It was a breezy, warm evening when we arrived at Centennial Golf Club last Saturday evening to attend the “culinary feast” part of the Southern Oregon Classic Tournament & Culinary Feast charity event.  Earlier in the day, teams of golfers representing local businesses, nonprofits and groups had taken part in the “tournament” aspect, competing for bragging rights that evening while raising funds for two local charities. The fundraiser, an annual event for the past several years, benefits different entities each year, but most focus on supporting children. This year proved no different, as we gathered to support CASA of Jackson County and the Asante Foundation.

The Asante Foundation works to improve health care in our area of Southern Oregon and Northern California, and as part of the Children’s Miracle Network has helped build medical facilities and provide care especially for pediatric patients here. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) provides specially trained community volunteers to serve as advocates for abused and neglected children in the foster care system in the pursuit of safe, permanent homes for them. Both organizations resonate with us, as our older daughter serves as a CASA here in our county, and our younger daughter is a NICU nurse. So while we always enjoy the food, drink and entertainment provided at the evening Classic festivities, it is especially gratifying to know we are also supporting such worthy causes.

Held on the event lawn of the golf club, the Classic feast features a dozen or more local and regional chefs serving up small plates of some of their specialties, along with an equal number of wineries, multiple beer and cocktail stations to accompany the food. Our admission fee allowed us to sample and sip to our hearts’ delight, while the band Precious Byrd played a lively mix of rock, funk and soul covers and original songs from the stage.  It was a beautiful evening; in years past we have sometimes suffered from high temperatures and little shade, but this year a (sometimes boisterous) breeze, light clouds and temperatures in the low 80s made it comfortable. As the sun settled over the mountains to the west, we enjoyed an ongoing colorful display as the clouds shifted from golds     to reds.

Before we delved too deeply into sampling the food, we took a detour through the silent auction tent to see what might tempt us to bid. In the past we have picked up some weekend trips and a whitewater rafting excursion, but we were disappointed to see there really wasn’t much in the travel category to choose from. However, there were plenty of other enticements: gift cards to restaurants, autographed music and sports memorabilia, artwork and jewelry, lots of wine, and spa packages. After registering on my phone with a handy app, we were able to bid on items of interest and keep track of the bidding and bump up our bids throughout the evening without having to revisit the tent.

That left us free to wander from table to table sampling all kinds of delicious nibbles.       I was impressed with the care taken to present a lovely looking plate, despite that plate being paper and the number of people being served at a rapid pace.      It gave us an opportunity to sample a wide variety of dishes and provide us with suggestions of restaurants to try that we hadn’t yet visited. It was also fun to match up our small plates with some of the wide varieties of wine being poured by the wineries represented there.

At the end of the evening, as the clouds faded from the sunset colors to night, we made our way to pick up the items we’d “won” through the auction and headed for the shuttle to return us to our vehicle. We left happy in the knowledge that we had supported worthy causes while enjoying a lovely evening and delicious food and drink.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor