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Olive Festival’s ‘Martini Madness’ shakes up Saddles Steakhouse Friday
Kathleen Hill
M artini Madness mixes up Sonomans and their olives this Friday, Jan. 9 at Saddles Restaurant at MacArthur Place. Since this event is part of the Sonoma Valley Olive Festival put on by the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, every martini must include an olive.
Moving and shaking bartenders from Saddles Steakhouse, The Girl & the Fig, El Dorado Kitchen, Maya Restaurant, Estate, Mary’s Pizza Shack, Steiner’s Tavern, Santé at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa and Murphy’s Irish Pub will compete for your “best martini” votes.
In addition to the straight-up Martini Madness Challenge ticket, you can purchase a Martini Madness and three-course dinner package. $40 ($45 at door if available), dinner package $85. 5-7 p.m. 29 E. MacArthur St., Sonoma. For advance ticket purchase visit www.olivefestival.com or www.macarthurplace.com dining page.
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As we kick off the New Year, we look optimistically to better relations among our leaders, within our country and between our country and others. We hope and work for peace and good health, to reduce the economic and other suffering of other people and to feed ourselves and our neighbors healthy food, and wine of course.
I began 2009 at 8:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day at Meals on Wheels as a prestigious substitute sandwich maker, where I turned out 70 roast beef sandwiches with horseradish mayonnaise and creamed Rosenberg blue cheese on Jewish rye bread as directed. We also served clients trays with a festive meal of black-eyed pea salad, ham, sweet potatoes, brown-butter broccoli, a roll and chocolate cake. Several volunteer drivers showed up early for snacks and to pick up trays for their routes. What a Happy New Year!
I highly recommend to everyone physically capable that you help cook food for those in need in our community, whether with the St. Leo’s Brown Baggers, FISH, Vintage House, the Sonoma Community Center Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners or at Meals on Wheels itself. When I help with these programs, I just plain feel good, and we could all use more of that.
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Two nights at Suzanne Brangham’s MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa were a prize on ABC’s “Wheel of Fortune” quiz show last week. Fabulous exposure for the inn and Sonoma!
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Speaking of Brangham, both she, as outgoing owner of Ramekins Sonoma Valley Culinary School, and Sarah and Darius Anderson, incoming owners, will be honored, along with The Olive Press’s Deborah Rogers, at the Sonoma Valley Olive Festival’s “Feast of the Olive” dinner on Saturday, Jan. 24. The evening will include a dinner guaranteed to be remembered. $150. 6 p.m. 450 W. Napa St., Sonoma. For reservations or more information contact the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau at 707.996.1090 or visit www.olivefestival.com.
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Pardon the expression, but the party at the Swiss Hotel after Helen Dunlap’s funeral at St. Francis Solano Church was a blast. Among those celebrating life in her memory were a couple of generations of many of Sonoma’s Italian families, including Marioni (of which Helen was one), Sangiacomo, Clarici, Stornetta and Leveroni, the latter two of which overlap slightly through marriage. Even the children of late chef Freddie Wing were there to honor Helen.
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Sonoma resident Val Diamond, the astonishing 30-year star of late Sonoman Steve Silver’s “Beach Blanket Babylon,” was featured in full color at her eastside home in last Wednesday’s San Francisco Chronicle “Datebook” section. Diamond and her husband, BBB band member Steve Salgo, can often be seen at Sonoma Plaza restaurants enjoying a late and robust lunch before they go to San Francisco and the show.
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Wild Thyme owners Joanne and Keith Filipello hosted their annual holiday party at their home, which was festooned with an outdoor lighted peace symbol. For all the terrific food they produce at their catering kitchen, their prized home stove is a 1950s O’Keefe & Merritt gas range.
Guests enjoyed “lame duck stew,” “Condoleezza rice with truffle oil,” “Cheney celery root salad,” “Rumsfeld ribs,” “Bush flageolet beans,” and an unnamed monstrous bowl of chocolate mousse, to say nothing of tarts, Filipello’s famous mini macaroons, and other splendors.
New labeling laws:
From now on, if you are still buying bottled water, the source of the water must be printed on the bottle’s label, whether it’s New Jersey tap water or water from Alaskan glaciers.
Large chain “restaurants,” or “stores” as corporate owners call them, must post fat, trans fat, and calorie content of the foods they serve.
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Kimberly and Simon Blattner gathered “a few” of their friends at their two-house compound last week, which always turns into one of the best conversational parties around. Simon Blattner is former president of the board of California College of the Arts in Oakland and of the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, as well as a sophisticated artist who makes paper. Kimberly Blattner, a former English teacher at Sonoma Valley High School, is active in many organizations in Sonoma and San Francisco and annually chairs the highly successful La Luz fundraiser at the historic Sonoma Barracks.
Artists, architects and arts sponsors were everywhere, including Paul Vieyra and Stanley Abercrombie, Marcia and Jim Levy, Fred (The Cookie King) and Barbara White Perry, Jim Lamb and his daughter Garland, who recently moved to Sonoma from the East Coast, Lia and Blaine Transue, Thale and Steve MacRostie and Carol and Kurt Krauthamer. Kurt Krauthamer recently accepted the opportunity to become co-chair of the Sonoma International Film Festival following the 2009 festival and is currently working as part of their transition team.
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At the invitation of Jerry’s law school roommate Gordon Philips and his wife Marie Hecklin, we dined at The Fig Café in Glen Ellen on New Year’s Eve. An unscientific dining room survey favored the Laura Chenel goat cheese flan, salt-rubbed salmon, and risotto as the hits of the evening. Meanwhile, Kevin McNeely and friends played at Shiso, EDK was so popular they served dinner in the fireplace room and several partiers moved from one venue to another to dance and make merry.
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New Year’s Day took us from Meals on Wheels to Readers’ Books’ whopper sale with Bloody and Virgin Marys, then to parties.
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Mara and Phil Kahn, who own Jacob’s Kitchen Ruffoni Copper Cookware Outlet on Eighth Street East, held their 20th annual New Year’s party featuring everything from Mexican pozole and “twice-engaged beef” (served at both of Mara’s brother’s engagement parties) to her lox, turkey, ham, Caesar salad and lots more. In the crowd were Kirsten and Peter Stewart of Deuce restaurant, Laura and Steve Havlek of Sign of the Bear kitchen store, FISH activist Evelyn Berger, Karen Collins, Marcia and Jim Levy, Carol and Kurt Krauthamer, Dick and Barbara Senn, and Claire and Jack Bock. Mara Kahn gave me four latkes (potato pancakes) she made and saved from her mother’s Hanukkah party at Merrill Gardens. Divine grease, especially reheated!
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Kitty and Bruce MacKay (of Landmark Vineyards) put on their annual “gumborama,” and this one was better than ever. Reflecting Kitty’s Creole background, the duo made gumbo with oysters, clams, crab and sausage, which Kitty began properly by making a broth from Dungeness crab shells. The cornbread was addictive, along with the good-luck black-eyed peas. Gloria Ferrer vineyard manager Mike Crumly, his wife Maureen and their kids; cookbook author Paula Wolfert and novelist and ceramicist Bill Bayer; Gerald Hill; and the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch of Trinity Episcopal Church and her husband Tim savored every bite.
Bon appétit!
Kathleen Hill is co-author with Gerald Hill of guidebooks to wine regions of the West Coast and writes for several publications.
Contact her by visiting the Contact the Columnists page at www.sonomasun.com.
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