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Summer 2012

Summer 2012

Features

Porch Wines

Porch Wines

It’s a porch wine. It’s what the top of your tongue and the back of your throat are silently asking for on a hot summer day when you’ve pulled off the gloves and rolled up the sleeves and parked yourself on the front porch around noon with a perfect deli sandwich.

Krave goes krazy

Krave goes krazy

What’s a better grade than A-Plus? How about A-Plus followed by six zeroes?

Quarryhill grows up

Quarryhill grows up

“They are like my children,” Josephine Nickolai reportedly said in 1990, when she and her daughter, Dorothy, spent long hours transplanting fragile seedlings into 4-inch pots. Behind them as they worked stretched 40 acres of rough, rocky ground on a steep incline. Like other children, these flourished and grew; they were the first plants that would become the lush haven that is now Quarryhill Botanical Garden, 22 acres of Asian woodland almost anonymous in Glen Ellen.

Twin chefs

Twin chefs

Cooking is their primary love, but their dreams stretch far beyond the kitchen. Besides the television shows and cookbooks that now seem inevitable, in the future you may be able to buy Twin Chefs clothing for kids, made in earth tones instead of the stereotypical bright blues and pinks.

The new school food:

The new school food:

Across the country today, children are discovering that tomatoes and onions and carrots, picked fresh and prepared with love, can be as appealing as junk food. Schools are using food as a focus to teach ecological principles, explore sustainability issues from world hunger to energy use, and awaken children’s wonder at the natural world.

Reluctant Locavore

Reluctant Locavore

Restaurant Guide 2012

Restaurant Guide 2012

Wine Country is also Food Country and, as with wines, the dining options are endless. Herewith a comprehensive, but not necessarily complete, guide to eating in and around the Valley of the Moon.

Plats du Jour

Plats du Jour

Sondra Bernstein surveys the display with the practiced eye of a proprietor: critical, observant, searching for defects. She has an empire to tend and standards to meet. She assesses the food and then her face softens. It is the face of a woman made naked by love.

Bread goes punk

Bread goes punk

He’s not the kind of guy who brings sweet things to mind. But forged by the fire of his hand-built wood oven, he’s blazing a new path in the industry, and he doesn’t give a crap whether you like it.

The Strudel Guy

The Strudel Guy

If the citizens of Sonoma County play their cards right—if they buy enough strudel—Alan Dennis will likely keep rolling it out for years to come. Who knew strudel could be this good?

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Departments

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road trip

NASCAR is coming

NASCAR is coming

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creative

Dancing her way out of town

Dancing her way out of town

Last year that voice won her a dandy cash scholarship. Two thousand dollars from the 2011 Sonoma Student Creative Arts Award scholarship committee to use whatever way she saw fit. This year the voice got her a solo gig as the debut act for the Sonoma Community Center’s Emerging Artists series, where she was paid a small honorarium and sold out of homemade CDs.

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contributors

Food is lethal if inhaled

Food is lethal if inhaled

Can I eat this?

Can I eat this?

Pretty poppy

Pretty poppy

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previews

PREVIEW

PREVIEW

How to Live & Drink in Wine Country; Finding the origins of music in the world’s wild places; Visions of Food and Form

As American as Baseball and Rhubarb

As American as Baseball and Rhubarb

Being one of the first plants to show up in the garden, it was a welcome sight to many a gardener after a long, cold winter.

Searching for the perfect margarita

Searching for the perfect margarita

It was the summer vacation between my junior and senior years in college, and I was at the age when my alcohol priorities placed quantity over quality. We were working as lifeguards for the City of Los Angeles and finally old enough to go to bars, which meant we had money to do just that

Faces of Sonoma - Summer 2012

Faces of Sonoma - Summer 2012

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grab bag

Take it outside

Take it outside

Kitchen catch-all

Kitchen catch-all

Codi Binkley is on a roll

Codi Binkley is on a roll

Society Thrives Here -Fashion goes to the Trash

Society Thrives Here -Fashion goes to the Trash

Trashion Fashion Show

Society Thrives Here -15th annual Sonoma International Film Festival

Society Thrives Here -15th annual Sonoma International Film Festival

Society Thrives Here -A Ribbon-Cutting Event

Society Thrives Here -A Ribbon-Cutting Event

Society Thrives Here -EDK Stands By

Society Thrives Here -EDK Stands By

Society Thrives Here -A Fine Spring Season

Society Thrives Here -A Fine Spring Season

SUMMER HAPPENINGS

SUMMER HAPPENINGS

Sonoma’s summer theater season

Sonoma’s summer theater season

Sonoma Raceway heats up for the summer

Sonoma Raceway heats up for the summer