On Tuesday, Aerial Innovations Tampa celebrated its 22^nd anniversary!  In the past, Colette has taken all of us to a nice restaurant to celebrate anniversaries.  But this year, to celebrate in an economically friendly way, Colette organized a “Recession Lunch” at the office for the A.I. crew.  For a week no one knew what exactly was going on – she was being very sneaky.  We knew there was going to be a big group lunch;  we had to bring in one place-setting from our homes for the table and 12 placemats were made at Kinko’s of the spring photo-contest winners’ images.  Monday afternoon, the day before the lunch, Colette asked us all to bring in fresh flowers from our gardens for the table.  Aside from that, we were kept in the dark.

Tuesday morning the conference room was magically transformed into a colorful and eclectic banquet hall.  Each place-setting was different, the cloth napkins were folded and arranged, flowers lined the center of the table.  Oh, yeah, and the professional chefs were setting up in the back office.

Greg and Michelle Baker of Cooks & Company created a gourmet meal with arugula salad, steak or salmon with asparagus and gnocchi, and a special chocolate cinnamon mousse with a toffee bar and strawberry.  Champagne and fruit-infused iced tea was also on the table.

Greg and Michelle prepared everything in our tiny back office while stepping over the all-too-curious office dogs, Leica and Sky.  Greg grilled everything on our ancient Webber grill that has been in the backyard forever and Michelle served everyone in the conference/banquet room while, of course, stepping over dogs.  Working in close-quarters with only a charcoal grill, they prepared the most amazing meal.

Aside from being gourmet chefs, Greg and Michelle are also food critics.  They were so impressed with how everything came together that they are going to feature our little “Recession Lunch” in their next article for the local newspaper.  Congratulations Aerial Innovations!!!