It's a tale as old as time. Entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a revolutionary new energy drink, entrepreneur convinces his parents to invest $1.2 million dollars, entrepreneur unleashes revolutionary new energy drink on the market.

I'm talking about Alex Ilica and his locally-produced beverage Viso, which, as of 2008 at least, was still being brewed and bottled in an old slaughterhouse off Interstate Avenue here in Portland. What makes Viso's line of energy drinks different from, say, Rockstar or Red Bull? First off, they're flavored with organic fruit juices, contain natural caffeine and use either Splenda or organic cane juice for sweetening.

Most importantly though, drinking a Viso doesn't result in the sugar crash that typically accompanies other energy drinks. Its caffeine content also packs a wallop: a whole 300 milligrams. To put that in perspective, a can of Red Bull contains 80 and a Starbucks Grande Latte has 150. There's also a line of caffeine-free Viso drinks but, ultimately, why would you ever bother with those?

I wouldn't mention it here if I wasn't a semi-regular Viso drinker. Speaking as someone who isn't a big fan of coffee, the beverage is a modern day miracle. Like other Viso devotees, I can attest to the fact that, perhaps because of its vitamin and organic fruit ingredients, it doesn't leave you feeling lethargic and lousy a few hours after drinking one.

Still, a word of caution: the caffeine contained within the average can of Viso is nothing to be taken lightly. As a colleague once advised, "never drink one after 12 PM." I made the mistake of downing a can last week during the cocktail hour. I didn't get to sleep before 3 AM that night. It's also a beverage that shouldn't be consumed quickly. This could very likely lead to your heart bursting out of your chest and immediately enrolling in the nearest triathlon. Pregnant women and the elderly? They should probably stick with Earl Grey.

Follow these simple tips and Viso may come through for you in a pinch one day. After a sleepless night last summer, I managed to get through a day-long hiking trip after downing one. Viso is currently available only in Oregon and Northern California but the owner plans to take it nationwide within the next few years. I'm predicting that it will eventually become a cult institution among grad students and workaholics from coast to coast.

Still, there are those that contest that the old formula before a package redesign last summer was superior. Myself, I'll say that the taste of the new flavors is definitely an improvement and I think they contain the same kick.

Labels: food

If you need some addtional context for this video, click here.

Labels: food, pets, stomach aches

By now you've heard about miraculin, AKA "Miracle Fruit." It was profiled in the New York Times last summer and thousands of journalists and bloggers have written articles and posts about it since. If all of this is news to you, here's a quick rundown. There's a berry native to West Africa that makes sour and bitter foods taste sweet and sweeter foods unbearably sweet. It's a food-additive that, while perfectly legal in the US, has yet to be officially approved for sale by the FDA.

Miracle Fruit has no known negative side-effects other than the potential for an upset stomach and it remains a big hit among dieters in Japan. All in all, it's a relatively harmless novelty worthy of Willy Wonka.

And taking it can ultimately lead to you licking a seriously annoyed house cat.

Meet my sister Shanna and her boyfriend Kyle. They're two earnest, God-fearing, all-American 20-somethings and, prior to eating Miracle Fruit, would have never considered sticking their tongues on a filthy, disgusting feline. Have a look at this picture. Don't they just radiate all-Ameican-ness? Please ignore the fact that the orange cat looks like he's about to punch Kyle in the face. His name is Turbo. He likes to do that sort of thing.

I bought a few boxes of Miracle Fruit, in tablet form, off the internet that made their way to Portland from, strangely and disconcertingly enough, Slovakia. Obviously, I wasn't going to stick any of this stuff in my mouth without first testing it on two suckers people I respect and care about.

Last week, Shanna, Kyle and I rounded up several things to try with these tablets and chopped a few of them in two. According to the instructions, a half tablet would be enough to alter our tastebuds for anywhere between fifteen minutes and two hours. After Shanna and Kyle stuck their tablets in their mouths and didn't immediately keel over and die, I grabbed mine. The first step was to let them slowly dissolve on our tongues. This took forever.

