Krik's Picks

For the third year running, a co-worker and I auctioned an event for our company United Way campaign. We host a happy hour at her family’s cabin on Big Island in Lake Minnetonka. (Click here to read my post about last year’s event.) The event is getting a reputation, and bidding for this year’s happy hour was pretty intense. I think it was the second most expensive item in the auction. We settled on a date in early June with the winning bidders. Here’s the menu: Lydia made Gianni’s Grilled Shrimp Appetizer, grilled chicken skewers with peanut sauce, and guacamole with chips. Gianni’s is a steakhouse in Wayzata . Click here to read about it. For my contributions, I prepared three celebrity chef items. From Giada De Laurentiis, I made Sweet Pea Crostini; the recipe is on the Food Network web site (click here ). I really am a big fan of Giada’s recipes. My wife says it’s only because of the low-cut sweaters she wears on her cooking shows. But honestly, I never even noticed. (Giada, if ...

As my Yelp review states, this was a fantastic dining experience. I was asked to find a restaurant for our group – 14 people. Oh, did I mention? I had only about an hour’s notice. We were at a reception on Capitol Hill. Our CEO thought it would be nice for everyone from our company to have dinner together. I thought so too. But the pressure was on. Fortunately, I had my trusty iPhone with me. The battery was getting low. But between Open Table and the map app, I was able to locate a few possibilities in just a few minutes. Of course, for a group of 14, you can’t actually use Open Table at most restaurants. So I started calling. I did actually call a couple of steak places first. I knew they would be reliably good. But neither of them could fit us in on such short notice. (That is to say, they offered us a table at 9:30, but that was too late by about two hours.) When I called Siroc , they hesitated. They already had another group in the restaurant. But they’d see what they could do...

For our Land O’Lakes United Way drive in 2009, we had an online auction. I ended up winning two of the items on the auction. One was a case of wine from one of our executive’s wine cellar. Truth is, the highest bid was less than the retail value of the wine, and I was just trying to get it up to the retail value. but I ended up getting the case. The other item, I really wanted. It was a selection of fresh, West Coast seafood. It was offered by an exec whose home is in Washington state. (He also happens to be my boss, but that’s not why I bid. Really.) When I won it, I envisioned hosting a dinner at our house with several co-workers. I wanted to have my boss, not only because it was his seafood, but also ... well, you get the picture. Um, well, we invited several co-workers who we knew would enjoy the food and have a good time. That was our goal. We finally got it all organized for July 8. I took the day off to do the prep. So in advance, I thought about the kinds of seafood that would ...