by Christina Waters | May 24, 2013 | Home |
O’mei’s menu continues to re-invent itself, producing sudden new spices and fresh seasonal responses to this or that bit of culinary influence.
For example this new small plate offering. Bearing a trans-metaphysical resemblance to empanadas, Cornish pasties, and a wide range of dim sum, this incredible bit of rock’n’roll baking was feather-light and filled with a spiced mix of pork and cabbage (from the Polish sector of Szechuan?). Black sesames on top. Fabulous, especially with a splash of fiery chile oil.
by Christina Waters | May 23, 2013 | Home |
Don’t miss the chance to visit small wineries, sample new releases, chat with vintners and find out what makes the Santa Cruz Mountains winegrowing district utterly unique and distinctive.
So – to do that – you need to get some tickets ($40 per) for the 24th Annual Vintners’ Festival, AKA Roots that Rock. They’re available online. Not only winery touring, but your ticket also gives you access to the Downtown Santa Cruz Street Fair – June 9, on Pacific Avenue (between Locust and Walnut Streets), where you’ll rock to music, artisan foods, more wines and loads of live entertainment.
So if you’d like to tour the wineries on the “other side of the hill” – plan to hop in the car the weekend of June 1 & 2, from noon to 5pm.
And to tour the participating wineries in Santa Cruz County, get set for the weekend of June 8 & 9, and then head over to the June 9 street fair from 11am until 3pm.
All you really have to remember is “the best locally-made wine” – and those two weekends of tasting. The intel on the SCMWA website will walk you through the rest.
Salut!
by Christina Waters | May 20, 2013 | Home |
Thanks to Dee Vogel for sending me this very (very) interesting link—a huge flow-chart tracking the mega-corporate owners of all those “natural” food labels you love.
You’ll be amazed – and possibly uncomfortable.
by Christina Waters | May 10, 2013 | Home |
After an arduous morning of soaking up Netherlands’ finest painters and printmakers—including several matchless Rembrandts, the peerless Carl Fabritius, and of course the beautiful if over-hyped Vermeer “Girl with the Pearl Earring,” we needed some food.
The deYoung‘s outstanding restaurant obliged with a textbook double espresso, fresh-baked walnut and carrot cake, and centerpiece of Dutch-inspired lunch plate complete with three kinds of cured fish, smoked salmon, deviled eggs, gherkins, potato salad, rye bread and pickled onions. It tasted as good as it looks!
This show is loaded with some of the finest exemples of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age—the Rembrandt etchings alone are worth the scenic drive up the coast. It runs through June 2. Be there.
by Christina Waters | May 9, 2013 | Home |
From one prurient, salacious, gossipy bonfire of the vanities to another—Jodi Arias, for example—we seem to be devolving into a “culture” of media-addicted ambulence chasers. While details unfold about the latest heartland atrocity, no details are unfolding about Benghazi, or Fukushima, or Syria.
Besides, it’s so much easier for Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch to understand crimes of passion than to demand answers about political decisions — CIA, Department of Justice—these require actually digging for facts and being able to understand implications.
Our refusal to think is going to pound that last nail into the sinking ship that is our collective culture.
But that’s just me.
