baltimore's Camden Yards, sitting way out in left field (so to speak) in order to take advantage of the pumped-up food options. Cavalier thinks some teams need that extra calorie boost to get their fan base into the stadium. "The Phillies, Yankees and all them are always going to be fine. They don't need to do this. But for fans of, say, this team, it's a good plan."

They may be the most expensive menus in the world -- and we're not talking about the price of the truffle mac 'n' cheese.

It's the menus themselves: at a restaurant in Sydney, Australia, the hostess doesn't hand you a boring old paper menu, but a brand new iPad.

We've got to admit, that's pretty cool.

The custom app at Mundo, in North Sydney, not only allows you to touch screen your way through the restaurant's selection of internationally inspired tapas, but when you've decided between the Szechwan Calamari or the Kingfish Ceviche, you can send the order to the kitchen yourself.

There's no doubt that bacon has become one of the trendiest food items in the last few years. Many of us have already had bacon in our brownies. Some of us have even had bacon in our bourbon in the form of Don Lee's Bacon Infused Old Fashioned (a.k.a. the Benton's Old Fashioned, named after the smokey bacon brand used) at New York's PDT bar.

You can infuse your own vodka or bourbon with bacon at home by adding an ounce of cooled smoked bacon grease to 750ml of spirit. I've seen people infuse their spirit from four hours to two weeks. After the infusion process, freeze the spirit to solidify the fat for at least a couple of hours, and strain with as fine a strainer as you can -- I use a micron filter, the kind used in fish tanks -- to remove any oily residue.

If you don't want to go through all that trouble, a commercial product was introduced on the market about a year ago called Bakon, a bacon flavored vodka from Black Rock Spirits in Seattle, Washington, that costs about $30.

If bacon isn't your thing, Alaska Distillery has just introduced its new Smoked Salmon Flavored Vodka. The distillery is located in the town of Wasilla, the home of Sarah Palin. Outside of Alaska, the first state to get it is Texas, but the distillers hope their vodka makes a show in California and Washington state soon.

Click on the Bros Icing Bros website and now all you get is a message proclaiming, "We had a good run Bros..." and a link to a poker site. To compete against the all-male Icing game, females had recently been participating in a similar game -- "Hoes Weising Hoes" -- which goes by the same rules as the widespread Icing prank, but subs in bottles of Budweiser for Smirnoff.

Now that the parent company of Smirnoff Ice -- drinks giant Diageo -- stepped in and assisted in the shutting down of the Bros Icing Bros website, an equally ridiculous site has popped up with pretty much the same rules as before, but this time only for women.

The "bizarre food" craze shows no signs of abating. Spurred on by television personalities and tell-all books, intrepid eaters continue to search the globe for the strangest -- and most off-putting -- edibles they can get their hands on. Which explains the skyrocketing popularity of the latest extreme tourist activity in Cambodia: hunting and eating tarantulas.

The hairy spiders are considered a delicacy in Kampong Cham Town and Sukon, and locals have begun offering visitors the chance to capture their own. The hunting party visits forests and cashew plantations to find the spiders, catching the nocturnal creatures while they're sleeping by poking sticks into their holes.

And then, cue the dinner bell. Deep frying the spiders is a popular technique -- they're served with salt and garlic. Prefer a drink? No worries. You can get your tarantula mixed into a rice wine and jack fruit cocktail.

Us food folks love the kitchen. A place where delicious meals are prepared and then consumed? It's naturally our favorite room in the home. So when it comes time to replace those tired countertops, rusty plumbing or appliances on the fritz, our bellies drive us to open our wallets for the most lavish, extravagant remodel.

Keeping us in check, though, are our friends over at ShelterPop, who took the advice of some handy, thrifty designers on how remodeling money should, or more importantly, should not be spent. Rather than falling for trends, these experts encourage homeowners to "recycle consciously, refine gradually and regret minimally."


Head over to ShelterPop to find out which five kitchen trends you should avoid, so you can dine comfortably in your redone kitchen five years from now, guilt-free (and with enough money for dinner).

Just when you thought drinking couldn't get any more ridiculous than pouring vodka in your eye, a drinking game involving the alcopop Smirnoff Ice comes along, complete with a website called Bros Icing Bros. The website suggests to "buy the most disgusting flavored Ice or a 24-oz Ice. Pineapple, mango, and grape are top of the list for the most gut wrenching, mind numbing, throw-up-in-your-mouth Smirnoff Ice flavors."

Read the rules as posted on the viral website (with grammar errors) after the jump.

I began bartending many moons ago when hardly anyone had heard of a cocktail competition. I've judged a few, but only ever competed in one, so I sometimes feel quite old when the young whipper snapper bartenders boast how many competitions they've won.

My initial training in Birmingham, Alabama came from a bartender who used to take me to T.G.I. Friday's so I could see how the "serious bartenders" worked. The flashy, bottle flingin' bartenders there competed to see who had the best flair -- and I'm not just talking about the number of decorative stick pins and message buttons on their suspenders. Friday's actually held the first ever "flair bartending competition" in the mid 1980's, inspired by one of their pourers who had a knack for juggling bottles. A few years later, they held the first world championship bartending competition. Fun fact: The winner trained Tom Cruise for the movie Cocktail.

Flair competitions now occur worldwide with large liquor company sponsorship. However, the cocktail competition world has also taken a turn towards actual mixing talent and not just showmanship. Perhaps the Japanese culinary show Iron Chef (with a cult US following) is partially to blame for the rise in competitive drink mixing.

With the legalization of making beer at home, microbrewing took off as homebrewers figured out how to sell their beer in the commercial marketplace. Whiskey is distilled beer, so it only makes sense that the passion of some of these brewers led them to diversify their business to also include distilled products, as well.

With home distilling still illegal, craft distilling isn't necessarily following the same growth pattern as craft brewing, but you will find small brewers such as Oregon's Rogue Ales and California's Anchor Brewing distilling innovative spirits such as single malt high proof rye and spruce gin. Like the craft brewers, many craft distillers are unfettered by tradition and shareholder profit pressure so they explore and create adventurous spirits that the big corporate distillers don't have the freedom to.