July 28th - Sarah, Kim, Angela, Tad and Raj

Another big crowd tonight! The guests were Sarah, a student in my department at Emory, and her partner Kim; and Angela, Tad and Raj, who were all previously introduced in the 4th of July party entry. Angela was a last minute addition to the guest list - I gave her a call around 10:00am while I was walking Ursa, and she told me that she had an interview in the afternoon right down the street from my house. So of course I told her to come for dinner! The prospects are good that she'll get the job, so she'll potentially be our new weekend tenant. Whew - I'm glad I've got furniture in the guest room! Angela was a big help throughout the day though - she ran to Publix to get some ingredients that I overlooked, and having company in the kitchen was nice.

Dinner was not particularly good for you - I won't delve into exactly how much oil I used frying stuff... but Cafe Davis has never really been about health, so who cares? The menu was Southern fried stuffed chicken with roasted red pepper and Vidalia onion gravy; cornbread salad; and fried green tomato stacks with Gruyere on fresh tomato concasse. The beer selection was my personal favorite, Abita Amber. I had a blast once upon a time visiting the Abita brewery, and then heading into New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It turns out that Kim is from Louisiana, about 15 minutes away from the birthplace of my favorite brew. She said she chose the night for the chicken, but perhaps the beer was kismet.

Sarah and Kim brought a wonderful dessert tray from the Australian Bakery Cafe (www.australianbakery.com) in the East Atlanta Village. I have a photograph of the dessert section of the menu, and the tick marks indicate which of the desserts were included on the tray. I think my personal favorite was the Vanilla Slice, "a flaky puff pastry crust with vanilla custard filling topped with a flaky puff pastry top covered with icing." Sarah and Kim also generously brought a hostess gift of Fat Bastard Chardonnay in a beautiful burlap gift bag. Thank you so very much! Dr. Tad and Dr. Raj brought a less complex, but equally delicious dessert of Krisy-Kreme doughnuts. I have such a weakness for doughnuts, but here is some good news I just read in the latest issue of Real Simple magazine... When asked which is better, to eat a doughnut for breakfast or nothing at all, experts recommend the doughnut! It's so great to have expert opinion to back up junk food rationalizations!

After dinner we played Scene It! again (we need some new games - we'll work on that for next year), divided along gender lines. The boys unfortunately won, but they really just got lucky with John Cusack questions at the end. If it wasn't for that, we would have destroyed them! It was really nice to hang out with Sarah, and to meet Kim. And of course, Angela, Raj and Tad are always a joy. Tad came to Cafe Davis 9 times last year - I know it's more trouble to get to us now from Athens, but I appreciate his effort to come at least once!

And now, Cafe Davis is over. To be honest, I'm tired, and I'm looking forward to eating cereal for a while. The real point of this entertaining fatuity is to get a chance to hang out with all of you. I hope that those of you who came this year had a good time, and for those of you who didn't make it, there's always next year. Thanks for everything!