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During a severe drought in 2011, JennaDee Detro noticed that many trees on the family cattle ranch in Cat Spring, Texas, withered, but a certain evergreen holly appeared vigorous. It's called a yaupon."The best we can tell is that they enjoy suffering," Detro says with a laugh. "So this kind of extreme weather in Texas — and the extreme soil conditions — are perfect for the yaupon."Detro began researching yaupon — a tree abundant in its native range, from coastal North Carolina to East Texas — and discovered that the plant contains caffeine and has a remarkable history.A thousand years...

The secret to making it to 105 years old is apparently a daily dose of alcohol. Making it five more years, however, means you may have to cut back. Those are the lessons coming from Agnes Fenton, who turned 110 on Saturday, when she officially became a supercentarian. Fenton told ABC in an interview for her 105th birthday that she enjoyed three Miller High Life’s and a shot of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch every day for nearly 70 years.

BEIJING – Chinese police are investigating if two distillers in the southwestern region of Guangxi added impotence treatment drug Viagra to their liquor in the latest food-safety scare in China. The Liuzhou Food and Drug Administration said that it found the Guikun Alcohol Plant and the Deshun Alcohol Plant in Guangxi's Liuzhou city were putting Sildenafil, more commonly known as Viagra, into three of their baijiu products. Baijiu is a fiery grain liquor that commands high prices in China.

The recall includes certain 3- and 4-pound packages of American and white American slices, Kraft said. Those affected have a “best when used by” date between December 29, 2015, and January 4, 2016, followed by the manufacturing code “S54″ or “S55.” “A thin strip of the individual packaging film may remain adhered to the slice after the wrapper has been removed,” Kraft said. “If the film sticks to the slice and is not removed, it could potentially cause a choking hazard.” The company said it has received 10 complaints and three reports of choking.

It was just a catty complaint. A hungry Brit called the West Yorkshire police seeking to rat out his girlfriend — and their pet feline — for devouring his precious bacon. “Me girlfriend has let the cat eat my bacon,” the man could be heard telling a dispatcher in an audio clip of the call released by police. “I want to press charges.” The bizarre complaint did not rattle the operator. She asked the man if he wanted to press charges against the cat or his girlfriend. Both of them, he said.

HARRISBURG, Pa., - Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has become the latest high-profile personality to weigh in on the debate over whether a hot dog qualifies as a sandwich. Rendell was asked by an interviewer to weigh in on the subject, which has recently become a topic of heated Internet debate, and he came out in favor of giving sandwich status to hot dogs. "It's got bread," Rendell told WPHT-AM. "Would you put a hoagie in the sandwich category? What I would think is the hot dog, the cheese steak, the hoagie, they're in the elite sandwich category...If you eat...

Not content with having the best whisky in the world, Suntory Holdings Ltd. plans to take its whisky out of this world and into space. The Japanese brewing and distilling company said this week it would send a total of six samples of its whiskies and other alcoholic beverages to the International Space Station, where they will be kept for at least a year to study the effect zero gravity has on aging. According to a spokesman at the company, the samples, which will be carried in glass flasks, will include both a 21-year-old single malt and a beverage that...

Whole Foods may be toast. Granted, it's toast made from pricey, gluten-free, organic honey oat bread. But toast nonetheless. Shares of Whole Foods (WFM) plunged more than 10% Thursday after the high-end natural grocery chain reported sales and profits that missed analysts' forecasts. Its outlook did not impress investors either.

Norwegian ice-cream maker, Hennig Olsen, unveiled the world’s largest-ever ice cream cone in front of 9,000 people at the start of Sunday’s Tall Ships Race at Kristianstad.The ice cream, which measured 3.08 metres from top to botton, was flown over Kristianstad quay hanging from a helicopter and placed in front of an expectant crowd of around 9,000 people. Glen Pollard from the Guinness Book of Records had made the trip to Kristianstad and confirmed that the Norwegian ice cream cone was larger than that of the previous record-holders, Mirco Della Vecchia and Andrea Andrighetti of Italy who made their ice-cream...

After a 20-year hiatus, Naugles, a popular Mexican restaurant that once had a cult-like following, reopened Tuesday in Southern California ... Naugles merged with Del Taco in 1988, and by 1995 all of its locations had been shut down and replaced with Del Taco restaurants ...

