Playing With Our Food

“Do you want to go with us to Pocatello?” That was the question from my daughter, Aubrey. Her family, University of Montana football season ticket holders, planned to make the 375-mile trek to watch the Griz play at Idaho State. “Heck yeah!” He said: Aubrey, Kenny and the kids picked me up from work and brought me lunch for the drive - some apple slices and a thick slick of Papa Murphy 5-meat pizza, just like I had on a Clark River paddleboard outing with Lori. Nothing like getting a road trip off on the right food, er, foot.  The first stop on our trip was an overnighter with family in Rexburg, 80 miles from our game-day destination. As we rolled into town, we hit dinner at Millhollow, self-touted as the oldest homegrown restaurant and the first to bring both frozen yogurt and toasted sandwiches to town. Millhollow sandwiches are basically “build your own,” which I did – ham, banana peppers, EXTRA pickles (always!) and honey mustard. And I washed it down with a smooth Just Pe...

“Hey Mark,” a co-worker said as she popped her head into my office, “we’re all getting an early out today. Tell your crew to head home at 3:30.” Sweet! It was a Friday afternoon. And outside we had sunshine and early fall temperatures in the 70s. Now, what to do with that perfect weather to take advantage of a 90-minute head start to the weekend? One hour later, there we were in the mountains just above our house. He said: When you need a quick meal, you defer to a favorite – or in this case, two favorites and an all-time favorite side “dish.” For me, favorite number-one is what I call “salad pizza,” though this was a mini-version of my usual full plate mounding. That’s a base of lettuce and then all kinds of ingredients on top like white cabbage, red cabbage (yeah, I like cabbage), carrots, tomatoes, banana peppers, pickles, ham, cheese and slather it with a healthy dose of sweet and spicy French dressing just like you’d bury a regular pizza in cheese. (Side note: I’d usually inc...