Harris Ranch

What goes on the grill on the glorious Fourth? A glorious steak, if you're lucky. Nothing's easier to find in a supermarket than steak, but there are steaks and then there are steaks ... and then there are still more steaks.

If the objective of a club-goer is to meet Mr. or Ms. Right, Century City's hoity-toity nightclub Tripp's may hold some attraction. On Saturday nights in particular, the two-tier venue rounds up the singles crowd and begins packing 'em in like the Harris Ranch stockyards. In every other way, however, Tripp's stumbles, fumbles and falters, offering a thoroughly unmemorable night out. All that, after paying a $15-cover charge and $5 for parking.

Bucolic Thousand Oaks is loaded with charm and beauty but, until recently, it's had relatively few interesting restaurants. Perhaps the success of 2087-An American Bistro can change that. This handsome spot is an airy space with dandelion yellow walls, a wooden floor, an open kitchen and a casually rustic ambience. It is across the street from another unproven experiment, the impressive Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Now the concept of dinner and a show has a completely new spin.

If there's any place that a Republican can hope to find friendly faces and warm handshakes, it is here, where they don't consider family values a joke and where they recognize bull manure when they see it. So why did only 15 people attend a lunch for U.S. Senate hopeful Tom Campbell, while just down the road in Tulare, 500 people showed up for a speech by Democratic incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein?

Japanese trade negotiators in Tokyo agreed Saturday to reopen their markets to U.S. beef, 10 months after discovery of a single case of mad cow disease in Washington state prompted Japan to ban American imports. The deal was seen as the first step toward reestablishing the export market for U.S. beef -- which totaled more than $3.8 billion in 2003, but essentially disappeared at the end of December. That's when more than 40 countries stopped importing U.S.

Dear SOS: The Harris Ranch in Coalinga has a Peanut Butter Chip Cookie that makes my mouth water every time I think about it. Please, please, try to get the recipe. --LYNN Dear Lynn: You are not alone. The cookies were a hit with the Test Kitchen taste panel too.

I had no time to rest up from my Sierra adventure before my wife and I set out by car for San Jose. As lively and progressive a city as it may be, it is not a place one would choose for a holiday, like San Francisco. Obviously, I had a reason for going there. I was to give a talk at a meeting in the De Anza Hotel. We took Interstate 5. There is no quicker escape from the overcrowding of Los Angeles than a drive up 5.

Lunch is more than just a meal to countless California private pilots. It's also a launch pad for adventure in the skies--a reason to climb into that cockpit and take off into the great blue beyond. The flying-to-lunch bunch makes no particular demands when it comes to cuisine. To their way of thinking, what you eat is less important than how you get to it. Expense also is not an issue.

The beneficiaries range from Stac Electronics, a San Diego maker of data-compression software, to Harris Ranch Beef Co. in Selma. In fact, just about every California company that exports goods and services to the Pacific Rim stands to benefit from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade agreement signed Tuesday in Indonesia by the United States and 17 other Pacific Rim nations.