Dear Feastlings,
I was thoroughly convinced last week, after all the demo taping, the virtual wine tasting stuff, the planning and the generally trying to be all things to all people, that this would be a restful week- the calm before the storm, if you will. I delivered 180 meals to Sister Jose Women’s Center today (Thank you, National Bank of Arizona, for underwriting a generous donation! We were happy to throw in thirty extra meals ourselves, because that’s just what we do around here) and thought I’d have a couple of days to regroup. This is both happily and sadly not the case. As your Thanksgiving orders are coming in and we keep trying to re-up our orders with our purveyors, we’re getting calls back from them saying that, well, they’re out of turkeys. and while we may still be able to scramble from one grocery store to the next, it’s becoming abundantly clear to us today that we need to move the deadline for Thanksgiving orders up. I hate to do this to any of you, let alone all of you, but we’re not sure that we’ll be able to keep up with orders, especially since we’re providing meals to Youth on Their Own and to the people who live in B’nai B’rith Covenant House, and for that we’re grateful to those of you who’ve donated a meal, a cookie, or a dozen meals, to Bank of America, whose grant is helping subsidize Tucson’s Covenant with Elderly, to whom we’re also thankful for choosing Feast to provide these meals. So I hate to do this, but we need to move the deadline up in order to meet demand and to achieve the quality you’ve come to expect of us in your Thanksgiving meals.
Contrary to Alanis Morissette’s assertion, rain on your wedding day, unfortunate as it may be, is not ironic. What’s ironic to me, today, is that here we are needing every small scrap of business that we can scrape together to keep our doors open, and we will likely have to turn no small amount of it away because it’s all coming in one fell swoop.
We’re no strangers to this- everyone wants to eat at seven in more normal times, and if they can’t get a reservation then, they’re likely to look elsewhere before they consider changing their reservation time, and every Valentine’s Day we’ll invariably have to tell someone there’s not a seat available- but this year of all years, it’s particularly difficult to cut off Thanksgiving orders when we’ve never had to before. So we’re grateful to have maxed ourselves out, but wishing we could offer more. In order to give you all a chance to convene with your fellow Thanksgiving diners and decide what you require, we aren’t simply cutting off Thanksgiving orders immediately, but I sure hope everyone planning on ordering Thanksgiving food is reading this, because we need to cut off orders TOMORROW RATHER THAN SUNDAY. If for any reason we’re able to extend the deadline to Thursday based on what ingredients we know we can get in time, we will, but I do implore you to order by tomorrow if at all possible.
Sorry about that. I’m bracing myself for the phone calls and emails, but the pandemic has spoken. Again. Here’s one last look, though, at the Thanksgiving menu:
For those of you who thrive on ritual, today’s the day you need to put together your order and phone it in at some point during the next 30 hours or so, but if you’re like me, it’s of little consequence. You’re content with a grilled cheese sandwich on Thanksgiving because you do your dining when it suits you. For those who feel like I do, here’s the regular menu, which you can enjoy any day you’d like- even on Thanksgiving, if you’re willing to take it home cold on Wednesday and heat it up on Thursday.
And for those of you who find wine to be the key part of the meal anyhow, there’s this week’s wine tasting:
I must admit, Grignolino and stuffing sounds pretty good to me. I’ll have more to tell you as the week progresses, but please get those Thanksgiving orders in as soon as humanly possible.
Love,
Doug