Going to the Game!

Got to go to see Lincecum pitch against the Dodgers at ATT Park. Here's what I brought to eat.

Now I am a foodie, and I love to grow my own food. I use very few ingredients in most of my cooking and hardly ever anything from a box or a can. My heroes are the great natural food philosphers and chefs.

That said I love ballpark food. All of it. Junk or not. There is something about being at a game that makes me hunger for It's Its, dogs with kraut, all that stuff. And being a cheapskate I could spend a week's income and eat a year's worth of calories and salt in a single inning.

Getting it ready for the ball park!

So to counter that I have to bring food that I just will love sitting and eating. I try to load up on healthy things, even eating too much, if it keeps me from cashing in my retirement to buy a burrito.

I try to bring things that take a while to eat, have strong flavors and have lots of crunch.

Here I have lamb leg steaks (my butcher calls them sirloins but they are cut from the leg), some Kalamata olives, a sliced carrot, some raw cabbage and an apple. I also brought a couple of pieces of Thunder Chicken and some crackers and dried apricots. The only thing I bought was some ice cream - and at $9 it cost more than all the other food I brought combined. If only I could bring my own parking...

And no - I didn't eat all that lamb! So far is has served 3 meals and there are leftovers.

Kitchen Sink Pasta

Thank god for leftovers.

This is one of the house favorites, Kitchen Sink Pasta. We also make Kitchen Sink Soup, Kitchen Sink Salad, etc.

Leftover pasta with Stuff

To make this particular dish I dry-fried some onions cauliflower and carrots. When they were slightly burned I added the asparagus, diced smoked pork and a bit of olive oil and orange zest. I let it cook for a few minutes then turned the heat off and threw in the leftover campanelle and some toasted almonds.


On top is some shaved fennel and dried apricots.I squeezed the juice of half the orange over the whole thing.


You can make this kind of dish in just a few minutes. I try to include different textures and colors and cooling foods like the fennel and rich savory tastes like the almonds. This dish improves if you let it sit a while.

You can easily make it vegetarian by leaving out the pork. You could add shredded tofu or smoked tofu. You could substitute fish for the pork or bbq chicken or whatever you have. If it's dull add some flavors and colors and crunch or juice or something!

Pack a Great Lunch

A crunchy, flavorful, satisfying meal

Some people are embarrassed to take lunch with them to work. If you don't want to be embarrassed don't bring embarrassing food! Your food should be your bling! Bring a steak! Bring these salads!


This is a lunch you can take anywhere and it will pack a lot of flavor and crunch. I will admit that when I sat down to eat this I really wanted something hot and filling but I changed my mind after a couple of bites. This is an outrageous meal.

The idea behind this lunch was to have a good number of different flavors and textures and colors. I went to a new market in the neighborhood that I had been meaning to check out and I approve!

Here are the flavors and textures: romaine lettuce, carrots, kalamata olives, boiled potato, 2 different cheeses I picked up at the market, toasted almonds, fresh flat leaf parsley, smoked herring, satsuma tangerines and a vinaigrette made with olive oil and fig balsamic vinegar.

I know what many of you are thinking - smoked herring? Isn't that really strong and fishy? Yes, but with the combination of the bland potato, crunchy lettuce and the sweet and sour dressing it tastes fairly mild, sort of like a smoked salmon but admittedly stronger. I love it and talk about cheap! Cheap!

The cheese I bought was an aged white cheddar and a cheese that was simply marked 'Italian table cheese' but it was made here in Silicon Valley so I had to try it. Funnily it tastes just like the cheddar!

I made the dressing with fig balsamic vinegar which, while sort of stuck in the 1980s, can be a very tasty food.  It is rather sweet so I cut it in the dressing with the juice of an unripe orange from my tree.

This looks pretty good but it tasted way better than that

I was lucky to have this leftover pasta, too. It's mini bow ties that I dressed with onions, walnut pieces and corn sauteed in walnut oil the night before. Perfect for a picnic it doesn't contain any ingredients that will go bad quickly.

The combination of the pasta and vegetables with the crunchy nutty almonds and the salty olives was very tasty.

To make this meal vegetarian you could substitute smoked tofu for the fish. If you did that and left out the cheese it would be vegan.

This is a relatively low fat, low sodium meal and there is a lot of nutrition here. Total cost: about $2.50. What you would pay in a restaurant for this? Ten, fifteen, twenty bucks?

A Fast but Great Lunch

Just a few minutes and loads of crunch and taste

Today was one of those 'I have nothing to do but I am really busy' days. I didn't have anything on my schedule until evening rehearsal but managed to keep busy playing with the dog, planting cucumbers and tomatoes and making a simple lunch on the first hot day of the year.

Despite the ridiculous price of produce right now I found these nice red leaf lettuces for a buck and a half each. Here I am serving myself one half of one. Notice the core of the lettuce is trimmed but still attached. It's my favorite part.

The sandwich is really thin ciabatta bread waved over a burner and seasoned up with dabs of strawberry preserves from a student of mine and a bit if Dijon mustard. I sliced some left over turkey and some cucumbers as a filling.

The salad got dressed with this Morrocan olive oil I found in the clearance basket at the market. I am not sure it is good enough to go back and buy more. I also used lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Another Classic - Pork Chops with Apples

What's a chop? What's a steak?

A bone in beef rib-eye is a steak. A pork loin cut is a chop.  A beef T-bone is a steak, a lamb T-bone is a chop. Huh?

The pork in this recipe is a sirloin chop. Or steak. Who knows. It depends on what the butcher thinks he can get more money for.

Another great, fast, inexpensive meal

Here we have a great lunch, spicy pork chops with apple and yellow beet salad.

The pork is seasoned simply with olive oil, chipotle powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper then grilled in a cast iron pan.

The salad is dressed with walnut oil and this great French cider vinegar. Each of these is expensive but the amounts used  on this plate costs pennies.

The bread is a ciabatta toasted over a gas burner. It stays soft in the middle but the outside gets crusty and smokey.

The beets are raw yellow beets that I sliced so thin you can see through them.

The pork is easy to make if you have a heavy bottomed frying pan. You can use a non-stick pan too if the bottom is not too thin.

You want to take the pork chops out of the fridge at least ten minutes before you cook them. If you take them right from the fridge they won't be as tender.  Cook them over medium heat so they brown and take them out just as they firm up. Let them rest for a couple of minutes before you eat them.

A hunk of meat, crusty bread and a flavor salad in about 15 minutes. Total cost for the meal: about two bucks!