But it was well worth it. The first thing we dug into were lemons wedges, which, amazingly, now tasted like lemon Starbusts. From there we moved on to spoonfuls of vinegar that seemed more like brown sugar. A glass of Guinness tasted like a watered-down chocolate milkshake. Once bitter wine tasted like Kool-Aid. The stinging effects of wasabi were almost entirely muted. Shots of rotgut mescal that a friend brought back from a trip to Mexico tasted like top-shelf liquor. Bitter beer? Not bitter anymore. Hot sauce had magically metamorphosed into mild salsa.

Simply put, Miracle Fruit lived up to its name and completely exceeded our expectations. We thought we could handle this. Unlike others we'd heard about, we assumed we had the willpower to not let all of this go too far and that we could learn from the mistakes of those who had come before us.

Fat chance.

Within twenty minutes we were going through the cupboards looking for anything consumable to stick in our mouths. Coffee beans, ginger and peanut butter tasted pretty much the same but we discovered that oatmeal worked as a great pallet cleanser for everything we could get our hands on. Spoonfuls of sugar just tasted more sugary and a bottle of Mexi-Coke tasted like Pepsi. The sweetness of an old package of Batman fruit snacks tasted incredibly sweet.

Then we got into the Robitussin. If you ever find yourself "flavor-tripping" at a Miracle Fruit Party, I strongly recommend bringing a bottle to freak everyone out once they start getting bored. With a miracluin-covered tongue, Robitussin tastes like the most amazingly screwed-up substance on the planet. It's not entirely unpleasant but incredibly overpowering. I can't quite capture the experience with words. Try it sometime. You won't be disappointed.

I don't know who's idea it was to grab one of the cats but suddenly we were all taking turns.

It took a grand total of, maybe, forty minutes for us to go from relatively sane people just like yourself to depraved feline-lickers. If Lou Reed had access to Miracle Fruit in the '60s I'm sure he would have written a thousand songs about it instead of heroin. I've got a video of Kyle tasting the cat but I guess I'll save that for another day.

You can wipe those foul jokes and metaphors right out of your head. That's my sister up there, dammit. Anyway, how did the cat taste? Not surprisingly, like hair.

Still, the cat wasn't the worst thing I stuck in my mouth that night. I found a lemon Starburst and it was unbearable. The sweetness tore through my tongue like an inferno in a Pixie Sticks factory and I had to spit it out within seconds. It was the sweet-equivalent of eating a super-hot jalapeno and it took several glasses of water to get the taste out of my mouth.

As time went on, we each kept a wedge of lemon handy to see if the effects had worn off yet. Kyle's tablet sputtered out first at the 30-minute mark. The effects vary from person to person. Shanna made it to an hour. I finally started tasting the sourness of my lemon wedge at around 85 minutes. By this time, Kyle was clutching his stomach and Shanna was feeling "pukey." She went into full "Evil Monkey from Family Guy" mode right before kicking me out of her apartment.

Curse you, Miracle Fruit! How many once normal relationships with siblings have you tarnished? How many homes have you wrecked? How many lives have you destroyed? How many millions of dollars have you cost this country in ineffective recovery prog...

...ok, enough of that. If you ever decide to give the stuff a try, heed this advice: remember, while vinegar may taste like brown sugar it ain't brown sugar and lemon juice is hard on the walls of the average stomach. Mix these things with hot sauce, candy, random condiments, alcohol, wasabi, cough syrup and cat dander and you're bound to get an upset tummy.

Moderation is key. You've got to control yourself but avoiding the inevitable queasiness that follows "flavor-tripping" is hard when pretty-much everything tastes fantastic.

Labels: food, stomach aches

When it comes to things that are edible and won't kill me, I'll try just about anything. On Saturday night I found myself in the middle of a discussion about what myself and a few friends would and would not eat. I drew the line at cats but admitted that, under the right circumstances, I might try a dog burger. Of course, only if I could be sure the dog was raised free-range and certified organic and all that. No Golden Retrievers though. This beg the question: what would be the most suitable pooch for this sort of thing?

