In the competitive, volatile market of food trends, one consumable blankets the majority of Earth yet is massively overlooked by epicureans: water. Commonly considered flavorless -- most would scoff to hear there are some 3,000 varieties of bottled water worldwide -- the commodity is getting reexamined as health issues abound and alcohol consumption is on the wane.

At the forefront of the water movement is water sommelier Michael Mascha, who is working to "educate people about premium bottled water" in hopes of "taking bottled water to the next level and making it a luxury item" -- a lofty goal, considering the liquid is most often regarded strictly as a commodity. However, after a private water tasting at New York City's Cook. Eat. Drink. Live. convention last weekend with Mascha -- a retired food anthropology professor at USC and self-proclaimed "authority on the art of water tasting" -- there may be more to water than meets the eye.

More on the art of water tasting and 'fine water etiquette' after the jump.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series for the caffeine-addicted.

Since brewed coffee is more than 90 percent water, it only makes sense to use the perfect H20 for the job, right?

But what is the "perfect" water for coffee? Are we talking about highfalutin fountains that'll bleed you dry, or straight-from-the creek agua with turtles still in it? Will a Brita filter suffice? Read more after the jump.

I've already covered the cheap and environmentally-friendly way to indulge in your sparkling water and soda whims with a home carbonater. But what about bubble-free beverages?

Lemon-scented H20 may have ticked off some restaurant goers out there, like Slashfood's Annoying Restaurant Trends revealed, but it's still a great way to get flavor in your beverages without spending a lot of money and downing a lot of artificial flavoring and sugar.

Just fill a carafe with water, and add one slice of lemon. Almost immediately, you'll be able to taste the lemony scent to your water. The neat thing is that you can keep filling it up and having more, so one little slice of lemon can fuel many glasses. The most I've left one in my carafe is 4 days. After a day or two, the water tastes almost like lemonade -- just a sweet-flavored, lemony water, without the tart bite and sugar needed to tame it.

In a world where we need to cut back and watch our spending, something like this can save our cash for other foodie areas. Why spend $1-$5 a pop for a bottle or two to drink when you can save that cash and get that great cut of meat, fish, or other tasty ingredients?

Bottled water just got even snobbier.

Enfant terrible (bad boy) of French fashion Jean Paul Gaultier has designed his own glass Evian bottles, due to be released in 2009. Secretly? I love this. They have pretty snowflakes. Other reasons:

1. I can't afford very many Jean Paul Gaultier things, and here we have a solution for when I need to feel fancy and also need to pay rent.
2. They are a great host's gift for when you're going to a dinner party at the home of non-drinkers.
3. Glass bottles, so, you know, your insides don't get Saran Wrap'd.

A case of Christian Lacroix (current featured designer) Evian bottles is $118 on the website, so I expect the Gaultier bottles will be around the same price.

Seven special Evian Haute Couture Bottles will also be made, and auctioned off to benefit the Evian Water Protection Institute. Click here for more information.

Flour is the basic structural ingredient. It's the starch in the flour that will, when mixed with liquid and heated in the oven, gelatinize and set when cooled. Flour also contains the proteins you need to make gluten, which is great for baking bread but not so desirable for making pie crusts. All you have to do is use a flour with a lower protein content, which generally means all purpose flour (cake flour might be too weak).

Fats are considered tenderizing agents for baked goods like cakes and pie crusts, rather than shortening agents like they would be for bread. In pie crusts, fats like oil, vegetable shortening, butter, and lard prevent gluten from getting formed in the first place by coating the flour granules, thus ensuring tenderness. Flakiness is achieved by the way you mix the dough: larger chunks of fat from less mixing make for more flakiness while more mixing and smaller fat chunks make a less flaky crust. They also add a lot of flavor, especially in the case of butter and animal fats. Lard and butter are also generally considered to have a better feel in the mouth, and lard is reputed to create a flakier crust than other fats.

Water and milk are the most common liquids, while buttermilk, eggs, and cream can also be used. Liquids function as a binding agent: they allow all of the ingredients to be evenly dissolved and incorporated. They also hydrate the the starch and protein in the flour and activate whatever leavening is being used. If you're using a liquid besides water, you're also adding fats, sugar, and acidity which is a good thing. The fats add tenderness, the adds to crust color, and the acidity makes the dough more stable and easier to roll out as well as taste better. Make sure to always use a cold liquid to keep the fat nice and cold, so it'll retain its shape/temperature and produce a flaky product.

Eggs are used for hydrating the dough, creating structure, giving color to the dough, and flavor. The whites are 90% water and the rest protein, so that aids in hydration and structure. The yolks are 50% water with the rest being mostly fat, contributing to hydration and tenderness as well as flavor and crust color.

Sugar adds sweetness and contributes the most to crust color. Ths crust turns golden brown because the sugar in the dough caramelizes as it's baked. Also, the texture of the dough can be changed by using sugar ground to different levels of fineness. For instance, powdered sugar makes a dough that is smoother, even if it doesn't taste as good as granulated.

As a documentary lover, I am so excited about two food documentaries coming out this fall. Both Flow and Food, Inc. deal with the way two basic necessities, water and food, are handled by big industry.

Food, Inc. sets out to expose the truth about the food industry. Most of it will probably be familiar to anyone who's read anything by Michael Pollan, who is featured in the film. The film delves into who makes food, how it's made, and what the consequences are to various groups of people. Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Gary Hirschberg (the head of Stonyfield Farms), and Joe Salatin (the head of Polyface Farms) are also featured.

