I'll admit that I have a secret dream of some media outlet picking up a whiff of Cafe Davis, sending out a staff reporter for a free meal, and then writing an amazing story about my great idea to grace the pages of their fine publication (something like this will do). But, I also figure that will never happen unless A) I get to know more influential people, or B) I actually write in this blog more often with a fun, fresh, creative voice so people want to follow my entertaining shenanigans. Until the influential people reveal themselves, I'll go with option B.
So what's the state of Cafe Davis preparation thus far? Uh, nothing beyond writing down reservations and making sure the menu is out there for the world to see. This year's theme (as decided by our webmaster, Derrick Gable) is "2010: An Ingredient Odyssey." I've never actually seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I can't make any bad culinary metaphors to the plot of the film. But I can tell you about my thematic inspiration. A couple of Christmases ago, Mike got me a cookbook called "Starting with Ingredients." It basically has chapters with a featured ingredient, and then 5 to 10 recipes with that ingredient in it. The cookbook is supposed to help people figure out what to cook if they have, say, artichokes on hand and they are lacking in culinary inspiration regarding what to do with them. To be honest, I've never found the cookbook to be all that helpful for last minute cooking because while I may have a can of artichoke hearts, I don't have all the other 15 ingredients needed for the featured recipes. Ideally, this cookbook and one of those 5-ingredient cookbooks should procreate and maybe the offspring would be useful for everyday cooking. I digress, however. I still like the idea of starting with ingredients, so I asked former Cafe Davis attendees to suggest ingredients for the menu this year. We got an interesting array of suggestions:
- Chickpeas
- Peppers
- Tofu
- Sweet Potato
- Avocado
- Shrimp
- Coriander
- Nopales
- Cornmeal
- Mushrooms
- Chipotle and Cinnamon combo
- Squash
- Basil
- Eggs
- Wasabi
- Pineapple
- Barley
I wanted to do Cafe Davis for less days this year, mostly so that I can devote more time to working on my dissertation, and as luck would have it, we got exactly the same number of ingredient suggestions as I had dates in mind. Serendipity. I'm glad that no one got left out, and I'm excited about some of the interesting suggestions. I guarantee, for instance, that I would never have made anything with nopales otherwise (especially considering I didn't even know what they were).
So now that you know why people suggested recipe ingredients, what's your next step? Easy - tell me what day you plan to show up! You can make reservations on the Cafe Davis website: www.cafedavis.com
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