My apologies right off the bat, dear Feastlings.
I’ve sent emails this week about all of the events I’m about to list here, and if times were normal, I’d leave it at that, but the past eleven months have taught me that relentless pestering produces results fairly reliably.
So here’s a note to tell you that if you plan on attending tomorrow’s Zoom wine tasting, you essentially have until 2:00 tomorrow to order your tastes,
but if it’s Sunday’s tasting you’re after, we humbly request that you place that order today so we can prep the accompanying food samples accordingly. We’ve already made an eye-watering batch of alfalfa brine for the shrimp course, and while we’re hoping to sell as many tastings as possible, no one is excited about another last-minute batch whose clouds of steam send us all for the door, clutching at our throats and rubbing our watering eyes. But may I say: WORTH IT.
Meanwhile, there are still charitable efforts that we’ve gotten behind, one in a week and a half
and another ongoing for a couple more weeks,
A fundraiser for Nourish AND your favorite restaurants, whichever ones they may be
and you’ll learn about more of those efforts soon as we get them fixed on the calendar. You’ll also get a link to the March menu and ample notice about the briskets we’ve been corning for the house-corned beef with which by now the majority of you are familiar (but for those of you who aren’t, I’ll post our standard notification: if your corned beef needs to be red? The kind of red that only comes from saltpeter and nitrates? You won’t be happy with ours. It’s first brined for weeks and then simmered slowly for hours, so it’s moist and tender, and it’s brown. Please don’t get all tantrummy with me about how it can’t be corned beef because it’s brown. Don’t demand a refund, don’t tell me I’m an idiot or a liar (yes, all of these things have happened, all as a result of serving what we at Feast regard as real corned beef.) Just skip it, please. Go get one at a place that’s serving green beer and wake up with a nitrate hangover, which I regard as nearly as bad as a green beer hangover.
My intention: I’m going to eat some of what we regard as a proper corned beef and cabbage, I’m going to think about all the beautiful places we sprinkled my mother-in-law’s ashes, I’m going to slather oatmeal porridge bread with Kerrygold butter and eat that until I’m steeped in regret, and I’m going to end the evening with some Green Spot or some Writer’s Tears, until I’ve forgotten I’m steeped in regret. Then I’m going to go to sleep and with any luck, I’ll dream of Bread 41, where I’d recommend spending your time over any tourist attraction in Dublin.
Sláinte,
Doug