As part of the celebrations for his 91st birthday next Saturday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be served a feast featuring five impala, two buffalo, two elephants, two sables, and one lion. According to a report in Zimbabwe's The Chronicle, the menagerie was donated by Tendai Musasa, owner of the prominent Woodlands Farm near the Elephant Hills Resort at Victoria Falls, where the 20,000-person shindig will take place. While you'd think that eating elephants and lions, icons of wildlife conservation, would be illegal, it turns out it's not—neither under Zimbabwean nor international law. As of 1997, elephant populations in Botswana,...

According to a Gallup survey conducted this month, American liberals are more likely to drink than American conservatives. From July 8-12, Gallup asked 1,009 adults in the United States: “Do you have occasion to use alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine, or beer, or are you a total abstainer?” The results, which had a margin of error of ± 4 percentage points, showed a number of trends. Only 61 percent of self-identified conservatives said, yes, they do have occasion to use alcoholic beverages. However, 65 percent of moderates said yes, and 69 percent of liberals said yes. …

I've had several requests to do a thread on bread baking. I've hesitated, because it's been quite a while since I baked bread; I'm by no means expert at it; and I don't like to post recipes that I haven't tried and proven recently. But, due to popular demand, here we go! My first experience with baking bread was back in the 1970s when so many of us young folks were bitten by the 'back-to-nature' bug. I was also experimenting with various levels of vegetarianism, and was very interested in cooking with whole grains. The first bread I made was...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Toledo has put its water quality on "watch" status because of the toxins that shut down Toledo's public drinking-water system for three days a year ago. The water is safe to drink, city officials said. Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson said the water was put on watch because microcystin had been detected in the intake crib about three miles out in Lake Erie. The toxin was not detected in tap water, she said. "Our water treatment process is effectively removing the microcystin," according to the city's online water-quality dashboard. "We have an advanced warning system...

Tina Lin, compiling local police reports for The Andover Townsman of Massachussets, reports that "A caller from North Main Street reported at 12:38 p.m. that there was an item on the side of the road that looked like a torso." Fortunately, Lin adds, 'The responding officer reported that “it was a brisket.”' Less fortunate, however, was a local resident who reported that "someone is beeping a horn when they drive by her house.”

The suspects were armed with an air soft gun, and demanded money and pizza from the victimTwo men armed with an air soft gun tried to rob a pizza delivery driver in Emerald Hills overnight, but the driver chased them away with a stick, thwarting their plan. The San Diego Police Department said the near-robbery happened in at Bollenbacher and McHugh streets. A driver stopped to deliver pizza in the neighborhood and two men standing outside told him the pizza was for them. When the victim got out of his car with the pizza, one of the men pointed a...

For 17 years, Tom Carroll and his wife Hermine Ricketts tended an organic garden in the front yard of their home in Miami Shores Village, Florida. They grew everything from arugula to zinnias, mostly for home consumption. Then, one day in August 2013, disaster struck. It wasn't a hurricane, a flood, or a drought. It was the government. Armed with a newly amended zoning ordinance geared toward home aesthetics, Miami Shores ordered the couple to uproot their vegetable garden or pay $50 a day in fines. The village would tolerate fruit trees, flowers, or even plastic pink flamingoes in the...

Researchers at Oregon State have patented a new strain of seaweed that tastes like bacon when it's cooked. The seaweed, a form of red marine algae, looks like translucent red lettuce. It also has twice the nutritional value of kale and grows very quickly. Did we mention it tastes like bacon? According to Oregon State researcher Chris Langdon, his team started growing the new strain while trying to find a good food source for edible sea snails, or abalone, a very popular food in many parts of Asia. The strain is a new type of red algae that normally grows...

The machines started humming this week, the mixers were running, and the freezers were chilling. They started making ice cream. Not just ice cream, but Blue Bell Ice Cream — “The Best Ice Cream in the Country.” The production crew was making sure they followed all the new procedures for getting cleaned up and the equipment spic & span. In the Blue Bell plant in Sylacauga Alabama, everyone was smiling. This was the first batch of Blue Bell being produced since March in any of the Blue Bell plants. This batch will not be headed to stores. Instead, it will...

Ethical food does not matter to most Britons, a survey has revealed, showing that half of people say they do not care where their food comes from. Almost half of people (48 percent) surveyed said they would not necessarily stop buying products from a company if they discovered it was acting unethically, when surveyed by consumer research company Mintel. Of the 15,000 UK shoppers who were questioned, only a quarter (24 percent) said that the range of ethical products on offer influenced which shops they visited. More than half of UK consumers say that organic food is too expensive to...