Flow looks into similar issues with water. I heard about this the other day on Bob Edwards' Weekend on NPR, and saw that it is opening in a few weeks at my local art cinema. It is about issues surrounding water and whether it should be a public asset or privately controlled. Flow also delves into what is in our water, what is in the bottled water, and what local communities are doing to take back their water supply.

[via Serious Eats and Bob Edwards]

I hate when odors become a problem in the kitchen, especially when they've become attached to containers and the microwave. Here are a couple of deodorizing tips.

Wow, the confusion when buying water! These days, when you enter a grocery store and look on the shelf, you can view about 10 different flavored waters, each promising to be the perfect antidote to a specific ailment. There's Vitaminwater, Propel Fitness Water, Function Drinks, Sobe Life Water, Snapple Antioxident water, 24c Vitamin enhanced water, and much more.

Yesterday, I read an article from New York magazine about the entrepreneurs that started Function Drinks. And, for a brief moment, I thought that perhaps all these drinks were not bogus. Dr. Alex Hughes, one of the founders of Function Drinks, uses different dietary supplements to concoct beverages that help with a hangover, reduce stress, fight colds, improve memory, and even sustain sexual health. But, at the same time Hughes admits, "At the end of the day, we are not a pharmaceutical company. We're not trying to live up to those standards."

What's with the trend? Personally, when it comes to drinking water, I stick to non-flavored H2O that's not loaded with sugar.

Why are we so disgusted by the simple fact that all the drinking water on earth is recycled wastewater? Unfortunately, the natural recycling process, involving evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, does not deliver enough drinking water to the drier parts of the world. This Sunday, the New York Times Magazine had an article about Orange County's new facility where it's purifying 70 million gallons of recycled water a day.

Many people are skeptical and revolted by the idea that their drinking water is simply purified toilet water. But, if we were to analyze the general water infrastructure in the U.S., we'd realize that sewage enters all our waterways. The majority of us drink tap water that is disinfected at drinking-water plants far less sophisticated than the ones built in Orange County.

The water coming out of the Fountain Valley plant in Orange County is cleaner than many bottled waters, such as Poland Spring. However, to appease peoples' concerns about the water being unnatural and dirty, Fountain Valley puts the water back into nature (ponds, streams, lakes, etc.). Ironically, the water's purity dwindles when it goes back into the wild where it's exposed to bacteria, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural and industrial chemicals.

Should Fountain Valley care if people view their water recycling process as natural?

You may remember a few weeks ago that I brought you some information on starting your own sour dough culture. That is a very worthy pursuit, but even I admit that it can be hard to maintain and can be wasteful unless you make a lot of bread. But you want that great, complex taste that comes from the long development of yeast, right?

Well, there's a solution to that problem: preferments. Preferments are mixtures of flour, water, and very small amounts of yeast that are generally allowed to develop overnight. This way, you get highly developed yeast and organic acids without having to constantly feed a starter culture. There are four basic types of preferments. Keep reading to kind out all about them.

There is a book that came out recently about our obsession with bottled water called Botllemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. In it, the author talks about our reliance on bottled water and how tap water is generally as pure or more pure than bottled water.

Americans are getting away from bottled water, but it isn't because of this new book. Apparently bottled water is just too expensive, and in an economic downturn it's one of those luxury items that gets cut. This report from CNN.com interviews several people who have switched to tap water as well as a few calculations of how much you can save by cutting out bottled water.

The report also briefly mentions the environmental aspect of this trend. Refusing to buy bottled water helps cut down on the plastic bottles, which we've been told for years is what we need to do. Are you cutting back or cutting out bottled water for economic reasons?

A recent study found that cherry tomatoes grown in salt water can turn out tastier and heartier than ones grown normally, partially because the plants have to fight harder to fight the environmental stress and produce more compounds to help them cope. These compounds contain antioxidants like Vitamins C and E, which have healthy effects on those who consume the fruit.

The solution only contains 20% seawater. Unfortunately, not all genotypes of tomatoes react in the same way to the salt water. Some die because they cannot counteract the free radicals from the solution, so don't try to do this with larger tomatoes; it probably won't work. In the study, the water was constantly circulated and the pH controlled by a computer, so the researchers promise that the tomatoes won't taste salty.

The researchers, based at the University of Pisaone in Italy, are encouraging the growth of tomatoes in brackish water, because it will not only lead to juicier, healthier tomatoes, but will help to preserve our freshwater supplies.

Time to check in with our sister site GreenDaily for some environmental/food news:

• Water bottles: filters on the go; why we probably don't need as much water as everyone says we do

• Produce: not enough land to grow local stuff?; neighborhood gardening; cantaloupe salmonella scare; raw food safety tips; urban agriculture at its finest; try what one poster calls a "superfood berry"; how far has your fruit traveled?
  

• Milk: California might ban it; buy the best container; try organic; consumers fight back

• Chocolate is even better with when it comes complete with antioxidants and carbon offsets

• Junk Food: Cadbury goes green; organic ice cream; Sun Chips get sunnier
  

• Ball parks: all-you-can-eat seating; will the Nationals stadium be named after PETA?
  

I'm always cold. My mom worries that this is do to some circulatory problem. I think this it is due to me being a woman.

I have often wondered why ice comes in every drink I order. In the winter I've typically just come in from the outdoors and I'm freezing. The last thing I want is ice. In the summer, air conditioning is often so strong that I'm freezing indoors and again I don't want ice.

I'll tell you when I want ice - when it's hot! I like ice when I'm working or playing outside and sweating.

Mark Twain was quoted as saying, "The only distinguishing characteristic of the American character I've been able to discover is a fondness for ice water."

Do you like ice? Why do you think Americans like their ice so much?

Do you need to turn the faucet on and off when you're working with raw meat? Here's how to keep it clean.