"texas" news and stories

Cake balls, best described as ooey-gooey cupcakes with two tops, have become a certifiable trend in Texas and South Louisiana.

"We've definitely created kind of a craze," admits Robin Ankeny, the baker behind the Cake Ball Company in Dallas, where the local paper recently ran a story on how to make Valentine's versions of the wildly popular treats.

Ankeny started selling cake balls in 2006, inspiring a horde of professional and amateur imitators – and a few detractors: "Put down the cake balls," an Austin blogger pleaded in a recent post bidding good riddance to the past year's fads. The treats were so ubiquitous by Christmastime that the Times-Picayune food editor Judy Walker reported in early 2009 that they "turned up at just about every party or gathering I attended."

Walker admitted she'd never before heard of cake balls, a sentiment shared by food experts across the region. While Ankeny insists cake balls are an old Southern tradition, the treats are still rarely found in states that don't share a border with Texas.

With celebrities having already collected Senate seats and governorships, Commissioner of Agriculture may emerge as the next hot office for wannabe politicos.

The trend is taking off in Texas, where satirist and sometime country music star Kinky Friedman -- fresh off a bruising gubernatorial campaign, which even his buddy Willie Nelson's fundraisers couldn't salvage -- has thrown his 10-gallon hat in the ring. Friedman has proposed putting more Texas-grown foods on school lunch lines, ramping up alternative-fuel programs and building on a farmer's market tradition established decades ago by former commissioner Jim Hightower.

"The last commissioner I really admired was Jim Hightower," Friedman says. "When he did farmer's markets, they said people would never buy from subsistence farmers. Now they're the hottest thing going."

An East Texas man claims he found a fragment of a rat's jawbone in a package of frozen vegetables he bought at Walmart.

Ben Leonard of White Oak, Texas, told KLTV-TV that his wife found the fragment in a package of Walmart's Great Value brand frozen mixed vegetables. The family ate the vegetables before they figured out the fragment was likely a rat's jaw.

"She thought it was a big chunk of corn cob or something and the further I got into it the more I thought, 'Oh no, this is rat's jaw!'" Leonard told KLTV.

Leonard said he reported his find to the local Walmart, where the vegetables were purchased, and he told KLTV they directed him to the manufacturer. Walmart did not respond to Slashfood's request for comment.

In an e-mail, Leonard told Slashfood the company held a conference call with him when he first reported his discovery, then immediately turned contact over to their insurance company.

"They did not ask to examine what I had. I told them I was willing for anyone to examine the small chunk of bone but I was not going to send it any where," he wrote.

• Texas apiarists predict backyard beekeeping will be big in the coming year.
• Austin's "Biscotti Man," who annually makes more than 2,000 biscotti to the tune of Handel's "Messiah," shares recipes for two favorite varieties.
• Sharon Ely's locally famous posole is now available in a jar.
• Bread-baking is the kitchen equivalent of massage or meditation -- especially when the bread's baked in a Dutch oven, a fail-safe way of producing calm-inducing crispy crusts.

A steak delivery chain that's closed half its outlets is pinning its turnaround hopes on a state that seems perpetually starved for beef.

"If you can't make a steak delivery system work in Texas, then something's very wrong," concedes Mark Kime, who opened the state's first Steak-Out in Fort Worth late last month.

The Steak-Out concept -- summarized on the company's Web site as "from our grill to your door" -- was created in 1986 in Alabama by David Martin, who helped grow the chain to 70 stores. There are now a mere 30 outlets spread across a dozen Southern and Midwestern states.

According to a recent story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the chain shut down 10 stores over the last 18 months for under-performing and failing to comply with company standards. Chief Operating Officer Peter Petrosian told the paper that Steak-Out plans to revitalize its operations by recruiting more franchisees like Kime, who's spent 17 years in the restaurant business.