Hey there, Feastlings.
Not that it’s of interest to any of you, and not that I mean to whine to you, but I just got further than I ever have before with my PPP loan application. Every day since February 1, I’ve been applying, re-uploading, signing, dating and initialing whatever needed to be signed, dated, uploaded and/or initialed in order to apply for PPP loan number two, and every day, I’ve gotten back a message from my bank indicating that something was amiss, and I needed to re-apply.
Let me pause here to say that I know how lucky I am. That we got a PPP loan in the first place is a stroke of good luck- I have friends, acquaintances and probably enemies who didn’t even get a loan for round one, let alone have the opportunity for a second round. And yet, when I’ve made two five-figure dumps of my own personal savings into Feast in the past eight days, I’m sure you understand why each passing day without a loan is fairly unnerving.
Today, for some confusing reason, it looks as though they’ve finally agreed that everything they require has been submitted, so fingers crossed.
That frees me up to get cracking on the meal donation front again. Much like my bank, Banner has been mostly telling me what they need from me significantly after the fact, so when I heard on Tuesday that they couldn’t use the 150 meals I had prepared to donate, I started scrambling, only to discover today that the poor soul running the vaccination program at the U of A mall was in as deep as I was, and not prepared to receive those meals on a day’s notice either. So the (likely, at this point) winner is: El Rio Health Care- a couple of different clinics. Don’t worry, we’ll still be bringing food to the volunteers at Banner, but in a format that works for them rather than our cryovac meals. And we’re happy to take any donations anyone would care to make toward those- we’ll do what we’ve been doing: donate a meal for every five that have been donated by Tucsonans at large.
Meanwhile, we’ve made enough that you can pick up a couple of vacuum-packed meals for yourself if you’re so inclined, and you’ll find them here, on our menu.
If you’ve been dealing with various hospitals, banks, employees and the general public at the rate I have, you’ll also need a wine tasting. And we’ve got one of those on deck for you:
That’ll cover us for this week- the cutoff for Valentine’s Day orders has come and gone, and next week, we’ll have begun a new fundraising effort for meals for Banner volunteers that are more appropriate to their circumstances- a lack of refrigeration or kitchen equipment of any kind. Next week, you can expect to find new items on our website- plans for deliveries to our outlying hubs on the 19th, 20th and 21st, a link to my goofy (French onion) grilled cheese sandwich and (smoked) tomato soup thing for SAACA (actually, here’s that link now,)
https://saaca.thundertix.com/events/183823
We’ll include those dishes on the menu that day- February 23- and you’re welcome to pick them up and snack on them while you watch how we’ve made them. If you so choose. You’re also welcome to simply enjoy them without subjecting yourself to half an hour of Doug performing simple kitchen tasks.
We’ll also have information about next Saturday’s wine tasting, themed “Let’s not be hasty,” an ode to wines that fall on the cusp of prestige without the notoriety, or the price tag, of their big brothers and sisters; and about the Last Sunday of the Month tasting, wines that hail from parts of Spain that AREN’T Rioja.
There’ll also be a blurb about the abundance of crawfish etouffee there’ll be on Fat Tuesday, which falls on Tuesday, right on the heels of Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. And yes, for those of you who’ve been asking, we’ll have it in cryovac if you like, perfect for freezing or for not volunteering to vaccinate people in a parking garage. More on that soon.
Meanwhile, it’s the end of the day for a vast lot of you, so I’ll send this in the hopes that you see it before you leave work, if that’s a place you go to right now, and you order something to pick up on the way home. Or maybe you’re working at home and you’ve earned a field trip. I don’t know. All I know is that for the ninth time in as many business days, I’ve submitted everything I think my bank needs to process my PPP loan application, and I’m one step closer to getting a note from them telling me I’ve fallen short of giving them all the information they need.
Thank you all for your help during this cartoonish time, and have a really lovely evening.
Love,
Doug