Nepal fundraisers schedule; More Mother’s Day opportunities; Grandma Linda’s Ice Cream closes

We in Sonoma care about our people. Our people include the immigrants from Nepal, most of whom use the last name of Sherpa.|

We in Sonoma care about our people. Our people include the immigrants from Nepal, most of whom use the last name of Sherpa. They work in lots of our restaurants, run a taxi company, and take care of people. All of them have family in earthquake-ravaged Nepal. And they need help.

Here are some ways you can help, if you choose, by attending events and sampling good food. They are listed chronologically.

Tuesday, May 12: Murphy’s Irish Pub and Taste of Himalayas host their Tuesday Night Farmers Market After Party with Sean Carscadden playing. Murphy’s will give 25 percent of what you spend to relief. Taste of Himalayas will serve a buffet with all funds going for relief.

Thursday, May 14: Ramekins Culinary School & Event Center will host a community-?wide fundraiser with 100 percent of funds raised going to relief in small villages that suffered greatly and are not receiving the same level of relief that Katmandu residents are getting.

Local chefs donating, participating and sponsoring include those of Ramekins, Burgers & Vine Whiskey Bar, Maya Restaurant, Shiso Modern Asian Kitchen, Depot Hotel, Aventine Glen Ellen, Saddles Steakhouse, Yeti Restaurant, Glen Ellen Star, Crisp Bake Shop, Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, The Swiss Hotel, The Red Grape, The Epicurean Connection, Cafe LaHaye, La Salette, El Dorado Kitchen, Cornerstone Sonoma and Chateau Sonoma. La Tavola Linens is donating linens for the fundraising dinner.

Sonoma Valley chefs will serve dinner at 6 p.m. with Jon Reiter, just back from Nepal, and local Sherpa leader Nima Sherpa will speak with a short slide show from the field.

Let’s not miss this opportunity to help in a big way. This event has no administrative expenses.

Bring your checkbooks for an impassioned Fund-In-Need. No auction. All funds go to the Himalayan Sherpa Club Sonoma (501 c3). $200. 5 to 8 p.m. 450 W. Spain St., Sonoma. Reservations at Ramekins.com or 933-0450.

Thursday, May 21: Saddles Steakhouse at MacArthur Place will join with the Himalaya Sherpa Club of Sonoma (501 c3), also to help raise funds for smaller villages in outlying areas of Nepal. Executive chef Dana Jaffe, chef Sanjeev K. Singh, and several Sherpas will prepare “traditional” food. Contact Dana Jaffe at dana@macarthurplace.com if you would like to donate auction items. $50. More details to come.

Sondra Bernstein and her staff at the girl & the fig and fig cafe are encouraging donations directly to charitywater.org or donatecharitywater.org/donate/nepal, said to be a great organization working to deliver clean water throughout Nepal.

HHH

Mother’s Day alert:

A couple more Mother’s Day brunch outings have cropped up, and they present wildly different styles and pricing.

For a Mother’s Day celebration for the whole fam damily, you might try the annual Glen Ellen Firefighters’ Association Mother’s Day Pancake Breakfast right in the Glen Ellen firehouse and its parking area on Sunday, May 10. Always a great feast, this might be the best pancake breakfast in Sonoma Valley. Sometimes there are even takeaway plants for moms.

You will enjoy an endless plethora of pancakes, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, orange juice and coffee. And such a deal to benefit the Glen Ellen Firegighters’ Association and Glen Ellen Fire Association Auxiliary. We all need to support our fire departments. We need these public servants. $8 adults, $4 ages 4 to 17, free for ages 3 and under. 8 a.m. to noon. 13445 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen.

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At the other end of the spectrum, you might sample Steve Ledson’s new Zina Lounge at his Ledson Hotel introducing chef Yoshiharu Sogi and wines from Ledson and his Zina Hyde Cunningham labels. The menu of small plates might include excellent raw oysters two ways; clam chowder with edamame and a crispy wonton strip; tastes of seared ahi and salmon; marinated pork loin with raisin chutney; strip beef loin with small Brussels sprouts and fingerling potatoes; and a taste of chocolate mousse with banana flambe. $150. Seatings at 1, 5:30 and 8 p.m. 480 First St. E., Sonoma. Reservations at 538-3823 or ledson.com.

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P.S. DO NOT text or email your mother to tell her how much you appreciate and love her. CALL HER or see her in person. Thank you.

