Cafe Davis 2009 Recap

Cafe Davis 2009 had a lot of good, and a lot of artery-thickening deep fried foods. Unfortunately, none of that was documented here. I was swamped, I tell you. It is difficult maintaining two blogs (the other one is 100 Days), working all of my random part-time jobs, renovating the garage, and cooking up a storm practically every night. Whew. It makes me tired thinking about it. I'm going to go through a blog day-by-day for all of the Cafe Davis reservations we had, commenting on the food and stuff I learned. Better late than never, I suppose.

As far as my musings about next year go, there will be some drastic changes. First, I think we're going to go to a W-F, T-Th-S schedule. Essentially I'll take every other day off, plus Mondays for softball. I'm not as young as I used to be - I need a recovery day between dinners to keep my mental health in tip-top shape. Second, I am going to pay more attention to food preparation when I develop the menus. There were too many times when I was trying to fry a million things on the stove top at the same time while the oven sat by idle. Third, while still staying committed to local ingredients, I'm going to add a commitment to healthier entries. While fried goat cheese and fried green tomato salad was awesome, I'm not sure it was awesome for our health. Even Paula Deen doesn't eat her own cooking every night of the week, so some fat has to go. No worries, though, I promise everything will still be high on taste!

Now to answer the question I know you all have... what will be the theme? On my bookshelf at home I have a cookbook titled "Starting with Ingredients." It gives recipes based on one starting ingredient. What can I make with eggplant? Look in the book and I have at least four recipes to guide me. Taking that premise, then, I will ask all of this year's guests to submit an ingredient suggestion. That suggestion will be the centerpiece of a meal for next year's Cafe Davis. I'll be contacting everyone ASAP for their suggestions! If you came to dinner this year, put on your thinking cap (but please, no Beluga caviar).