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?

An elegant little appetizer

I like to use a big sharp knife!

Today's blog is about presentation. If you know a few rules you can make plates that would make a 3 star restaurant proud.

First here is how to cut cucumbers so thin you can see through them, without losing any fingers!

Notice how the knife rests against my fingers. 

Using a big sharp knife means all you have to do is guide the knife. The weight of the knife and the sharp blade do the cutting for you. Since you don't have to press you have more control.



If you are more comfortable with a smaller knife use it. In any case try to make the cut in one sweep of the knife to get a clean cut. Going back and forth creates an uneven surface.

One rule to remember in knife work is that no sharp part of the knife, the tip or the blade, should ever be pointed at a part of your body! If you keep that in mind you will never get cut.

Here we have a very simple geometric pattern.  It will showcase whatever we put in the middle.

This is a zester, which removes the zest or outer layer of a citrus fruit. The side you see has sharp ridges and the other side is smooth.

I like this kind of zester because it makes strips and I can cut them into the size and shape I want.

Here I have cut up a single Kalamata olive and put some long shreds of orange peel on top. You see how you hardly notice the cucumber or the plate now? They frame the olive.

Major faux pas here, enough to get you detention in cooking school. When your food extends beyond the rim it looks sloppy and casual.

 Here is the finished dish. You can add whatever goodies you have, from a little chunk of left over steak or pork or chicken to a fine cheese or an oyster. All I have here is a tiny chunk of orange, an almond roasted in walnut oil, a small piece of mozzarella and a piece of Italian sausage. The olive and orange mixture has a touch of olive oil and the specks you see are black pepper. Good eating, nice looking and it probably cost a quarter for all the food.