#crew lunch

One of the great things about having a terrific crew paint the exterior of our house was that I got to cook for them. These guys put their hearts in to our job which lasted almost 2 weeks, and when I was home, I loved showing my appreciation by preparing something good for their lunch. One day it was a homemade chicken vegetable soup with everything but the kitchen sink. The next day that soup was even better after all the flavors had melded together and when served with a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with canned jalepenos. When the weather turned warm, something that doesn’t happen very often in SF, I served a composed salad of romaine, tuna, avocado, hard boiled egg, carrots, pickled beets and red onion, radish slices, tomatoes, cucumber, olives and 1000 island dressing. We even celebrated Daniel’s birthday one day with a small ice cream sundae for dessert. I was touched when their phones were brought out to take pictures of our meals for sending to their families and friends, and the job they did on our house was stupendous!

Crew lunch by Versatile Foods. Eaten in the pretty blue tile room at the Mexican Cultural Institute during a rather awful shoot for National Geographic.

The staff plied us with milkshakes and fries and sodas for the four or so hours we were shooting and then treated us to lunch as well. I had a stuffed portobello burger. My favorite thing at Good Stuff, however, remains the flavored mayos. Clockwise from top left the mayos pictured are: chipotle mayo, sriracha mayo, mango mayo, and Old Bay mayo. You're supposed to dip fries in these, but I mostly just eat them plain with my fingers.

I have come to a point in my production career where I look at a picture of a crew lunch and see it in my head as a line item on a budget. This particular lunch was from a GE shoot I did last month at a factory that assembles incubators and baby warmers. The shoot was catered by Black Diamond.

I could basically write a food blog that's just about crew lunches. I'm not going to, but I could. This was a particularly good one - ravioli and chicken and rice and salad and green beans - eaten at Patterson Park in East Baltimore on a rather cold April day.

This lunch was apparently: spaghetti with red sauce, baked beans, some kind of chicken (or tuna?) salad, baked chicken wings, steamed corn, rolls, and some kind of cheesy eggplant/tomato thing. I don't think that this picture is from the day I poured lemonade straight down my shirt, but who knows, it could be.