To Thine Own Self, Be Food

Three months ago, I bought a food truck. Today, WanderLunch (yes, shameless FB plug) opened for its first day of service. To quote the oft-quoted Jerry Garcia, what a long, strange trip it's been. Frankly, I thought this day would actually never come.  Between truck repairs, licensing issues, and general business and food information gathering, I felt like I was playing around for the longest time. Until today, that is. After spending much of Thursday and Friday working on food truck preparation, we rolled out and pulled up to the parking lot of the Cellar Peanut Pub at 8:00 a.m.  Our first order was taken at 10:55 a.m. In the end, five hours later, we'd sold 75 sandwiches, and poured a couple dozen cups of Cream of Tomato soup.  The food truck has no cooling system, so we sweated it out in 90-some degree kitchen heat. And it was so much fun.  We played music, we joked around, we talked with people.  Yeah, I'm wiped the hell out.  My legs hur...

Yes, I just invoked *that* level of intensity. This week is the "make-or-break" week.  Well, no, okay, not really...but it's pretty damned important. First of all, my mobile unit business (aka Food Truck) is very nearly all-systems-go.  One last visit to the truck doctors and WanderLunch will be ready for its Kickoff Week. Yeah, no more messing about.  Time to get real.  Or something. To start, though, I'm catering a private business function on Tuesday, and the menu looks like this: Hummus and Vegetable Cups Butternut Squash and Sage Pesto Bruschetta Caprese Cocktail Meatballs Dulce De Leche Bars Mini-Strawberry Mousse Parfaits For visuals, this is what I mean: thriftyveggiemama.com foodnetwork serestocollars.com my private archives The request was for simple fingerfoods, and the time frame is 4-6:30.  Early evening...which to me, screams for light fare.  Hence, the above.  There's quite a bit I can make ahead an...

Here's your history lesson today.  It's well-known that India was under British control for many years before the middle of last century.  And who knew? Imperialism is a two-way street.  While many Indians adapted and assimilated the English, the Brits found certain aspects of Indian life appealing as well...namely, their cuisine.  Dishes like curry and chicken tikka masala are as common in England as fish and chips.  It's quite interesting, though, that the Indian cuisine popularity did not quite extend across the pond here in the US. Oh, to be sure, curry is ubiquitous here in the States, but not to the extreme that it is over the Sea. I think most people associate curry with spice, and that is true.  However, the spice is different from say, a Mexican habañero spice.  Curries contain spices like cumin, cinnamon, ginger...which give it a more "warm" spiciness as opposed to a complete burning off of your taste buds.  We've been to Indian re...