Dear Feastlings,
More and more I feel like I should be wearing a tie. I know I’ve said it before, but this being the closest I’ve ever come to working a nine-to-five office job since, as a grad student, I shared a desk for office hours with my now dear friend Antonio almost thirty years ago in the French and Italian Department, I still have no idea how those of you who spend the day at a computer and a phone do this consistently. We’ve been seeing heroes pop up all over the place throughout the pandemic, the social unrest and the forest fires, but- dare I say it? You’re heroes for having done this kind of work each day for years.
My job now is as much fundraiser and project manager as it is chef, and I’m missing the hell out of the chef thing.
The projects I’m managing are diverse and numerous- I’m meeting my friend David Elliott with the Primavera Foundation shortly to figure out how we’re going to pull off Primavera Cooks this year without putting people in a dining room together, so once we’ve chatted, I’ll be posting more about that. And we’ve got some smaller projects in the works as well: Today we’re celebrating the Summer Solstice with a Bonfires of San Juan menu, a tribute to all things Spanish, and although we’ve sold every last serving of paella, we’ll still have a few little tapas available, and whether you’re eating from that menu or not, we’re offering every bottle of wine that originates from Spain at 10% off today, so it might be fun to grab a bottle of Rioja even if you’re having the beef tenderloin from our regular menu, or maybe pair a Txakolina with your shrimp.
We’ve also got a virtual wine tasting this Saturday, focused on an Independence Day theme, since Independence Day does fall on a Saturday and we won’t have a tasting the following week. Here’s the information on our tasting of American wines.
There’ll also be a delivery run of donated meals tomorrow to seven different animal shelter/rescue/adoption organizations in town.
And two delivery runs to the periphery of Tucson this weekend, one to the north and northwest and one to the south and southeast.
Plus I’m still working on getting things sorted out with some EXTREMELY busy fire chiefs to donate food to some of the 900- plus firefighters working at containing the Bighorn Fire and protecting a lot of people and property right now.
As always, the crew here at Feast thanks you for your tremendous support and generosity, and wishes you well in staying safe and sane during the roughest time we’ve seen around here in a long time, if not ever.
Love,
The people of Feast