by Christina Waters | Aug 28, 2007 | Home |
UCSC Farm & Garden’s Annual Fall Plant Sale — next weekend! — offers gardeners a major selection of organically raised vegetable seedlings, perennials, and California natives. Sponsored by the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, the sale takes place on Friday and Saturday, September 7 and 8. The sale will be open from noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, in the Barn Theater parking lot at the intersection of Bay and High Streets in Santa Cruz. (My orchid, Cassandra, posed for this quickie image.)
“Fall is a great time to plant fast-growing greens and other vegetable crops for late fall and winter harvest,” says UCSC Garden manager Christof Bernau. This year’s offerings include spinach, kale, lettuce and salad mixes, chard, collards, kale, and leaks, along with broccoli, and cabbage. Annual flowers available this year include sweet peas, larkspur, bachelor buttons, nigella, statice, stock and mignotte, which can be planted in the fall for late winter and spring blooms.The Farm & Garden’s plant sale is one of the largest all-organic events of its kind in the Monterey Bay Area. All of the flower and vegetable starts were propagated using organic methods. No chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides were used in growing the plants from seed. None of the hardwood cuttings were given artificial growth hormones. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Aug 23, 2007 | Home, Wine |
The Santa Cruz Mountains Commercial Wine Competition for 2007 awarded its medals once again — thanks to the hard work of 50 judges sampling a field of 171 wines from 34 of our premium wineries. This definitely comes under the “hard work, but somebody’s gotta do it” heading. And once again, I didn’t mind helping out by sampling some truly fine red wines.
Along with wine buyers, restaurateurs, sommeliers and other experts, I spent the better part of last Monday in the spacious main dining room of Ma Maison restaurant, working through a four-hour tasting managed by John and Karen Hibble of the SCMWA & Aptos Chamber. And as usual I learned a lot from the assembled experts, including the highly knowledgeable Aaron Brandt from Bittersweet Bistro, former Wine Club buyer Anita Sjoberg, CAVA wine bar’s Cliff Livingston and Theo’s owner Roger Romano.
For the record, this is hard work. Sniffing, tasting, spitting – over and
over again, through at least five flights of six wines each. Helped along with lots of bread and long breaks after every flight, somehow we managed to get through it with palates intact. The photo at right gives you an idea of the sea of glasses confronting us at any given moment. I was judging red wines and that means a temporary case of purple teeth and gums.
The field this year was packed with more terrific wines than I can remember at this annual competition, and most memorable were the outstanding red wines, notably the zinfandels cabs and the mixed blends. Ma Maison chef/owner Lionel LeMorvan provided terrific appetizers (more…)
by Christina Waters | Aug 23, 2007 | Home |
One of the joys of wine judging each year at the Santa Cruz Mountains competition, is getting to meet some of area’s top restaurant owners and managers. But this year offered something special — Michel and Muriel Loubiére, natives of France, who have just completed negotiations for their own restaurant — Au Midi. After nine months in our area, the couple has acquired the space of the former Al Boccalino, in Aptos, (behind the Aptos Cinema). Muriel, the chef, and is quite passionate about developing a menu that will not be filled with fussy, heavy old-fashioned French clichés. Au Midi, which the Loubiéres expect to open in late September, will showcase the sunny, fresh, intense flavors of the South of France, which means more olive oil, less butter – more seasonal produce and a leaning toward seafoods.
The preview menus included mussels, scallops, duck magret, pistou, quiches, brandade and pissaladiere, as well as sumptuous salads and tarts all involving local specialty produce. This is exciting news and I wish all bon chance to Muriel and Michel!
by Christina Waters | Aug 23, 2007 | Home, Wine |
The first Thursday of every month, Theo’s hosts a Brown Bag Wine Dinner beginning at 6:30pm. A specific wine varietal is featured each month and Chef Nicci Tripp prepares a 3-course meal to complement the chosen wine. The price is only $45 per person, all inclusive, and you need only bring a bottle of the featured wine or purchase one from the wine list to share. Of course, there’s no corkage fee.
Enjoying a cult following among connoisseurs for over a decade, the Theo’s wine evening is a great place to get started learning about wine. As exciting as the chance is to taste a huge range of wines, and to enjoy a fine dinner as well, for my money the big draw is expert commentary by Anita Sjoberg, who knows more about wine than any ten people you’d care to name. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Aug 14, 2007 | Art |
Wrapping up our tour of this year’s SSC festival, we bundled up for a nighttime performance of The Tempest, an atmospheric bit of surrealism-in-the-redwoods. Thanks to ingenious visuals by costume designer Brandin Barón and lighting design by David Lee Cuthbert, this Tempest sparkled with eye candy. And once again, the most interesting part of seeing all the plays this year is the chance to experience the deep texture created by the repertory casting. As Prospero, the shipwrecked Duke of Milan, James Winker reminds us, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” But just last week, I’d been regaled by Winker as the linguistically inept Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. The same dramatic resonance occurs in the case of Prospero’s daughter, Miranda – played by Barbara Suiter, who also plays the much maligned Hero in Much Ado. The Tempest‘s splendid Caliban is played by Omar Ricks, whose singing enchants Much Ado audiences. The repertory casting lets us watch the range of the actors across at least two separate dramatic scripts. And the glen, as always, more than earns its reputation as a magical performance space — a softly hooting owl high up in the trees added a touch of “brave new world” fantasy during last Saturday’s performance.
Wanting to sink into Shakespeare’s strange saga of humans, gods, beasts and spirits, I found myself distracted by uncertain direction and a few casting issues. (more…)
