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Slow food everywhere: What the heck is it?
Kathleen Hill | Sonoma Valley Sun
With all the publicity about Slow Food Nation’s gigantic conference last weekend in San Francisco, we have to wonder what it all really means.
It isn’t just cooking slowly, or naturally, or carefully, or organically, or biodynamically or sustainably. It’s a way of life, and I don’t mean in the sense of forming a cult.
It also means slowing down our lives, letting the text messages go, speaking directly with people, and getting down and dirty growing vegetables or buying directly from those who do. It means going back to basics, and you don’t have to wear tie-dye to do it.
It means remembering how our parents and grandparents lived. Actually, my grandparents grew vegetables and kept chickens in their backyard in Berkeley, of all places. And they traded veggies with neighbors who canned fruits from their backyard trees.
That’s how America’s pioneers got along: one household (usually the women) raised pigs, corn, and carrots, while another raised sheep and grew lettuce and parsnips. And then they bartered and traded, always helping those who had less.
Aside from Sonoma Market, where you can purchase heirloom tomatoes from Cindy George’s Lone Star Organics, The Patch and Oak Hill Farm, Sonoma’s Tuesday evening and Friday morning farmers markets are the most convenient and gas-saving marketplaces. Sonoma Market also sells slightly older vegetables from local growers at great discounts on their cart opposite the veggie counter.
If you want to forage with your automobile or bike, you can visit several local roadside stands to get the freshest veggies possible. Tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters now.
Hardin Gardens – in contrast to Buñol, Spain’s annual “La Tomatina” tomato war where thousands of pounds of tomatoes are smashed, along with a few participants – offers boxes of ripe tomatoes at terrific discounts in case you want to make salsa immediately or can tomatoes for the winter.
The Hardin family suggests you bring your own box, or borrow one of theirs for a $4 deposit, to lug home your tomatoes. Pricing runs from $1 to $2.15 per pound based on quantity. Hardin also has a full market table of other vegetables, soaps and lots of other truly homemade goodies. Open noon-5 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday into October. 22656 Broadway, near the Schell Vista Fire Station.
Lone Star Organics’ Cindy George sells organic heirloom tomatoes from a table near her red farmhouse on East Spain Street near Fourth Street East in Sonoma. George grows the tomatoes here and many other vegetables and stone fruits on land south of town. She also supplies Sonoma Market with around 200 pounds of tomatoes a week. Honor pay system. 367 E. Spain St., Sonoma.
Claudia Ranniker’s front-porch table across from Vella Cheese, where her husband Roger serves as head cheesemaker, supplies friends with organic tomatoes, onions, squashes, leeks, dates and ripe fruit from their trees along the bike path. This is a two-person backyard endeavor we have to admire. Honor pay system. 300 Second St. E., Sonoma.
The Patch, which is just north across the bike path from Ranniker’s, has huge fields of corn, tomatoes, squashes, and whatever else their hanging sign announces for the day. Honor pay system. 296 Second St. E., Sonoma.
Oak Hill Farm has its Red Barn Store, with every variety of vegetables available in the valley, plus an array of flowers and artwork. 15101 Hwy. 12, Glen Ellen.
Bobby Cannard and Fred Cline’s Green String Farm, on the way to Petaluma with Ross Cannard often present and working hard, is the retail farm of Cannard Farms. Ross also brings some of their veggies to our farmers markets. Remember, Cannard Farms grows for the demanding Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Frates and Adobe Roads, Petaluma.
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Congratulations to Vella Cheese! Vella’s Dry Jack, made of raw cow’s milk and rubbed with cocoa and pepper, made Wine Spectator’s “100 Great Cheeses” of the world list in the Sept. 30, 2008 issue.
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Harvest Moon Café again was the only Sonoma restaurant to make San Francisco magazine’s 2008 food issue, comparing the ambiance and food to “… the soft, endearing rhythms of a lullaby.” 487 First St. W., Sonoma. 707.933.8160.
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Carneros Bistro & Wine Bar’s Heirloom Tomato Dinner comes up Wednesday, Sept. 10. Chef Janine Falvo will offer several creative tomato-centric courses, all paired by sommelier Christopher Sawyer with wines from Etude, David Noyes, Buena Vista Carneros, Gundlach Bundschu and Gloria Ferrer. $85. 6:30 p.m. For more information or reservations call 707.931.2042.
