Guests - July 9th-10th

Wow - blogging is hard when a vast majority of my time is preoccupied with cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, entertaining, and then starting all over again! Since I'm so behind, I'll go back in time to our first guests of the Cafe Davis season, Charlie and Elizabeth Tudor, and their adorable 2 1/2 year old son, Sam. Charlie and Elizabeth, or Chaz and Lizzie as I like to affectionately call them, visited the weekend of the 9th and 10th. For those of you with the menu in front of you, you'll notice that the Cafe was officially closed for our anniversary that weekend. Since we had houseguests, however, they got special treatment! Chaz and Lizzie arrived for lunch on Saturday from their beautiful historic home in the Summerville area of Augusta. The lunch menu consisted of Santa Fe Chicken Wraps, Mexican Rice Salad, and homemade tortilla chips with Spicy Mango Salsa (one of my personal favorites!). Sam seemed to enjoy the tortilla chips the most, and found the stash of cat toys behind the couch to be fascinating. Kids are so funny...

After lunch, we jumped on MARTA and headed to the Center for Puppetry Arts (www.puppet.org) to see their Bulgarian production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (see picture at the beginning of this post!) I really enjoyed the show, the puppet museum and puppet workshop. I would submit a picture of the puppet I made, but I'll spare you all that silliness.

Dinner that night was at The Downwind (http://www.downwindrestaurant.com), a tiny bar and grill at the Dekalb Peachtree airport, a couple of miles from our house. It's a fantastic place to take kids who love airplanes. The restaurant is right on the runway, and you can watch small (mostly private and charter) planes take off and land. That particular night it was pouring rain, so we didn't get to see many planes in action. Our waiter was shaken up for a while because he thought that his friend had just died in a bi-plane crash north of Atlanta. Halfway through our meal he found out it was a different bi-plane and his mood drastically changed - didn't quite know what to say when he told us his "good" news... I'm glad it wasn't his friend, but somebody still died, so....

After dinner we headed back to our house, preoccupied Sam with a stack of Disney movies, and then played some Hearts with a bottle of Segura Viudas champagne (see picture). Mike and I bought the champagne for New Year's Eve, but then after a fantastic dinner at Aria (http://www.aria-atl.com) we crashed at home and watched the Tsunami coverage (yeah, I know, we're lame). After the Segura Viudas, we opened a bottle of Las Brisas, a Spanish mix of Verdejo, Sauvignon Blanc and Viura which is always yummy and refreshing in the summer. The card game lasted forever, because then we broke out the Illy (the best thing ever - www.illyusa.com) coffee, which we sampled with a variety of liqueurs, including Mocha Caramel and Creme Brulee-flavored liqueurs, Bushmills Irish Cream, and Kahlua (setting up a trend that has continued the rest of the month!). I think that the alcohol and caffeine cancel each other out, because as soon as the card game was finished, we all had no problem going straight to sleep!

The next morning started bright and early with breakfast that included Baked Brie Strata, Pork Sausage, Fruit Salad with Honey and Spice Dressing, Illy coffee, and orange juice. Then we were off to the Lakewood Antique Fair, where we spent the rest of the day. I forgot to take the camera, so unfortunately I have nothing to post from the trip. For those of you interested in antiquing, though, Lakewood is a ton of fun, and on a drizzly Sunday it's possible to make some deals. The fair is the second weekend of every month, and more info is available at http://www.lakewoodantiques.com/lakewood.htm.