Alice Laussade

Yesterday the Huffington Post reported that 7-Eleven is nationally debuting Slurpee Lite. Slurpee Lite will be made with Splenda instead of real sugar and promises to be "50% fewer calories, 100% awesome taste."

Give me a summer-fucking break. Seems to me that if you're inside a 7-Eleven at all, you've lost your stupid calorie-counting privileges. But, you really want 50% fewer calories than a regular Slurpee? GET YOURSELF A SMALLER REGULAR DANG SLURPEE.

HuffPo says 7-Eleven is "hoping to target females in their 20s" with this Slurpee. Ohhhh, so you're making Lady Slurpees! Why didn't you just say so? We think that's a great idea. But, why stop there, 7-Eleven? Here's this list of Other Stuffs 20-Something Chicks Like At Places. We promise that if you stock these things in your 7-Elevens, you'll definitely bag all them chicks.

20-Something Chicks Like:

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McDonald's UK

Another tiresome food trend to add to the Valhalla-like halls of the Museum of Annoying Food Trends: the Taste of Whatever City/Country.

Japan McDonald's Big America campaign, which attempted to surmise the taste of entire American locale between the crusty buns of a meatburger, did roughly the same. Now comes McDonald's new "Great Tastes of America" burger, available this week in the UK: the Texas BBQ sandwich. Hang on, let me de-saddle from my horseshoed pony for a minute and pull off the dusty trail.

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Spreadably delicious, but not nutritious

Dear Athena Hohenberg,

I'm sorry to address you in such an adversarial tone, but I see no way around it. Your recent class action lawsuit filed against Ferrero, the company that manufactures the deliciously chocolate-like, hazelnut spread Nutella, is the saddest case of consumer idiocy I've seen in a while. It must be addressed.

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Taste the rainbow! (It tastes like sadness.)

When I reviewed the Chesterfield, and wrote about drinks the color of Skittles, I was referring to those bight blue drinks you see bopping around inside clubs. Red drinks, too, a vibrant crimson, often containing little alcohol and sometimes shuttled around in test tubes.

What I wasn't thinking about was actual Skittles. Then I found this sangria at the Common Table.

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Does this kid look like he's having any fun to you?

Yesterday The Dallas Morning News reported that food trucks serving the Arts District had received notices of violations. They were operating in a public right of way and that's no good.

The trucks responded by moving from where they were -- a plaza across from the AT&T Performing Arts Center -- into a private parking lot down Flora Street. Trucks can do what they like on private property, given the owners' consent.

I stopped by yesterday and checked out the setup. Five trucks packed into the lot served hungry lunch goers. Still, it felt like a temporary solution. The trucks were cramped and the space felt stuffy. So I called Joey Zapata, who oversees code compliance for the city, and asked what the deal is. Why can't we give the food trucks a little breathing room?

Turns out they just got some.

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Dickey's

First, a little back story: Dickey's Barbecue Pit has fired off round after round of press release material lately. The company is intoxicated with its expansion at every gas station and mall food court across the land, and its public relations firm mainlines Red Bull in order to make sure we all know about it. The news usually garners little attention.

But last week the flacks floated a press release that was actually quite striking: "Dickey's Signs Exclusive Agreement With Sysco."

In said release, Roland Dickey Jr., president of Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants Inc., announced that they intend to open 100 new locations just this year and with a total of 220 locations nationwide, he's "thrilled" to now supply those stores with nothing but food straight out of the back of a Sysco truck.

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Lauren Drews Daniels

Update: I'm catching some heat in the comments by readers who defend the practice of projectile bottle opening. This photo (pictured above) just landed in my inbox. It's an old fashioned made with whiskey, bitters, sugar, and citrus. It's garnished with a metal bottle cap scooped from the ice bin: another consequence of overzealous bottle popping.

Original Item: I promise I don't have a bartender vendetta, but some of them make it too easy. The cocktail tasting move drove me nuts a few months ago. Now I'd like to talk about something I'll call the "bottle top pop."

When I was a kid working in an Italian restaurant, the bartender saw me fumbling with some matches and showed me something called the "fancy flick." With a single hand the guy could open a match book, fold a single match over the back of the book so it touched the striking strip, and then flick his thumb to ignite it. It was a slick, fluid motion that seemed to light a match out of thin air, and you could hold it out, still attached to the book, and light someone's cigarette.

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What the hell happened to the mimosa? What could actually be a light, delicate and refreshing morning drink has become the booze of choice for those so hungover they can't choke down anything else without booting. And with very few exceptions, they're consistently terrible. (Maybe it's because they're served by the pitcherful? Anything thing served as an "endless" anything is bound to be awful.)

Fortunately for mimosa lovers, a solution to the issue couldn't be more simple. It just takes a careful look at the drink's three primary components.

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BPI

Processed-meat fever came to a head over the weekend. It started with a full-page ad, which appeared on Friday in the Wall Street Journal (and is on display below), paid for by Beef Product Inc. The company branded itself a paragon of food safety and cited "pink slime" libel as a threat to 3000 jobs.

The ad was a direct response to a media blitz, started by food advocates including Jamie Oliver and amplified by news and social media outlets. A photo posted on the Internet depicting pink slime extruding into a cardboard box like strawberry soft-serve went viral, and suddenly grocery stores were declaring that their shelves would soon be "pink-slime" free.

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Facebook

It's a relatively quiet Wednesday night at Deep Ellum's newest watering hole, Swallow Lounge (double entendre or just a hastily chosen name? You be the judge). I take a seat at the empty bar lined with bright red vinyl stools. Above the bar, back-lit swallows -- those little birds that adorn collarbone tattoos on every wannabe rockabilly kid from here to Tokyo -- slowly change from red to blue and back again. Old blues plays weakly from somewhere out of sight.

According to the bartender, they're still in soft opening mode, so there's no real cocktail menu to speak of yet, other than a little table tent with a few house concoctions. He instead asks my preferences, and I relay the usual parameters: I like gin, nothing sweet, fruity is cool, herbal is great.

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