Welcome to Fantasy Foodie!

Over a not-so-exciting meal, B and I started talking about building the perfect menu. "I bet you that we could build a great menu!" I said to B, and as we twisted the conversation, we devised a fun plan. We would invite friends over and cook against each other. Our friends would vote and we would have a night of entertainment.

OK - we don't pretend that this is a novel idea! We have watched every episode of Top Chef (This season - Sam should have won!) and we are avid lovers of No Reservations! and Anthony Bourdain’s books. But if you have ever been to Northwest Ohio, you will soon learn that you can only be a culinary critic if you are the lover of the fine dive. For example, we also love – love -- love the best bar with food in Tontogany, Ohio -- Doc’s.

AND, they have PURSE HOOKS at the bar! Fabulous! However, despite our love of the dive, we love gourmet food (one day we will tell my pissy sushi story) and we strive for making great food given our resources.

So – how does Fanstasy Foodie work? B and I will choose a theme for each meal. We invite 6 people to our house and prepare an appetizer, a main dish and side, and a dessert. We present the dishes to our guests and they vote on their favorite. They will vote on presentation and flavor for each course (so nobody really loses)! We also have the mystery wine challenge. At each meal, we select one wine in the $5.00-$15.00 range and pit it against the $25.00-$50.00 range. Our guests vote on the best wine! We hope that our idea will create enough buzz that we can eventually donate our Fantasy Foodie event to charitable fundraisers.

With the concept in our mutual mind, we took a trip to Dee-troit (OK - we saw it on several billboards -- only God knows why)! Our trip led us to Crate and Barrel! Yes, all of you urbanites are rolling your eyes right now; however, we don't even have one in our town (although B was convinced that we did have one)! As two women recently divorced, no