The following article by McKinsey about placing health checkpoints with nurses in grocery stores and pharmacies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is an interesting public health initiative that helps everyone get their blood pressure and blood sugar checked as part of preventative health where and when it is convenient:
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Gam s
Porchetta in the Park: A Florentine Food Truck Memory by Ruth Paget
After eating a memorable meal at the Fattoria di Maiano up in the hills around Florence (Italy) in Fiesole, my husband Laurent and I spent the next part of our vacation in touristy Florence looking for authentic food in a speedy not slow food location.
What is truly wonderful about Italy, especially Florence, is that we found the authentic people’s food of Tuscany at the Mercato di Cascine (Cascine Market) on Tuesday morning.
This market that stretches a mile along the Arno River has hundreds of food trucks selling cuts of spit-roasted pork and porchetta (pronounced por-ketta) sandwiches among other food items, clothes, shoes, and household items.
Several trucks specialized in just porchetta sandwiches, which I later found out was roasted, rolled pork belly seasoned with herbs like rosemary and fennel. Porchetta is basted every ½ hour with its fatty cooking juices, which makes it taste especially good.
Laurent and I bought porchetta sandwiches, because they were easy to order for tourists with limited Italian skills.
The street vendor we purchased our porchetta sandwiches from grilled two ciabatta bread halves and placed them two medium slices of warm porchetta on the bottom bun. Next, the vendor placed a mound of peppery arugula on top of the porchetta with a splash of red wine vinegar.
The warm top bun went on top of the arugula. The skin on the porchetta was crisp along with the ciabatta bun for good texture to this calorie drenched sandwiched. I liked the punchy vinegar on the arugula too.
We bought San Pellegrino Limonata, lemon sodas, to go with our delectable sandwiches.
We strolled up and down the market for exercise and being part of the local culture and economy I was so happy to have found an authentic agritourism spot in Italy that also supported what was to become the globally respected Slow Food Movement.
The recipe below from Serious Eats calls for 4-hour roast on its belly roll porchetta that can be used in sandwiches.
https://www.seriouseats.com/all-belly-porchetta-recipe-italian-roast-pork
A food truck specializing in porchetta sandwiches might be able to turn a profit quickly by setting up reservation orders at a Farmers’ Market or by setting up neighborhood delivery runs like ice cream trucks or Omaha Steaks.
Having a porchetta truck run on a non-market day like Monday in Salinas, California could bring food into local neighborhoods and distribute it quickly.
Also, Salinas has easy access to all the Porchetta sandwich ingredients - organic pork from San Benito county, organic arugula from Monterey County, and lots of homemade wine vinegar options in California. The ciabatta bread can easily be made locally too, if we have a constant supply of sugar.
Food thoughts for the day!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
Classic Greek salad, what we called Village Greek Salad in Detroit’s (Michigan) Greek Town, uses no lettuce, but is loaded with chopped vegetables and feta cheese with lemon juice and oil dressing with oregano.
The vegetables used in this salad include:
-cucumbers
-red onions
-cherry tomatoes
-Black Kalamata olives
Delish provides a great spring and summer recipe below:
Nob Hill Supermarket in Salinas, California sells feta cheeee in several sizes and formats.
Bon Appetit!
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
The Big Sur Marathon will take place on April 26, 2026 from Big Sur to Monterey, California.
The Marathon’s route is certainly one of the most cliff-hanging events in the world.
Details about the Big Sur Marathon follow:
https://www.bigsurmarathon.org/
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
The 2026 Asian Cultural Fair will be held on April 25, 2026 from 11 am to 4 pm in Salinas, California’s Chinatown Neighborhood.
Good food community event to be sure!
Details about the event follow:
https://www.salinasace.org/acf
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
Steak Tourism at Pub’s (Growers’ Pub) in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
I try to make every steak meal at Pub’s (Growers’ Pub) in Salinas, California a surf and turf meal when I do what I consider “steak tourism” in a region with 40 pioneering ranch families, whose brands are emblazoned on two walls of the back dining room.
For starters, I ordered Monterey Bay Fried Calamari that have a delicate flour and corn meal crust. I love dunking these warm morsels in chipotle cream cocktail dipping sauce. This part of my surf and turf meal at Pub’s brings back many happy memories to me of my honeymoon in Barcelona, Spain, using up the last few days of a Eurail Pass vacation of Italy, Spain, and France.
I prefer seafood to steak, but when I eat steak I like to go to Pub’s for delicious meat at varying sizes and price levels so my husband Laurent can eat items like rack of lamb while I can happily eat the flat iron steak meal.
The Angus steaks at Pub’s seem to come from two local sources in Monterey County – Corral de Tierra off Highway 68 just outside Salinas and Parkfield located off Highway 101 inland from San Miguel Arcangel. (Parkfield is famous for its spa with horseback riding and café.)
I like my steak medium rare, which was perfectly cooked with sea salt added as the only needed extra flavoring. For the potato option in this meal, I ordered scalloped potatoes made with delicious aged cheddar cheese. (Scalloped potatoes are a favorite hot dish in Wisconsin where I lived for several years and took family vacations as a child.)
This steak meal came with a green leaf salad as an appetizer, which I ate with the house-made Thousand Island dressing. The buttered and seasonal vegetables with the steak – steamed broccoli, zucchini, and carrots – were excellent as you would expect from a growers’ pub.
We brought our own bottle of wine to dinner (purchased at COSTCO) and the reasonable corkage fee of $20 for our Château Carbonnieux Bordeaux.
This winery was established in the 13th century and has changed hands between a local Benedictine Monastery and bourgeois families of Bordeaux since that time. The Perrin family currently owns it and has instituted sustainable wine making practices, which you can read about on their website.
Château Carbonnieux is also the proud owner of a pecan tree planted by Thomas Jefferson on a 1786 visit to the Châteaux.
This Bordeaux wine comes from the Graves sub-region of Bordeaux and lies along the Garonne River that flows into the Gironde Estuary that opens out into the Atlantic Ocean.
I felt like I was drinking history in a glass as I sipped this wine with my steak meal.
Other diners who want to combine an excellent wine with their steak tourism meal at Pub’s can check out the following stores in town in case you want to bring a wine bottle to go with dinner:
-COSTCO
-Star Market
-BevMo
For relaxed and delicious steak tourism in Salinas (California), Pub’s (Growers’ Pub) should be a destination on your visit to Salinas and Monterey County.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
The BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) announced that the US GDP for 2025 was 2.1% in the following press release. Scroll down for the cumulative 2025 figures:
https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/gdp-second-estimate-4th-quarter-and-year-2025
The following chart summarizes world economies by GDP in 2025 and gives a historic listing for 1980:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-worlds-top-economies-in-1980-vs-2025/
The chart below of the world’s largest economies was produced by the International Monetary Fund:
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
Reposted by Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Game