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...

Almost two weeks since my last post here at Be Food.  Not quite two weeks, but almost.  Still.  Laaaaaame. I'm taking a few minutes to compose today's post whilst my husband and 14-year-old daughter discuss what exactly "watch me nae-nae" means.  Also, he appears to be shocked that photos of him are on her Instagram feed. But anyway. This brief montage pretty much sums up my Saturday.  Puttering in my kitchen and making magic happen.  We're having a teacher friend and her electrician husband over for dinner...as a thank-you for all the incredible good work he's done for us the last couple of weeks. I really dithered over the menu...I mean, it is just friends, but there's still a small part of me that really wants to wow.  However, I didn't want to knock myself out completely in the kitchen and not enjoy the company.  I haven't made the Bolognese for some time, and with the cooler weather as of late, there seemed no better time to ...

Oh, now, don't you just want to read on with a provocative title like that? By nudity, I mean of tomatoes.   The harvest from the garden is ongoing, although things appear to be slowing down a bit.  I have more tomatoes than I can eat fresh without causing my mouth to erupt from overacidulation. I have diced a bunch and made tomato juice...and frozen all of it.  So, today, with the mass that was ripe-n-ready, blanching, peeling, deseeding were the order of operations.  And luckily for me, my two sons pitched in and helped.  The youngest, who's 11, wanted to know what 'blanching' was.  Blanching, of course, is the process by which food is cooked quickly in hot water/oil and cooled immediately in ice/cold water.  Tomatoes benefit from this process because it makes them way easier to peel.  However, blanching is a good thing to do for any food that usually takes a long time to cook (e.g. vegetables).  Once they're cooled down, they can b...

Mini-bacon quilts, that is. If every small child and homeless person had a quilt like this when they were cold and/or scared, they would stop being that way immediately. The inspiration for this came in the form of an subscription email from Food & Wine.  The Mad Tips guy, Justin Chapple , complained that most BLT sandwiches have one major problem in common.  The bacon is in strips, and doesn't lay properly in a square sandwich...meaning, and this is a big deal, it's nearly impossible to get bacon goodness in every bite. For the record, I'm really not into bacon that much.  I don't go to Baconfests, I don't drool over bacon-wrapped stuff, I don't even have it in my house that much.  However... and if I'm going to do BLTs...then boy howdy, I'm going to do it right.  Enter Chapple's tip about the bacon weave.  Bacon in every bite.  Tomatoes from the garden, and lettuce from the fresh food co-op basket.  That's summer, folks. T...

Two meanings, for me, that particular phrase: I have three children, that's three separate incidents of labor...they are my fruit, so to speak. And the countdown is on...less than a month until my special little fruits return to school.  Get this: I will have two children in high school and one in his last year of elementary.  Most of the time, I don't really believe it...I don't certainly feel that old.  Anyway... I have a garden, and it is that time of season to begin the harvest and reap the fruits of those labors, so to speak. My father-in-law calls me yesterday and asks if I'd like sweet corn.  Sharing the fruits of his labors, as it were.  Of course I say yes, all the while wondering what the Bejesus I'll do with all this corn.  Remember, we planted three rows in my parents' garden and we are now picking all those as well.  And there's only so much sweet corn one can really eat before the ol' digestive system just shuts down. In my humb...