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It's 5:30 on a Wednesday morning, and you're broke. Maybe you're short on rent. Maybe you need some beer. Either way you need to get some cash. It's too early to rob a bank. They're all closed. So are jewelry stores. All-night convenience stores have too little cash at this time of day and too many cameras. So naturally you turn to the one place that can satisfy your twin desire for small amounts of cash and over-sugared, deep-fried pastry rings: the local doughnut shop.

It's a brilliant plan. Really, it is. But before you go declaring yourself as a criminal mastermind, it's worth keeping in mind some of the ways the plan can go horribly, humiliatingly wrong.

Take yesterday's attempted holdup of Golden Glazed Donuts on Garland Road just northeast of Peavy Road. According to Dallas police, a man in his late 20s, thin, white, and about 6-foot-2, walked up to the counter and ordered a pastry. The employee went to the back to warm it up -- police, unfortunately, don't specify whether this was a bear claw, kolache or something else -- then returned to take the customer's money. But the man didn't offer any cash, instead revealing a gun and demanding everything in the register.

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BroBible

You've no doubt spent the 14 months since Doritos Locos Tacos were introduced wondering how Taco Bell came up with the brilliant idea of turning the popular chips into popular taco shells. If you just assumed this was the work of a dedicated, and probably high, Yum Brands food scientist, Gary Cole is here to tell you that you're wrong.

To be accurate, Cole isn't here exactly. He's in the super-max prison in Florence, Colorado.

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Justin Grogg was in town from Panama City on a business trip when he and a colleague went out on the town to sample the local fare. They went to the Red Lobster at Stemmons and Northwest Highway, and Grogg ordered a Budweiser.

Grogg says it took only a second for him to realize that the burning sensation in his throat, esophagus and stomach was something more than the tingle of carbonation. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was treated for inflammation and ulceration of his esophagus and pharynx. The pain eventually subsided, but doctors told him his future would likely be plagued by infections, acid reflux and difficulty swallowing.

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All delicious, but worth armed robbery?

The haircuts at Triple D Cuts & Styles on Sunnyvale Road must be top notch. They were certainly hard to pass up for two Grillmasters salesman who decided on Friday afternoon to take a break from their meat hawking and stop in for a trim. They decided the truck full of frozen steaks could wait.

They were right on that front. They told police that both truck and steaks were still there when they were thrown out of Triple D a while later after one of them tried to pay with a counterfeit $100 bill.

Just as they were getting ready to leave, they told officers that 10 men appeared, all of them carrying guns. They made the guy who tried to pass off the fake bill lay on the asphalt next to the truck and directed his colleague to sit in the driver's seat and stay there. Then, while the salesmen were kept at gunpoint, the men jumped into the bed of the truck and began unloading steaks.

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Neighbors and pizza aficionados have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Jay Jerrier's second Cane Rosso, planned for Grand and Gaston just south of White Rock Lake, since word of its existence first leaked in November. It was slated to open in the middle of April -- just about now, in other words -- but it looks like everyone will have to wait.

The restaurant was broken into not once but twice over the weekend, the thieves making off with a $2,500 prosciutto slicer, a $3,500 espresso machine and multiple sets of knives.

The first burglary happened overnight Friday and seems to have been an inside job, since the thief used a key that was kept in a security box accessible only with a key code. The second, which occurred overnight Saturday, probably wasn't. In that case, the thief didn't use a key but busted through through the sheetrock from an adjacent, vacant storefront.

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Via.

We hope, for the flies' sake, that this is an organic orange.

There was a minor furor in the media last year when a study conducted by a researcher at Standford's medical school concluded that organic fruits and vegetables are no healthier than their conventionally raised counterparts. This wasn't quite as newsworthy as the headlines made it sound, since the study was looking mainly at vitamin content of produce, not at the chemicals that were or were not sprayed on it. Precious few people buy organic carrots expecting through-the-roof levels of beta carotene.

Then again, maybe they should. A new study by researchers at SMU, which is clearly more definitive than the Stanford one because it's newer, suggests that eating organic food may cause you to live longer. If you're a fruit fly.

They chose fruit flies essentially because they're easier to keep on an all-organic diet, since they can't sneak off and binge on Twinkies and they don't object to consuming a single type of liquified produce from Whole Foods (either potatoes, raisins, bananas, or soybeans, depending on the fly) for their entire lives. They also live for about a month, making it easier parse out the effect of diet on lifespan.

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In a move that will protect our children from a future of grocery store snack aisles packed with nothing but kale chips and similar creme-free items, private equity firm Apollo Global Management has teamed up with food mogul Dean Metropoulos to purchase Hostess' snack business out of bankruptcy.

The New York Post reports (h/t Frontburner) that the $410 million deal included not only the Twinkie brand but also Ho-Hos, Donettes, and the rest of Hostess' snack cake lineup. They'll be back on the shelves come summer.

Not that there was ever any question that the Twinkie, indestructible object that it is, would ever just disappear. But it puts one's mind at ease to know for certain what the future holds.

Dallas Republican state Senator John Carona wormed his way into beer lovers' good graces two weeks ago when he cosponsored a quartet of bills aimed at making things easier on craft brewers in Texas.

The legislation, which has the support of both an impressive roster of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and craft brewers, would tweak the "three-tiered system" established in the wake of Prohibition and allow, among other things, small breweries to bypass distributors and sell directly to retailers. It was, as Tyler Republican Senator Kevin Eltife put it, a way to "level the playing field for the small business segment of the Texas brewery industry."

Signing onto the bills seemed like a canny move on Carona's part, because beer. But almost as soon as the legislation appeared, Carona removed his name from the list of sponsors and filed craft beer legislation of his own in the form of SB 639.

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Flickr user dolescum

You may never look at pecan pie quite the same way again.

George Martin and Marty Harrell used to be friends. They live 800 miles apart but swim in the same professional circles, the former heading Corsicana-based Navarro Pecan Company, one of the world's largest pecan-processing companies, and the latter in charge of the Harrell Nut Company, which shells and sells pecans for growers.

So neither had any reservations when their respective companies signed a $2.5 million agreement for Harrell to shell, then return, 4.5 million pounds of Navarro's pecans.

The relevant part of the agreement was a provision stipulating that the shelled nuts must be "free from every contamination, including extraneous material, infestation, and foreign objects/flavors/odors."

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Via.

First of all, a salute to all the hard-working pizza men and women out there who show up to strangers' homes in sketchy neighborhoods carrying cash and delicious foodstuffs. It's thankless work, and dangerous.

Take last night, for instance. At 10:30 p.m., a Pizza Hut driver was delivering some pies to a house in the 10300 block of Whitington Street in Pleasant Grove when two men toting semi-automatic pistols approached him and ordered him on his knees. They demanded everything he had, which turned out to be $318, a GPS unit, and a kitchen knife.

"Get the fuck up and get out of here," they told him when they were done stealing his stuff. The men ran off through the alley. At the end of the alley, one of them turned, aimed the gun at the pizza guy, and repeated himself: "Get the fuck out of here."

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