Dear Feastlings,
Our tiny world here at Feast is invariably a peephole into the psyche of the community. We’re like Santa; we know when you’re sleeping, we know when you’re awake, we know when you’re willing to put yourself in a room full of strangers and count on avoiding infection, and we know when you’re feeling skittish.
Me, I’m on the fence. Numbers are most decidedly increasing yet again,
https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/hospital-crowding-in-arizona-reaches-pandemic-high/article_f3182d1e-5920-11ec-9f0f-2f3a6bf1e78f.html#tracking-source=article-related-bottom
and hospitalizations are nothing to dismiss, but I’m also convinced that this virus, like any competent virus, is mutating itself to the point where it stops killing people and only makes us into mildly uncomfortable virus-spreaders. Fingers crossed. I don’t want a cold or flu any more than anyone else does, but I do take a certain significant pleasure in avoiding hospitalization.
Evidently, so do a number of you- when we started doing in-person wine tastings again, virtual tastings dropped to a mere handful, and this week, enough of you are reading that article to say to yourselves, “you know, tasting at home feels pretty comfy.” So there’s still ample time for you to pick up samples for tomorrow’s tasting if you’re doing it at home, and if you’re inclined to join us here in our pleasantly distanced private dining room, there’s, well, more room for you here than usual. The tasting, like this week’s wines, is a titch pricier than most weeks, but by no means a bank breaker:
And with today’s numbers (ours, not the hospitals’, though I’m convinced there’s correlation if not causation,) I’m hustling to put together both a New Year’s Eve prix fixe menu and a series of hors d’oeuvres and wine samples a la last New Year’s Eve. That should be out soon. in the meantime, the holiday stuff we’re working on is a menu of Christmas treats for pickup on the 24th
and one more run of meals donated to the students of Youth on Their Own, where we’ll drop off our 3rd monthly installment of meals that you (and we) have donated.
As to our other donations, we’ll be back at those once we’ve survived the holidays- it turns out that staying in business occasionally means doing business, and with our still-limited staff, we’re having trouble keeping up with all the holiday parties people want catered and still getting the meal donations out. I’m hoping that they’re all fine right now, the people at the Primavera Men’s Shelter, the Sister Jose Women’s Center, Covenant House, St. Luke’s Home, Casa Alitas and the various and sundry apartment complexes run by Compass Affordable Housing. I’m banking on the fact that the holiday spirit keeps them well taken care of this month, and we’ll circle back around when people have gotten back to their quotidian lives and left the meal donations to people like us, who’ve been too busy to help but have always regarded holidays as dates that can be shuffled about for our own convenience when it comes time for us to celebrate them.
Whenever your celebrate, and whatever you celebrate, please accept this wish for a good one of them.
Your friend who’s still in good health, or at least good physical health,
Doug