Time to make the doughnuts

We spent most of yesterday afternoon getting ready for today's tasting at Riverside. Usually Friday's include making sure all the recipes have all the ingredients (it's always a pain to have to run out to the store Saturday morning), there's some prep work, making the desserts (brownies) and preparing a few of the dishes that will improve overnight (roasted almonds w/ five spice powder, olive tapanade, black bean salsa).

Tonight's tasting is buffet style, so there's not as much late afternoon work to be done -- by late afternoon, I mean dishes that need to be prepared just before leaving to go on-site. The kitchen at the tasting site is circa 1952, electric (not gas) and is only really good for reheating -- but it's reliable. We'll be making sushi, stuffed grape leaves, curried tofu in phyllo cups and Hoisin tofu in rice paper salads.

Also, one less thing to worry about tonight is that Patrick is making a dish (Chipotle/Tomato Pizza) for the buffet. That saves us about a half-hour.

Next week is the biggest tasting we've done to date -- 32 people crammed into the house for an eight-course northern Italian wine dinner. It should be a good test to see if we've learned anything about catering in two years ;)