Sales Dinner

I wanted to give a big shout out to James Ebersole, our East Coast Sales Manager, for a fabulous dinner after our day-long sales meeting in the Boulder office.

James prepared a scrumptious 6-course meal for 10 attendees. When we arrived at our CEO and host, Jeff Bowman’s home, James had already prepared and laid out our amuse-bouche, which consisted of shaved dry aged strip loin with asparagus and blue cheese mousse. It was simply delicious! I have to admit, I was not at all familiar with the term amuse-bouche, so I had to look it up. According to Wikipedia, “it arose as an identifiable course during the Nouvelle Cuisine movement, which emphasized smaller, more intensely flavored courses. It differs from other hors d’œuvres in that it is small, usually just one or two bites, and preselected by the chef and offered free of charge to all present at the table.” According to Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a popular New York celebrity chef with restaurants around the world, “The amuse-bouche is the best way for a great chef to express his or her big ideas in small bites.” And it sure did!

At this point, Jeff had already started making his ‘deadly’ margaritas for everyone and that’s when the party really started.

Our second course was a bibb lettuce and baby spinach salad with OJ soy vinaigrette and chili seared shrimp. Wow! That’s all I have to say. Third-course: the appetizer – plum chicken dumplings with a plum porter sauce. Fourth-course: butternut squash and mushroom soup topped with crab meat. I’m normally not a fan of crab, but I have to say this was my absolute favorite dish of the evening. All the ingredients blended together and were perfect. Side note: I will have to get this recipe from our talented in-house chef. Fifth-course was our entrée and consisted of poached salmon and chicken with a seafood fume. At this point, I think we were all feeling pretty satisfied, but I still couldn’t pass it up.

The sixth and final course was THE dessert: chocolate chip cookie dough crème brule. Between plates 1 thru 5 and the margaritas, I didn’t think I would have the room, but because it was prepared from scratch, right before my very own eyes, there was no way I was passing this up. And I’m glad I didn’t.

As humble as James is, he mentioned he created this splendid menu while on the short drive from Denver International Airport to Boulder. He went by Jeff’s house the day before and prepped what he could and spent all of his time in the kitchen cooking that night. Thankfully, our domesticated co-workers helped with the clean up (Duncan, John, Gordon). In the meantime, the girls just sat back and enjoyed every minute feeling very spoiled.

If this was kind of impromptu, I can’t imagine what he would have done if he had actually prepared well in advance. Needless to say, I rolled out of Jeff’s house that night with a sense of abundance and feeling a little tipsy.

Thank you, James!