Specialty cupcake shop Cup Quequitos is holding another event this Saturday, March 10, on the patio of Cafe Poca Cosa. If you like delicious and unique cupcakes you will not want to miss it.

Owner Shanali Zeballos says she'll have habanero-mango, jalapeno-cilantro-lime, Guinness-chocolate and other amazing cupcakes for sale at the event. You can check in over at the Cup Quequitos Facebook page for all the details.

The Tucson Taco Festival is coming in April.

I know this is a bit early notice, but I think this will be a big hit, so you may want to your tickets soon.

Modeled after the Arizona Taco Festival, the event should prove to be tons of fun — not to mention all that good food to sample. There will be tacos for sale for a mere $2.00, plus salsa, guacamole and more. Cooking demos, Luche Libre wrestling, kooky cooking contests, a Kid Zone and live music are also part of the mix.

The main event is the “Grand Champion Taco” contest, where 30 professional and amateur taco teams will vie for a grand prize of $5,000. Forty judges from the National Taco Association will be sequestered to ensure fairness and professionalism. Tacos can be made using beef, pork, chicken or seafood. Stay tuned for the list of contestants.

At the Tequila Expo another, more potent contest will take place at the same venue that day: The Margarita Challenge Mix-Off.

Here celebrity judges will choose the best tequila cocktail from those created by ten local bartenders. Fair goers can get in on the fun as more than 100 tequilas by thirty makers will be poured.

This fun foodie event was created by David Tyde and Rick Phillips of Affordable Food Festivals, LLC. And indeed this is a most affordable event. It’s only $10.00 to get in the gate. Kids under 12 are free. (FYI, there will also be a VIP tent with catered food and a $100 entry fee.) Buy your tickets on-line at www.TucsonTacoFestival.com

The Tucson Taco Festival will take place on Saturday April 28th from 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 pm, at Rillito Downs (1st Avenue at River Road.)

Got a garden full of surplus veggies and nothing to do with them? Or perhaps you made a few too many jars of prickly-pear jelly last year and there they sit, lonely and unused, on the pantry shelf. Worry not, Food Swap Tucson can help.

The group aims to create a network where local cooks, gardeners and otherwise food-oriented folks can trade or barter handmade, homemade or foraged goods. You can visit its blog here.

Tucson has needed this sort of thing for a long time and I am thrilled to see it taking root. This city is teeming with talented cooks, gardeners and others who could make such an event a wonderful addition to our local culinary scene, and gathering them all in one place would create a sort of think tank that could germinate other great ideas.

Count me in for this one. I will be bringing fresh-baked rosemary bread to the first event on Sunday, April 1, provided I receive an invitation (hint, hint). You can sign up for the group's mailing list over here.

Another installation of the popular Tucson Food Truck Roundup events takes place at the Tower Theatres in Marana tonight, and a whopping 30 trucks are attending. There's more information on the event here.

It should also be noted that tonight's event will be the last chance to dig into a kimchi quesadilla or fried-rice burrito from popular food truck MaFooCo. We're truly sorry to see the truck go - the owners and the food are wonderful - but it certainly was delicious while it lasted.

Tonight's event takes place from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Bon appetit!

Blue Sky Deliveries is a new service that delivers food from food truck Animal Farm, Ethiopian eatery Cafe Desta, Delectables on Fourth and Bacon and Craeggs. It uses eco-friendly tricycles to get the job done from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The business delivers to downtown and the university area and charges $3 per order plus a 15 percent gratuity.

There's more on Blue Sky Deliveries here.

I attended a nifty cooking demonstration yesterday afternoon at the foundation for Intercultural Dialogue/Turkish Cultural Center. This tiny, hidden spot is a bit of a Tucson gem. They have classes not just in cooking but also in Turkish painting and learning Turkish. On occasion they’ll have lectures on Turkish culture and international topics. There’s also a book club, Turkish coffee night and soccer game nights (where they watch soccer, not play.)

Anyway, yesterday’s class was all about Mexican food. Two women, Maria Uhlmann and Marta Ortiz demonstrated how to make empanaditas, green chile and cheese crepes, an easy chicken and potato dish, pastel tres leches and chocoflan (also called impossible cake). Weirdly, in all my life I’ve never had chocoflan but earlier this week, a co-worker at my day job brought in some chocoflan that his wife had made.

There was a small crowd, mainly young women members. They had a video camera and a big screen so we could see how everything was made. It was great fun, and next month, they're taking on Japanese cuisine. I can't wait.

If you’re interested in more info about any of the classes or other events, check out their website: www.fid-az.org

A new tea store named Tea and More has opened inside the Many Hands Courtyard at 3054 N. First Ave.

Owner Petra Williams says she imports the tea from Germany and that she currently has nearly 70 varieties on hand, most of which are herbal. She does not sell tea by the cup, but says there's always a steaming kettle of sample tea for customers to partake of.

Williams says she scours the European continent for tea and tea-related items on annual trips back to her birthplace of Germany. Most of the items she sells are fair-trade.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. There's more on the store over here.

Food educator and long-time pastry chef Rene Luedeman was pushing a shopping cart through a local grocery store when the first dizzy spell hit. More were to follow and she was eventually diagnosed with a balance disorder that resulted from inner-ear damage.

As a scientist for 20 years and a teacher for Pima Community College's culinary-arts program, she was used to spending most of her time on her feet, but that was now out of the question. But she could make cakes, and stunningly beautiful ones at that.

So she and her husband Terril Yuhas put their heads together and came up with the custom-cake shop Dizzy Dame's Bake Shoppe, which operates out of their home and only takes custom orders for the time being.

Luedeman - who also founded the local nonprofit Cakes for Causes - currently makes cookies, fruit pies, cakes and caramel apples, but the sky is the limit. There are some stipulations on what she can sell because the business is based in her home, but decades teaching food safety and cake decorating seem to be coming in rather handy as the orders keep coming in.

There's more on the Dizzy Dame's Bake Shoppe over here.

According to Bamboo Sushi, the sustainable fishing focused Portland restaurant, this four minute film took seven months to create, using 100% handcrafted miniatures. However, I probably wouldn't have been inclined to watch a video about the ethics of sushi that wasn't so beautifully made (I'm bored easily, it's a problem), so the work was worth it, right?

So here's what it boils down to: Buy pork belly, cover it in equal parts sugar and salt, let it sit for a week while pouring off the fluid that accumulates and adding a little more sugar and salt each day, rinse it and slice it thin. I smoked mine for an hour or so over mesquite wood, too, but it was good even before that. You can also add in whatever spices you so desire. The garlic-infused stuff I cured came out the most fragrant.

Everyone who dined on it this morning agreed this project was well worth the effort, and I made three pounds of bacon for around nine bucks. Works for me.