The Chef Apprentice

Imagine having your own chef for a day.

Not just any chef, but one that could explain the intricacies of California water policy while turning out a shaved asparagus salad, a pasta ragu that sings like Pavarotti and various cocktails invented at Oliveto.

If this sounds appetizing, then buy a ticket for the AgFest Dinner, to be held Saturday at Fremont Park and hosted by SlowFood Sacramento. If you do, you can bid on the Chef Apprentice. All proceeds from the dinner and auction benefit the Sacrament Hunger Coalition and the Sacramento Community Garden Coalition.

Here's the deal: I'll meet the winning bidder at the Sacramento Farmer's Market on a Sunday that is mutually convenient. We'll plan a lunch of handmade pasta that includes the best ingredients at the market that day, which I'll pay for out of my pocket. Then we'll go back to your place and I'll prepare a lunch for you and up to six of your guests.

There's lots of other items to bid on at the AgFest auction. These include dinner for six at Mulvaney's, a ride-along with Bee restaurant critic Blair Robertson, a garden consultation with Bee Garden Columnist Debbie Arrington, Ginger Elizabeth chocolates and more. 

Going once! Going twice! Sold to...?

You've read about my matriculation in making pasta. You've seen the photos. Now's your chance to have me as your pasta cooking slave for a weekend lunch, following a joint shopping spree at the Sacramento Farmers Market.

To raise money for local garden and hunger charities, the Slow Food Sacramento chapter is holding an all-day event on Saturday, July 11 that will culminate in an AgFest Dinner at Fremont Park. At the dinner, foodies can bid on several different items, including a pasta lunch that I will prepare for you and your friends on a future Sunday. All proceeds benefit the Sacramento Hunger Coalition and the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition.

This should be a fun gathering, one that will feed your both brain and taste buds. The Slow Food Chapter has scheduled a day of farm tours, movies and workshops to help bring together local growers, gardeners and chefs. The dinner menu, prepared by Magpie Catering, features grilled Petaluma chicken and roasted corn with patty pan squash.

Speaking of grilled foods, I will also be sharing my meager cooking skills with a barbecue pit crew this Friday and Saturday, at the Way Out West BBQ Championship in Stockton.

Tim Mar, who owns Mar's Mobile Grill in Marysville, has been hounding me for months to join his pit crew at various competitions. I had a scheduling conflict for the state championship, in which Tim and his crew finished third. But now I am ready to take the challenge.

The Way Out West competition is part of the July 4 Taste of San Joaquin event at the Weber Point Events Center in Stockton. Stop on by the Mar's Mobile Grill camp if you want to see a BBQ apprentice in action. 

Not content to write one blog, I am now producing two.

Today, the first installment of my culinary odyssey appeared on Bay Area Bites, a food blog published by KQED, the public broadcast corporation based in San Francisco.

Bay Area Bites includes a stable of 16 bloggers, who post daily recipes and observations on Bay Area food issues and events. I am grateful to be part of this crew.

While there be some initial overlap between the two blogs, you'll see differences over time. The Chef Apprentice will focus on my day-to-day challenges and triumphs as an intern. My postings for Bay Area bites will focus more on the classic techniques of Italian cooking I'm learning at Oliveto.

Think of it as a multi-course meal. Appetizers, entree, etc.

I cook. I tweet.

Yes, I've finally broken down and signed up for Twitter -- under "sleavenworth."

If you sign up and follow me, you'll be able to keep track of nearly every dish I make and be instantly notified every time I stick a knife into my thumb.

Unless, of course, you have something better to do. Which I hope you do. 

The Chef Apprentice hits the radio airwaves Monday at 10 a.m.

Jeffrey Callison, host of Capitol Public Radio's "Insight," is curious why a journalist would take leave from a prestigious editorial board to risk his fingers -- fingers that are essential for typing -- to work as kitchen slave for no pay, for six months.

It's a good question. It's one I ask myself many days, as I do this crazy train-bike commute daily between Sacramento and the Bay Area. Tune in on Monday morning to find out what kind of answer I pull out of my toque.

"Insight" is broadcast daily at 10 a.m. during the work week on Capitol Public Radio -- KXJZ-FM, 90.9 in Sacramento. And now, back to work...

Self-portrait shot today on Amtrak, passing by the vernal pools of Yolo County.