Food 360 Kitchen ebook: Make Tasty-Great Times Synchronizing with our Food Cycle

By David Yapo

Food 360 Kitchen: Make Tasty-Great Times Synchronizing with our Food Cycle is a cookbook anyone can follow to create delicious meals and adopt habits that will bring their kitchens in sync with our food cycle. Chef Yapo shares seven weeks of exciting, globally inspired recipes suited to every type of diet from carnivores to vegetarians. Chef Yapo provides his no-odor recipes for compost and worm bins, pictures, and links to videos to equip readers with the knowledge needed to adopt Food 360 Kitchen practices by safely diverting food scraps into new earth and plant food for future gardens. Home cooks will learn how to choose the best food ingredients, save money, and taste the rewards of adopting Food 360 Kitchen habits.

After completing seven weeks of Tasty-Great Times, readers will come away with positive experiences cooking from scratch, reusing leftovers in follow-up meals, and using food scraps to build their own compost. Chef Yapo’s goal is for readers to adopt Food 360 Kitchen habits, which will lead to their living in sync with our food cycle and leaving a legacy that generations will celebrate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387949755

Book preview

FOOD 360 KITCHEN

Make Tasty-Great Times Synchronizing with our Food Cycle

85+ original recipes from scratch

David Yapo

Diagram Description automatically generated

Yapos Home Publishing

San Diego

Copyright © 2022 by David Yapo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-387-94975-5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to my friend Amanda Dahlgren, who is a photographer and took some of the pictures I use in the book; to my friend Jennifer Braidwood who helped me organize, write, and explain ‘my’ story concisely; and to my cousin Shaula Stephenson who helped me organize, edit, and format my entire book, and designed my book and cover.

DEDICATION

Leaf with solid fill

For Jill: my wife, best friend, and lover, my first collaborator and student of what I call a Food 360 Kitchen.

Chapter 1: Start Now

Have fun doing good in the kitchen!

Meet Chef Yapo

Hey y’all! I’m Chef Yapo. It’s David Yapo, but for most of my life I’ve been called by my last name. It’s memorable and fun to say - I encourage it!

I graduated from San Diego Culinary Institute (SDCI), worked in the industry, and have been running a catering business serving Tasty-Great Times for over a decade. I do event catering, cooking classes and private dinner parties, all as San Diego’s sustainable chef. When I say sustainable, I mean using local organic food ingredients first, striving for no food waste, and having fun doing it.

My earliest memories of the garden, kitchen, and cooking are all with my Grandpa Yapo during my early childhood, where I would spend summers at my grandparents' home in Fern Park, a suburb of Orlando, Florida.

Most days started with pulling weeds in the garden that Grandpa kept at the side of his house. After our time in the yard, we would always cool down by jumping into his kidney-shaped pool. Most of the time, lunch and naps were on tap next but occasionally, Grandpa would pull out a pad of paper and pen. We would sit down together and talk about what we had eaten the last couple days and not eaten for a while until we had ideas to talk to Grandma about.

With the warm Orlando sun above our heads, my grandpa, whether we knew it or not, was instilling in me an appreciation for life and the happiness that can be obtained when hands meet the Earth and fresh food becomes a meal.

In my early adulthood I continued to find myself at the center of every kitchen, whether cooking and entertaining friends and family, or winning the local chili cook-off. I spent some interesting years from college to my early 20s cooking at Hooters, Ruby Tuesdays, and many other chains. What it came down to was: I always knew I could cook. It was a passion, but I didn’t really consider it as a serious profession. Soon I found myself cement-locked in corporate America, working in executive sales for Microsoft Sidewalk.com, then CollegeClub.com during the early Internet craze. I was what we now know as a virtual millionaire with all my stock options.

Things changed on March 26, 2000, when I suffered a traumatic brain injury in a skiing accident that resulted in a 22-hour coma and 45 days with no memory. That period regularly reminds me how short life is. I said I knew how to walk but in truth, I could not move without assistance. As my therapist held me on a beam an inch off the ground, I could hardly move three steps before I slipped and had to rebalance. A living nightmare, knowing I used to do this without consideration.

A year later, I completed therapy and successfully relearned how to walk and talk again. To test myself, I decided to train and solo hike the John Muir Trail. This proved to me that I could still succeed in the face of physical and mental challenges. When I walked into the backcountry, my goal was to return to corporate America as an executive sales superstar.

Evolution Lake

That solo hike in the backcountry started to open an awareness of sorts inside of me. I was forming habits that worked in unison with nature, working to leave no trace everywhere I camped. Everything I needed was on my back and nature provided the rest. I would catch a few fish, filet, and fry them in my tiny skillet, then bury the bones in a hole at least two feet deep and fifty feet from any water source. I was always on the lookout for running water in streams and rivers, two sources that are naturally safer than stagnant lakes. I would filter water and use it for drinking or cooking food in the backcountry.

John Muir Trail, 2001.

John Muir Trail, 2001.

Surviving off the Earth transformed my way of thinking about food and water in general. It became really clear to me how dependent I was on the Earth to provide my basic needs: safe food, clean water, and air. I became aware of nature’s frailty, its importance, and our voluntary and involuntary impact on it. I hiked into the backcountry with a dangerous naivety and returned with an awareness of the alarming waste and corruption of life’s necessities.

After my hike I began to see our lifestyle in all its opulence, ignorance, and cannibalistic reality. I said goodbye to corporate America, followed my passion, and began my education and professional training as a Chef at the San Diego Culinary Institute (SDCI) and Master Compost Educator at the County of San Diego Solana Center for Environmental Innovation. My experience at SDCI allowed me to build on my natural culinary skills and my experience at the Solana Center enabled me to be master of the food cycle.

During my time at SDCI, I also worked at a catering business and Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Restaurant, where I earned my chops working double shifts when I was not at school. The defining moment came when I realized I wanted to interact with diners as well as be in the kitchen.

In early 2009, I accepted an offer from a friend to cater at their home for a moving out of state party, and Yapos Home Catering was founded. It was joyful for me to serve food that was appreciated by all.

Chef Yapo

My big break came a few months later when I booked my largest event at that point: catering the 200+ person Surfrider Art Gala at the Del Mar Powerhouse. I partnered with a local grocery chain and delivered the best food and service in the history of the event. From there, my focus on making tasty-great food and being good to our Earth with no food waste finally came together.

Chef Yapo, 2016.

Over a decade later, Yapos Home Catering clients include local celebrities San Diego Mayor Faulconer, former San Diego Padres coach Bud Black, and ocean photographer Aaron Chang, and organizations like the City of San Diego, City of Chula Vista, and U.S. Green Building Council. The San Diego Gas & Electric Company Energy Innovation Center, Del Mar Powerhouse, and households all over San Diego are also clients.

In between events, you can find me teaching cooking classes at the San Diego Sur La Table as a Chef Instructor and Cozymeal.com for private classes.

Today I hike and surf when I can, love on my family and friends, and strive for graceful dominion of my portion of Earth, here in North Clairemont, a suburb of San Diego, California.

J&D at DisneyWorld Xmas04

Every day, I continue to fall more in love with my wife Jill. She is my object of desire today,