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Get your tickets for the annual “Fashion in the Vineyards,” one of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley’s two annual fundraisers, which takes place next Thursday, Sept. 11 at Cline Cellars.
Deborah Emery and fashion maven Helen Lyall turn up the heat with local models. San Rafael caterer An Affair to Remember will present Asian, Mediterranean and global cuisines, with dishes such as dim sum, grilled scallops and a saté fusion of chicken, beef, shrimp and vegetables; asparagus rolls; arancini with mozzarella, black and bleu steak bruschetta, caponata and grilled endives with Serrano ham; chipotle chicken quesadillas, corn bread-coated crab cakes, Latin meatballs and eggplant steak sandwiches. $150. 5 p.m. 24737 Hwy. 121, Sonoma. For tickets call 707.938.8544 or visit www.bgcvom.org.
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Taqueria La Hacienda on Hwy. 12 in Boyes Hot Springs is so successful that they are expanding to seat another 20 diners. Their ceviche, seafood soup, fish tacos, fried whole snapper and carnitas are particular favorites.
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Gramma’s Cal-Italia will host its “now nearly world-famous Pizza Parking Lot Sale” on Saturday, Sept. 13 in the Maxwell Village shopping center from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Medium cheese or pepperoni pizzas will be a bargain at $6.
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Sage Catering of San Rafael has re-opened the café at Cornerstone Place, formerly known as Cornerstone Gardens and a few other titles, with fresh, organic, sustainable and colorful goodies. Sage Fine Food & Provisions makes sandwiches, soup, savory tarts and sweets, which you can enjoy there, in the many designer gardens, or at home. 23570 Hwy. 121.
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Windee Smith, who previously owned Yabbies Coastal Kitchen and William Cross Wine Merchants in San Francisco, will soon open The Valley Wine Shack at 535 W. Napa St. next to Duggan’s Mission Chapel funeral home. Smith says she will feature “a tasting bar, a casual wine salon and retail sales. Our emphasis will be on imports and small-production California wines.”
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Infineon Raceway’s IndyCar Series Charity Auction and Grand Prix Fiesta dinner, catered by Elaine Bell at B.R. Cohn Winery, together raised $17,000 for Hanna Boys Center and Valley of the Moon Teen Center.
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Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance’s enormous organizational feat last weekend for the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend and Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction included Friday luncheons and Saturday dinners at wineries, and the grand auction at Cline Cellars on Sunday.
We felt privileged to attend the Benziger Family Winery dinner, along with the publisher and staff of Gourmet magazine and the gang from NBC 11, for sesame seed prawns and other appetizers in Benziger’s biodynamic vegetable garden and vineyards; dinner of at least seven tomato varieties from their garden, a choice of lamb two ways or halibut with corn, rice cake and vegetables (from 100 feet away); and a divine chocolate tort, all paired with Benziger biodynamic wines and port. Many guests clamored to go to Benziger’s just to learn of their farming practices. Benziger now delivers vegetables to The Girl & the Fig and El Dorado Kitchen (EDK).
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The Honorary Chair’s Winemaker Dinner, honoring Gundlach Bundschu Winery and Jim and Jeff Bundschu, at what was The General’s Daughter, became a momentous culinary occasion when The General’s Daughter’s former chef Preston Dishman and The Girl & the Fig’s chef Chris Jones combined efforts to cook a fabulous dinner.
Guests dined on seared duck confit roulade with arugula and figs served with GunBun’s 2005 Pinot Noir; West Coast shrimp and grits with 2005 Merlot; roast lamb with garlic confit flan and Provençal vegetables with 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon; a cheese course with 2001 Vintage Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon; and their library wines with mini desserts.
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Sunday’s Harvest Wine Auction may have been the most fun ever, with cooler weather than usual and a raucous ‘60s theme, especially hilarious for those of us who were there and even remember some of the era. Among the highest bidders was the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, which again “bought” a row of Robledo Family Winery’s vineyard for $22,000, with all funds going directly to Vineyard Workers’ Services, which provides life-saving services for the people who make the vineyards grow and produce Sonoma Valley’s primary agricultural crop.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley benefited tremendously from two bidders who volunteered to pay $21,000 each for Gundlach Bundschu-organized outdoor adventures near Whitefish, Mont.
Cheers!
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