Bacchus Celebration Dinner

Wow I had the most perfect night on Monday!!!

A fine-dining restaurant in Milwaukee called Bacchus held an event of Olympic proportion in my honor and to raise money for the American Heart Association.

The event began promptly at 6:30pm.  Guests began to show up at 6:00 and were taken into the dining room at about 6:15.  In the dining room I set up a table of Olympic Memorabilia.  My medals were there as well as huge frames that are filled with Olympic tickets, credentials, pins, lanyards and other novelties.  

I began by talking to the audience about my Olympic experience.  I divulged the mystique of what the Olympic village was like, how phenomenal the Water Cube was, what the food was comprised of in Beijing, and of course how crazy that 400 Freestyle Relay was!  My talk at the beginning of the meal lasted for about 20 minutes.  I was really rushed because usually all that takes me at least 45 minutes to say ha ha.

The dinner consisted of four courses.  The first course was an Israeli Cous Cous with sugar snap peas, roasted peppers, roasted heirloom cherry tomatoes, a bit of crumbled feta, topped with spinach and a lemon infused oil vinaigrette.  The second course was a knock off of my Salmon recipe.  We had salmon with tomato, red onion, Parmesan cheese all on top of fingerling potatoes and baby carrots.  After these two courses I talked for about 15 minutes about the food that made up the menu.  I thought it was important to let the audience know that the menu was prepared with a healthy low-sodium consumer in mind.  The reason for this is because I have high blood pressure and try to maintain a low-sodium diet.  I really attribute a lot of my success to eating healthy.  During this time I also talked about the product line of low sodium foods I want to start in order to help others eat low-sodium diets too.

The fourth course was a bison fillet with a bison and red wine reduction sauce.  The bison was set on top of steamed spinach and garlic.  Accompanying the bison were sweet potato wedge fries that were grilled.  This was an outstanding creation.  Finally the dessert was a flourless chocolate cake topped with mango sorbet and an orange cookie.  On the side was a raspberry coulis and chopped pieces of mango.  The dessert really topped the meal off well.

During the course of the night I made my way around and talked to every table.  It was important to me that I got a chance to really speak to everyone and thank them for coming.  Bacchus really did a wonderful job, I couldn't have been happier!  

One of the most exciting parts of the night for me was at the beginning when the special events manager for the restaurant, John, presented me with a chef's jacket with the Bacchus logo and my name embroidered on the front.  I literally felt like a million bucks walking around in that thing!!!!  Maybe it is a sign???