Dear Feastlings,
I bit off more than I can chew again. I had every intention of getting an email out to you around noontime today, but the list of things I couldn’t say no to has been growing all morning and well into the afternoon. The good news is that, flying by the seat of our pants or not, we’ve got wine tastings planned for next week, which you’ll read about soon enough, though you should make your reservations sooner than later for the Last Sunday tasting, as those still do get booked up, even in the summer months. The theme: local boy does good- we’ll have winemakers who hail originally from Tucson but have ended up in Carneros, the Willamette Valley, Napa and/or Australia (still waiting to hear back from two people) and our own back yard in Sonoita. Meanwhile, you can still grab samples for tomorrow’s tasting, if you’re so inclined:
I’ve also signed myself up for the Arizona Public Media fund drive, so I’ll do my customary bit of bringing Feast gift certificates to soften the blow of interrupting the programming you love and ask everyone to donate to the cause.
Speaking of donating and important causes, I’m going to Casa Alitas with food for a hundred and fifty refugees, which will have been donated by both you and us at Feast, with any luck. That will be on Tuesday the 24th. What’s Casa Alitas? It’s this:
https://www.casaalitas.org/
and what are we doing with them? It’s this:
I’ve also got most of the September menu squared away with my buddies here in the kitchen, so we can be ready for Sonoran Restaurant Week,
https://www.sonoranrestaurantweek.com/
and I just finished making arrangements for a private wine dinner that will be our maiden voyage into integrated events that happen both in person and on Zoom. That one’s a private event, so I’ll have to let you know how it went, but I’m bullish, and if we learn enough from it, we can inch toward public events that include presenters from faraway lands, people who want to eat here, and people who want to eat in the safety of their own homes. Fingers crossed.
Then there’ll be a cooking class for the kids at both Tully Elementary and Tucson High Schools- hey, we’re not the only ones doing Zoom events- and a couple of dinners with Kent Callaghan of Callaghan Vineyards, where we prepare the food and sent it down to the winery with Kent so they can plate it up, and, if we’re lucky, a sister event here at Feast where Kent can chime in on Zoom on our big screen like a movie star. More about all of that soon, though in the meantime, you can still get into one of their dinners if you get in touch with Kent or Lisa:
https://www.callaghanvineyards.com/home
Having tasted the wines to write the pairings, i can tell you firsthand: they’re flipping beautiful. You’ll get another note tomorrow with a link and passcode if you want to join us for tomorrow’s Zoom tasting, and we’d love to see you here in the restaurant as well, any time. Except Mondays. No one is invited on Mondays. But do come join us.
Your friend Doug, and all the kind people at Feast
In any case, I’m lacing up my running shoes to get all this stuff done