My Daily Thoughts for Monday April 4

In my professional life I work in marketing and through that I get to work with a lot of very talented and creative people.  Being surrounded by such talent daily always gets my brain going and since I've taken on the role as the President of the Italian Club, my brain works daily on things related to the Club and its success.  Since I get my own blog as part of the job, I thought that tonight I'd use it to simply spew a day's worth of the things that ramble around for me...

~ Our reservation system is acting up tonight.  If you made a reservation today for our Regional Cena this coming Friday featuring Liguria, chances are you got a confirmation response from me... in Spanish!  Trust me, it's a glitch in the system and no, I'm not changing our language!

~ We're preparing for Taste Addison on May 20-22.  This will be our 2nd year as part of this great event and this year we have both a great booth location and our Chef Tomasso has been invited to participate in the Taste Showcase.  The fun part of this job is having a great chef to work with.  My hometown of Binghamton, NY is famous for Spiedies, a variation of Italian spiedini from the Abruzzzo region of Italy (where my family is from) and I'm working with Chef Tomasso to teach him how to make them!  So if you know what a spiedie is, you'll want to visit us at Taste Addison in May and try them out!

Spiedies

~ I often get emails from people in Dallas that have never visited Italy but are planning a trip this year and would like to learn more before their trips.  To help them, we are creating a series that will run during our 1st Wednesday Pasta Nights from May through September where we will share with attendees the cumulative experiences many of us have after having visited Italy numerous times.  I'm not sure yet if we'll call it "Italy 101" or "Ciao! Italia" but this is one of my personal projects and I'm having fun with it!

~ Our very good friend Giacomo Butera introduced us to a really great wine during our Sicilian Regional Cena and wine tasting.  It's from a Sicilian wine maker named Firriato and the wine is called Harmonium.  You can purchase it at Jimmy's Food Store and trust me... it's delicious!

~ I'm working with our marketing committee on producing a radio spot for the Club.  More details to come on that.

That's it for tonight.  Congrats to the University of Connecticut for winning the men's NCAA basketball championship (yes, I was multi-tasking) and I hope to see you at the Club sometime soon!

Mike