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?

Brown Rice Risotto

If you are an Italian grandma please sit down and clutch your heart. I made risotto with brown rice. No expensive little packages of special rice from the north of Italy. I actually like this best made with brown basmati rice but I didn't have any.

Rachel and I had a California Pops rehearsal. All big band music for this show, which is sold out. I made this risotto right before we left I just had a bite of it and left it for my snack after rehearsal.

Brown rice risotto, onion and potato soup

This is an unusual recipe for me.  It takes over and hour. Although there isn't much work to do you do have to be close by. Every few minutes you have to stir the rice and add liquid when it needs it.

The process is the same as making a traditional risotto. I started by sauteing an onion in olive oil, then I added the brown rice and some thyme and sauteed them too.



I boiled some water and added an ounce of dried mushrooms.  When the rice had changed color I added a enough of the mushroom stock to cover the rice, a clove of garlic and stirred like mad.

So for the next 50 minutes or so I alternated between practicing and stirring and adding stock.

At the end I added some sliced water chestnuts, salt and pepper.

Tonight after rehearsal I sat down and heated up some of my leftover onion and potato soup, added a bunch of the now rehydrated wild mushrooms, a dash of Madeira and seasoned it. I reheated some of the risotto and added it to the soup.