Looking back on 2021, I think we can say that we accomplished a few things as U n’ I Personal Chef Services. Started out with appetizer/cocktail birthday party at So Many Roads Museum & Brewery in the middle of snow storm! A Romantic Surprise 7 Course Tasting Birthday party, Corn Beef Madness, Virtual Cooking Class between Canada & USA in early January & February, and we were finally fully vaccinated at the end of March 2021!
In Early Spring, our new website was completed by our awesome web-master, Megan, our services were more visible on Google! We had a few graduation parties (Congrats, Phineas Bianchi & M. Family!) & a Girls Night party. On the girl’s night, Chef Aric created customized menu that was all Gluten Free except one dish, and it was delicious!
We finally found a little cute seafood shop (www.tomsseafood.com) that we like! One day I was scrolling down Instagram, and saw a photo of “Steamers”. I remember when my friend and I visited her parents in New Jersey, she took me to her favorite bar and ordered it so I could try. She told me it’s an East Coast thing to eat. Along with the steamers, we purchased fresh tuna, and that was when we knew that we could teach “How to make sushi rolls” class because it was amazingly fresh!
So when we were asked about the class, we were stoked! Oh what fun we had when we had our first “Sushi Making Class” with fabulous clients and their friends & family! (The bonus was to meet a new born baby girl, Sadie! :) )
We started our 5 summer garden boxes, but we thought it all washed out by the crazy Colorado weather during the early storm & hail. When we thought we have to plant seeds all over again, Mother Nature said, “Hold my beer!”, and our gardens thrived from there, and produced many veggies throughout the summer. Actually, it was WAY too many that we could eat by just two of us, so we decided to donate a box of fresh veggies to “Kaizen Food Rescue” (Please visit their website and support them!)
Our biggest event of the year was Wednesday, July 14th 2021 when Jay Bianchi, Chef Aric and I did a fundraising event at So Many Roads Museum & Brewery for Aurora Mental Health/ Fitzsimons Crisis Unit to honor & celebrate Phil Bianchi’s life and the Bianchi’s mom, Marge Bianchi’s birthday. This was our first fundraising event, so we thought this was going to be a very small event, we were hoping to get maybe a few hundred dollars donations. Instead, we were able to raise almost $2,000.00!!!
Thank YOU so much, Justin Brunson & River Bear American Meats to donate generous amounts of meats to us to be able to make the Lasagna. Thank YOU so much, Kiendl & staff at Dew Drop Inn for letting us use your kitchen to cook off almost 120 pound of lasagnas! Last, but not the least…All of our extended families who came to support the event from all over the places…Muay Thai of Colorado, old customers from Quixote’s True Blue Cafe since 1996, people who used to work or hang out with Phil at Sancho’s Broken Arrow…some of them flew in from California, others sent us generous donations with warm and kind messages from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. What a community we have, it was a day we witnessed great friendship & love. Thank YOU so much, your friendship means so much to us, and we’re hoping that this fundraising event will continue to be an annual event in the future! Soon after the fundraising event, we celebrate another important person’s life. Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead. Thanks Jay for letting us have this event at So Many Roads Museum & Brewery, it was another way that we were able to say “Hi!” to our great friends we haven’t seen for many years. In this event, not only we had fun, but we sold out EVERYTHING! We’re thinking this may be another annual event in the future… ha ha ha!
In later summer & fall, we got massive amount of peaches from our dear friend, Thomas. The peaches were all so sweet & juicy; we canned some and freeze them some, but we ate a lot of them within a few days! We were getting a bit busy during the fall, we got a bachelorette party and Chef Aric made dishes that are incorporate with the place where the clients came from (Georgia) & Colorado theme. These are the moment that his creativity shines and he loves creating a menu like that! Our long time chef friend visited us from Chicago, it was such a brief moment to spend time with him, but these 2 chefs could talk about food all day, and I always learn so many things from them!
We had yet another fun “Sushi Party” and this time was for a new company, called “Hoi Polloi Adovisors” and they used this party as their “Team building”! It was awesome to meet powerful and wonderful women with great mind sets as entrepreneurs, it sure motivated me to do better at what I do for U n’ I Personal Chef Services!
Later on, we were nominated to a magazine company for an interview by an annoymunus. Because it was during Covid, the interview was done by an Email exchange, but it did get published! Check it out!
Thanksgiving went by so quickly, but we made several videos & reels on Instagram and Chef Aric showed how to make Turkey dinner step by step. I’m hoping that I can have more time to edit and make a longer videos so I can start post them on YouTube, too! So stay tuned! Personal news: Aric & I celebrated our 29th (!!!) Anniversary on September! We took a few days offs to ourselves, enjoyed driving around and had a picnic at a park! We’ve been to Mount Evans for several times this year for mushroom hunting, and I found a Porcini mushroom for the first time ever, on top of that, it weighed almost a half pound! Aric has been working on building things for the house, he built a bar, dining table, benches, my office desk and now, he is on to some decorative shelves for me! Our house is slowly, but surely making great progress and I’m so proud of what he does for this house! We’ve been dog-less house for more than a year, but our dragon cat, Oryo keeps us busy with her high maintenance requests by super loud meowing; giving her subQ fluid 3 times a week, special diet for her chronic kidney disease, feeding her whenever she wants to eat, take her to our bed and cover her with the blanket whenever she needs to take a nap. She wakes me up almost every 2-3 hours in the night, but I can’t get mad at her when she sleeps on my pillow, purring for non-stop. (But I have to sleep without a pillow! Ha ha ha!)
We thank YOU SO MUCH for sharing your special days with us, we appreciate YOU for being wonderful friends, thank YOU for supporting our tiny business throughout the year, and we hope YOU & I (U n’ I) will continue sharing memories together in 2022! Happy New Year!!
Love, Chef Aric & the quality checker, Yukari & the queen of the house, Dragon Cat Oryo