Did you think you'd be reading a blog post about dog meat right now? Well, for what it's worth I didn't think I'd be writing about it either. Weird how these things work.

Anyway, a few Portland blogs linked to this article about "miracle fruit" that appeared in the NYT yesterday. Supposedly, a small berry native to West Africa is capable of temporarily suspending a person's ability to taste sour and icky foods. Lemons suddenly taste like candy and a shot of rotgut tequila goes down like Sprite.

A new restaurant somewhere in town plans to stick the berries in its cocktails but I'd be more interested in giving them a try on their own. Such a berry could allow me the ability to eat just about anything without gagging. Or enable me to finally make a successful run at vegetarianism. Regular-flavored broccoli and tofu? Bleeeeeeech!

Labels: food

The Irish Shepard's Pie turned out well. It's a St. Patrick's Day miracle!

The green-dyed ale, uh, that's another story. 12 drops of dye a pint is about 9 drops too many. I may have green teeth for the rest of my life, as may any future children and/or grandchildren. That must have been industrial-strength food dye that we found in the pantry.

Labels: food, holidays

I write these words from my parents' kitchen.

I'm covered from head to toe in Bisquick, mashed potatoes and hamburger meat. Moments ago, I discovered a small carrot in my shoe. I'm beaten and bruised but my enemy is fairing far worse than I. It's currently 15 minutes into a 35 minute ride in a 350 degree oven.

Do you hear that, Irish Shepard's Pie?!!! I BEAT YOU! AND IN 20 MINUTES I'M GOING TO FEED TO YOU TO MY FAMILY! WE WILL SING SONGS AND TELL TALES OF OUR EMERALD ISLE FOREFATHERS! YES, INDEED, WE ARE AS IRISH AS IRISH CAN BE! Er...uh...I think my great-grandfather may have been Irish BUT NEVER MIND THAT! ERIN GO BRAUGH, BEEEOTCH!

I'm supposed to be enjoying a laid-back St. Patrick's Day this evening. That went out the window when my sister suggsted that we can a simple chicken meal and try something more elaborate. Of course, she left me do the cooking while she went out shopping for dessert with her boyfriend.

At one point, I was boiling potatoes, browning meat, mixing a biscuit topping and dancing an improvised jig to the Dropkick Murphys at the same time. Needless to say, this level of intense culinary multi-tasking created the Irish Shepard Pie equivalent of Frankenstein. And not the Boris Karloff version. I'm talking about the Robert de Niro one. The recipe produced too much pie for my mother's largest casserole dish, which led me to frantically try scooping out hamburger mix to make room for the biscuit mix. The stuff went everywhere. When the pie finally went in the oven the thing looked like something out of H.P. Lovecraft's nightmares.

In 17 minutes we'll know if it was all worth the effort. HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY, er, NIGHT!

Labels: food, holidays

..but we do have pancakes in a can.

Just squirt, cook and eat. It's that easy. While humankind has yet solve the whole war/poverty/celebrity worship thing, at least we can slouch towards the apocalypse with cans of Batter Blaster held high.

It took me a few tries to get the hang of it. After three thin, burnt pancakes wound up in the trash I decided to read the instructions. My next attempt turned up as light and fluffy as anything I could make with Bisquick, water and ninety additional seconds of effort.

Here's to you, Batter Blaster. While you may not be absinthe you certainly made my weekend 10 - 12% more enjoyable.

Labels: food

I found myself with a daunting task this holiday season: whipping together Christmas dinner for my parents, my sister and her boyfriend. I didn't want to cook but neither did any of them. With absolutely no holiday meal preparation experience under my belt, I was the worst person for the job. I'm still not sure why I was nominated or why any of them trusted me with the task. Despite what the ghost chef in Ratatouille claims, anyone can't cook. For instance, I routinely screw up cereal.

