Dear Feastlings,
If you’ve read any number of the emails I send, you know already that there’s a morass of nervous concerns and minutiae that crowd my brain and lead me to write long, meandering diatribes that barely keep from overshooting the landing strip of the sentence. If you’ve seen my desk, you know what it looks like inside my head. Until today.
Each several months, I reach a point at which I can’t further handle all the flotsam and jetsam that have agglomerated on my desk, and today, I got there. Mind you, even putting away half a dozen books, throwing away some check stubs that I found from 2021, and returning to the tool box the screws and valves who’ve landed on the desk over time, there remains a layer or two that I have yet to address. There are still victim notifications from the times we’ve been burgled, yellow pads jammed with food and wine pairings and payroll notes, and, for some reason, shelf-stable hops that I bought with the intention of cooking with them.
There’s a fortune-telling 8-ball that Kevin gave me, and a singed chunk of Palo Santo that Deen gave me. Many of you remember either or both of them, I’m sure. There’s a bottle of Arizona Sagrantino that I picked up for a winemaker from Umbria who’s returned to Umbria without it, and a calculator that was in the office of La Fonda when I bought the entire contents to turn it into Feast.
Ultimately, I’m acknowledging that my desk, even when I clean it, never arrives at a complete state of tidiness, or if it does, it’s so fleeting that most people will never see it that way. I’ve removed a sizeable portion of the offending papers and tools, though, and feel ready now to dash off this note to tell you that there’s a wine tasting this Saturday at 2:00,
a prelude to the treats we have lined up for you on Sunday (yes, open on a Sunday!) to celebrate Bastille Day,
and that otherwise, we’re just maintaining the status quo around here, which means we have a great plenitude of squash blossoms to offer you, and crabcakes and duck. And we’ll have halibut tonight and tomorrow as well, if you’re so inclined. Come visit; we’d love to see you. I’ve even cleaned off my desk for you. Sort of.
Love,
Doug