Monday, October 19th - Culinary Demo Featuring The Wave; You Don't Win Friends with Salad!!!
This was a last minute addition to our culinary deminar lineup. I'd really wanted to book the signature dinner that the Wave was holding during the F&W Festival but like so many other over-priced and tasty events, it was sold out by the time I got through on my 48th phone call after that Sleestak CM disconnected me at exactly 6:01AM on the morning of August 11, 2009. Not that I'm bitter or still upset about that ... "unfortunate incident" as I refer to it in polite society.
Anyway ... since we couldn't attend the special dinner I thought it might be nice to check out a culinary demo being led by The Wave's head chef so that we could get a taste of the restaurant's cuisine. As we made our way through Epcot over to the Welcome Center I forced Jay into Mouse Gear ... the weather was still pretty darn chilly and I was determined to use it as an excuse to buy something cute that had caught my eye the day before. And the CM was nice enough to cut the tags so that I could wear it around the park and serve as a walking advertisement to encourage guests to buy more Disney apparel. I did get a lot of compliments on it - it's soooo cute! You wanna see??
Bendy models her mouse gear!
We had a wee bit of extra time to kill before our deminar started and needed to wash the awful taste of Casey's travesty of a hotdog from our mouths, so we took a quick detour over to the Puerto Rico food booth for some Chicken with Rice and a Bacardi Frozen Mojito. We were a little disappointed in the food options from Puerto Rico this year ... we didn't try the ham croquettes because they looked like tater tots served with a side order of thousand island dressing while the chicken and rice reminded me of the Rice-A-Roni Spanish Rice with mystery protein thrown in for chew factor that Grimace used to make for dinner every Thursday night. BLECH! Thank Gawd for booze because that frozen mojito was fabulous! And if there was a silver lining to the cloud that was unseasonably cold weather, it was that our frozen mojito didn't melt in five minutes like it did last year!
Frozen mojito and chickadoodle rice
As we made our way back to the Festival Welcome Center we ran into TigerKat and her hubby - they were going to the same deminar as were Shovan and her hubby! Woohoo ... a table full of friendies guarantees a good time! There was a fair crowd for this deminar which I thought was a little surprising for a Monday afternoon, but it was nice to see a good turnout. Before I get to the details of the event, allow me to share a couple of pics with you ... first up TigerKat and her hubby. Kathy was such a trooper - bless her heart if she didn't end up having at least one root canal after arriving in Orlando that weekend and for some reason I think she may have actually had two.
TigkerKat & her handsome hubby
A table full of troublemakers ...
So, what was on the menu from our friends at The Wave; a restaurant that specializes in local, organic ingredients and has only been open for about 18 months?
Salad.
For a moment I thought it was a joke.
Salad?
That's what you're going to make to showcase your talents as a chef and to tempt potential patrons into your establishment?
Dude ... this had better be the best freaking salad I've never eaten.
Before the salad tossing began ...
...
sorry, it's a private joke between Jay and me ... we were given our thimble of wine - this time a Los Carneros Pinot Noir from La Crema Winery. There isn't much for me to say ... La Crema makes some tasty wines and the drop that we all received was good enough to make us think about buying some once we got home to Stinktown. And we had to show TigerKat and Shovan the drink/coin comparison that ImprovGal has made famous.
Wine to quarter comparison...
It works with a dime, too!
The best part of this deminar, other than attending it with our friends, was the name of the chef. The recipe shows that his name is Dylan Schauwecker so imagine our surprise when Pam introduced him as DY-LON. At first we thought it was a mistake but she made a point of calling him DY-LON several times throughout the event, which led to much snickering by Jay and me because all we could think about was a Dave Chappelle skit where a rapper named Dylan (pronounced DY-LON) was going on about the five best rappers in history.
"Who are the five greatest rappers of all time? Think about it: Dylan, Dylan ... Dylan, Dylan, and Dylan! Cause I spits hot fire!"
So of course each time Pam called the chef DY-LON, Jay and I started giggling and whispering to each other, "My name is DY-LON and I spit hot fiyah!"
Ahem.
Would you like to know about the salad that Chef DY-LON slaved to prepare for us? It was a Granny Smith Apple and Pear Salad with a Port Wine Vinaigrette. It looked nice and it did come with some generous shavings of Midnight Moon cheese which I adore, but I can't really eat much in the way of salad. And in the case of this salad I could only really eat the fruit and the cheese because it was crawling with pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries - two foods what really upset my Crohn goblin.
It was a decent portion size, it tasted fine, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, but I just thought it was the easy thing for Chef DY-LON to prepare. As someone who's yet to dine at the Wave I can't say this dish makes me all that anxious to hurry up and see what else he's making in the kitchen - I wanted to be wowed and instead I was just bored. Homer Simpson was right: You don't win friends with salad!
Salad.
Yeah, he made a salad.
And hope you didn't jinx us by saying they haven't messed up the fries "yet." I hope that day never comes!
SUPER ick on that dee-scusss-ting hot dog facsimile of yours. Pretty soon we're all gonna be brown- baggin it to the parks. The DDD needs to go DOWN!!
I can make my own decisions, thankyouverymuch!
