The Week in Food

Here's what I've been eating recently.

Rather than using my Baskin Robbins coupon on National Ice Cream Day, I took Katie to the local Coldstone Creamery. I had Mud Pie Mojo, which consists of coffee ice cream, peanut butter, Oreo cookies, fudge, and roasted almonds.

A recent long work day found me famished with no time to actually stop and eat. I stopped at a convenience store for what I affectionately refer to as a "7-11 Lunch": A drink and a bag of chips, in this case an Icee and a bag of Harvest Cheddar Sunchips.

We attended a party at the home of some friends. As is typical for one of their parties, there was plenty of fresh and delicious food, most of it purchased at San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market. Seen here is a platter of sliced French bread topped with cheese and smoked salmon.

At the same party I also filled up on bread, cheese, crackers, olive tapenade, and artichoke dip, seen below.

I chased these appetizers with rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes, and salad. Apologies for the overuse of flash on this picture; I was on my fifth or sixth Pisco Sour at this point.

Here's the caprese salad from The Melting Pot, a leftover photo from our anniversary earlier this month: Baby greens topped with tomatoes and mozzarella, dressed with balsamic vinegar.

The Melting Pot's California salad consists of baby greens, Roma tomatoes, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese, with a light sprinkling of raspberry black walnut vinaigrette dressing.

Last Saturday, we had out-of-town relatives over for dinner. We put out some fresh mozzarella, as well as an excellent, moderately-spicy peppercorn cheese from Pedrozo Dairy and Cheese Co. That's the wedge of cheese seen at the top of the platter. No, it hasn't gone bad. Those are peppercorns.


We prepared a salad of red leaf lettuce, diced apples, cranberries, candied walnuts, gorgonzola cheese and raspberry walnut vinaigrette. While it may seem that the idea for this salad was stolen from The Melting Pot, in truth we have been making this salad (or variations thereof) for years; if we were inspired by any restaurant, it's likely Pizza My Heart.

We barbecued a pound of shrimp, and served it with fettucine or angel hair pasta, depending on the preferences of our guests. Katie made a cream sauce that didn't photograph as well as I'd hoped. However, it tasted just as good as I'd hoped.

We also barbecued two ears of corn, seen here sliced in half. There were four guests, plus Katie and myself. One guest doesn't like corn, and I took one for the team and did without, ensuring that the remaining three guests and my wife could have half an ear each.