As always with challenges like this, I immediately decided to make things more difficult for myself. Instead of ordering a nice, simple turkey with a nice, simple popper, I put in an order for a turducken. Cooking just one bird wasn't enough. Only a chicken stuffed inside duck stuff inside a turkey would do.

And so last Sunday off I went in the pouring rain to pick up this mutant concoction from the Beaverton New Seasons. Behind the counter in the meat department was a guy who, according to a tag on his shirt, was named Turtle. Turtle couldn't find my order but was kindly enough to track down a 13 pound turducken roast from the freezer. It didn't look anything like I was expecting. Instead of an overstuffed turkey, this thing looked like a meat bomb set to go off at any second. I nervously took the turducken back to my car and prayed that it wouldn't go off on the drive home.

I consider it an accomplishment worthy of putting on a resume that I was able to get this beast over to my parent's house on Christmas morning. According to the overly-complicated recipe I looked up at the last minute, I'd need eight hours to cook the turducken and a roasting pan. Do my parents own a pan large enough for the Frankenstein monster of holiday main courses? Had I thought to pick one up? Of course not.

Four closed grocery stores and one open neighborhood market later, I returned with a $2.00 roasting pan almost identical to the normal turkey pan my parent's already had. Undaunted, I shoved a cookie sheet in the bottom of the pan to further prevent the turducken from wallowing in its own juices (supposedly a serious no-no). I tossed on an old chefs hat and finally threw the turducken in the oven over an hour behind schedule.

What to do next? The recipe had nothing to say about basting this mutant bird. A colleague I talked to on Christmas Eve claimed that basting anything, be it a turkey, a turducken or a goose, is a complete waste of time and will only turn it into something akin to the dried-out husk Chevy Chase contends with in Christmas Vacation. When the turducken reached the four hour mark, I panicked after noticing there were no juices at the bottom of the pan. I ended up basting it with a container of chicken broth.

Dinner was scheduled for six but the turducken was still twenty degrees away from being ready according to everything I read online. 165 Fahrenheit was the magic number it needed to hit before it would be deemed suitable for human consumption according to the USDA. Six quickly became seven and the turducken was still ten degrees short. My sister and her boyfriend decided to undermine my authority and pitch in with the side dishes. Had they no respect for my chefs hat? It was doing little to protect my honor. Faith in my ability to run a kitchen had reached an all time low.

I broke out a meat thermometer again. The ends of the turducken were five degrees higher than were they needed to be while the center was five degrees below. I decided to take a vote. None of us knew what to do. Everyone was all in favor of just eating the damn thing. The recipe claimed it needed to sit under tinfoil for an hour to "firm up." Instead, I left it front of a televised Blazer game for thirty minutes figuring that Brandon Roy's awesome dunking skills might somehow inspire the turducken to be more tasty.

The results were mixed. The exterior, turkey portion of the bird turned out dry while its duck and chicken center were juicy. In hindsight, I should have pulled el meat bomb out of the oven 30 minutes earlier.

The mysteries surrounding turduckens continue to elude me. Is it even possible to properly cook something like this- a weird feast o' meat melded together out of portions of three different animals? I've come to the conclusion that turduckens just weren't meant to be.

Labels: Christmas, food

A friend of mine from way back is now the author of his very own cookbook. But this isn't just any cookbook. It could be the holder of the weirdest title for a cookbook in the history of cookbooks. The title of this tome? Whisking With Chlamydia.

I'm happy to say that the book doesn't actually touch on what it's like to prepare elaborate meals while suffering from the effects of a nasty STD. "Chlamydia" is the name of an oversized whisk the author bought several years ago. What kind of a cookbook writer names a phallic kitchen instrument after a venereal disease? A cookbook writer with a sense of humor, that's who.

The book includes sections on quick meals and an appendix on how to properly prepare pasta. Adding oil to the water is apparently a serious no-no. I had no idea. You can download your very own copy of Whisking With Chlamydia by clicking here.

Labels: food