Gourmet foil dinners

I have this fantasy of owning a yuppy foil dinner restaurant where people sit by a man-made fire and order bundles of leek and turnip hash, foil foie gras or pickled herring and kohlrabi date salad, wrapped in foil. I think I'd call it The Tin House, or for a Shakespearean twist, Foil. (Or if it was close to Berkeley, it could be called FOIL'ed)

I've never been much for camping, but there's just something about a hot cowboy coffee and a slop of fire roasted food that makes me want to appreciate nature. (Almost!)

These are my vegetables, courtesy of the Grand Lake Farmers Market: where hippies, yuppies and hipsters combine to form a triad of social consciousness.

I put in all kinds of turnips, little yellow carrots, kale, spinach, shallots and romanesco (an Italian cauliflower), with generous amounts of salt and pepper and some leftover mint I had laying around. If you're not using meat, a healthy dose of olive oil is pivotal to keeping the vegetables moist. Mansten didn't use any in his dinner, and it came out dry as a driad.



Make sure you rub some butter on the inside of the foil so it doesn't stick. Put it in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour...



And presto! A beautiful plate of steamed vegetables, probably nothing like the ones grampa Bubkis used to fire up with his marshmallows, but wonderful nevertheless. It was probably the healthiest thing I've eaten in recent memory. (But I won't quibble if you add some beef.) I felt so good after eating it, I almost considered taking a walk outside!