How depressing: a new study shows that most Americans get the majority of their calories from soda and other sweet drinks. We used to get the bulk of our calories from bread, but now we've decided bread isn't sweet or fizzy enough, and besides, it doesn't fit into a Big Gulp cup. Unsurprisingly, researchers found that people who consume more soft drinks and other sugary drinks (Snapple, anyone?) are more likely to be obese. Or, as they put it, people who drink less sweet drinks are "less overweight." Ha!

I recommend this New York Times article about avant-garde cuisine. You may be just starting to hear about this trend, but it's been the hot thing in international cuisine for some time now. It's postmodern cuisine, where food is not just cooked but deconstructed and transformed. As an example of the kind of thing we're talking about, consider a "riff on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: a peeled, heated grape, still on a sprig, that had been dipped in a peanut puree and encased in a thin layer of brioche."

The founder and darling of this mad-scientist cuisine is Barcelona's Ferran Adrià, whose restaurant El Bulli is only open 6 months of the year so he can spend the rest of the year in his culinary laboratory. Want to eat there? So does everyone else; it's booked up a year in advance. Adrià's most famous innovation is the culinary foam, which brings your food down to a concentrated, ephemeral form.

The NYT wrote a while back that the most exciting cooking in the world is now found in Spain instead of France. That's almost a blasphemous thing to say, but by all accounts Adrià can back up the boast. Here's one convert's experience, while here are photos from one of his famous multi-hour 27 course tasting menus.

Here's an example of what he's up to: he created a potato skin consomme in which were floating a ball of pumpkin seed oil, a liquefied olive and pouches of softened butter, all of which were in special edible skins to keep them from melting. As the NYT reviewer says, "by remaining intact and independent, these pouches provided spikes of richness that would not have been possible if the butter had merely melted into the soup."

In New York, Wylie Dufresne is the most famous chef of this school. At his restaurant WD-50, he uses science to create "impossible" new food experiences such as "cubes of mayonnaise that can be deep-fried without melting...served beside pickled beef tongue in a deconstruction of a deli sandwich" or oysters pressed into papery flat rectangles before being deep-friend and served with granny smith apples, dried olives, and pistachios. His restaurant has gotten mixed reviews, but those who love it really love it.

The cuisine might be untraditional, but it's not stodgy, and often plays with lowbrow food references, such as using crushed corn nuts as a steak crust, or serving "crushed Altoids instead of mint jelly with lamb [and] lollipops of foie gras encrusted with Pop Rocks." In the words of one chef, "Why not go to the store and get the curiously strong mint? [It's more interesting than] that horribly boring quote, 'I love to use farm-fresh products and local ingredients and European technique.' "

Me, I love farm-fresh local ingredients and classic technique...but then, maybe it's just sour foam. Anyone want to be an Urban Honking research granter and send an investigative team to Spain???

Friends! It's May! Can you believe it?? I can't quite, but then on these beautiful mild evenings where the sun stays up so late I dare to think that it'll be summer soon. Summer! Spring may be when a young man's thoughts turn to love, but summer is when my thoughts turn to barbecues, watermelon, homemade ice cream, corn on the cob...and of course, cool, thirst-quenching drinks.

I like all kinds of refreshing summer drinks. I love a homemade iced tea, sweet and lemony on the porch in the sun. I can't get enough of the soft punch of mint julep just as the sun gets low. Ask me for my Indian ginger-cucumber-lemon cooler recipe sometime; it's fantastic. I love homemade lemonade, agua de jamaica (a Mexican sweet drink made with hibiscus flowers), root beer floats, and filling our kegerator with light, crisp lagers instead of winter ales.

This summer I'm planning to add two new drinks to my list: clara con limón and tinto de verano, two drinks Fiona and I discovered during our recent trip to Spain. They're very easy, refreshing and delicious, but first you have to get over the seeming blasphemy of mixing beer and wine with soda.

Both of these drinks are based around lemon soda; in Spain they often use Lemon Fanta, but better yet is when they use a sparkling lemonade made with real lemon juice (such as my favorite Spanish brand Kas). In the US, you can find many options at gourmet/nature grocery stores, but a good standby is San Pellegrino Limonata.

These drinks are simple to make: for a clara con limón (also known as cerveza con limón), fill a glass half-full of a cold, light lager-style beer (such as any decent pilsner). Then top off with lemon soda. To make a tinto de verano, pour a red Spanish wine over ice (nothing fancy; everyday tinto will do just fine) and add lemon soda to taste. For both drinks I recommend starting with equal parts soda and beer or wine and then adjusting to how you like it.

I'll be drinking plenty of these this summer; they're the perfect way to beat the heat and dream of further travels to sunny Spain. Next time you bike by, be sure to stop in and I'll make you one too!

(Photo courtesy Fiona)