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Grandma Linda’s Ice Cream shop has closed. The Troy Marmaduke family opened a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop on the Plaza, a few years later disassociated with Ben & Jerry’s, and reopened as an independent ice cream shop named for Grandma Linda Marmaduke who had passed away fairly recently. So sorry to see a family that gives much to our community leave Sonoma Plaza. They did not respond to my email inquiry.

Handwritten signs on the window and the famously controversial pink door say they are closed, the shop is under new ownership, and that they will have “really good ice cream.” The new folks suggest they will open in “summer of 2015.”

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Fans of San Francisco’s Sam Wo’s who wept over the restaurant’s closure by the Health Department will be glad to hear that the 100-year-old restaurant is on its way back. Not sure if the great surly waiter, Edsel Ford Wong, is still around but I certainly hope so.

Sam Wo will rise again in the space occupied by Anna Bakery as a new entity, Sam Wo Restaurant and Bakery, with a whole kitchen to make jook and wonton soup. Early hours will be 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., with late afternoon tea offerings for elderly regulars, followed by Sam Wo-style dinner hours from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., opening hopefully in July. 715 Clay St., San Francisco. 415-989-8898.

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Our early Cinco de Mayo celebrations last weekend were fabulous, as was the weather. We began at Robledo Family Winery, admittedly a little late for the buffet by Javier Pereznegron’s Baccuisine from Newark, although Lazaro (Larry) Robledo said he got four spices for the mole sent from Puebla, Mexico. We were in great time to enjoy wine and spectacular dancing by Quetzalen, Sonoma’s own Mexican Folk Ballet Company. Children from age 4 or 5 and those who started dancing during their time at Sonoma Valley High School were nothing short of spectacular. Larry Robledo and brothers were in charge, and encouraged everyone to stop by the churro trailer for dessert. Nancy Lang and I were surprised that the mini churros came with fillings, including chocolate and caramel.

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The Cinco de Mayo celebration La Luz Center put on in Sonoma Plaza was a huge success with more people attending than ever, and a true mix of our community and cultures. Seats were hard to find in the Grinstead Amphitheatre while various Mexican dancers, musicians and singers performed all afternoon. The same Quetzalen dancers were center stage but performed much different dances. The kids came out as vaqueritos and vaqueritas (I think I made up both words) and performed some pretty tricky leg twirls most of us shouldn’t try. Former La Luz board president Claudia Mendoza-Carruth emceed.

The food was interesting and delicious, as always, with the biggest line for the corn-on-the-cob I mentioned last week. Thank you La Luz for bringing our community together.

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Williams-Sonoma Culinary and Events Director Elizabeth Payne will do a demo from hot chef April Bloomfield’s “A Girl and Her Greens” On Wednesday, May 13. With Ken Friedman, Bloomfield owns The Spotted Pig, Breslin Bar & Dining Room, John Dory Oyster Bar and Salvation Taco in New York, and Tosca Cafe in San Francisco.

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Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance Executive Director Maureen Cottingham gave birth to a gorgeous red-haired, blue-eyed “princess” (aren’t they all – you don’t have to be British royalty), Quincey Ann. Father Adam looks totally in love as well.

Maureen brought Quincey to a recent “reunion” of Magnum Force at the home of Lori and Rick Miron, who happened to have “won” the Harvest Wine Auction bidding for the group’s lot five times, with Chandra and Bob Frieze “winning” one year as well. Magnum Force is a gang of jazzy women who either grow grapes or make wine and rehearse for months to perform and up the bidding at the Labor Day weekend fundraiser for education.

Suzy Fridell lends her boundless energy and professional dance experience to lead the Magnum Force troupe, assisted by Nancy Lilly, Gayle Arrowood, Vallerie and Sharon Cohn, Courtney Curti, Jann Forth, Rebecca Forth, Chandra Friese, Jamie and Deborah Emery, Becky Jenkins, Terin Ignozzi, Betsy Karrer, Ramona Nicholson, Mia Sangiacomo Pucci, Gail Ross, Bettina Sichel, Sally Stone, Pat Stornetta, Kari Viegland, Taylor Serres, Abigail Zimmerman, Lori McGovern and her mother, CeeCee Ponicsan, and Melania Mahoney, who serves as the group’s photographer. Just to see these women at their hilarious best is worth the substantial price of admission to the Harvest Wine Auction. I have officially signed on as Mascot, apparently not an empty title.

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Culinary romps:

Join me on Saturday, May 23 at Williams-Sonoma for a talk about and demonstration of historic kitchen utensils from my Kathleen Hill Culinary Collection. Elizabeth Payne will cook old recipes from Chuck Williams’ book, “Merchant of Sonoma.”

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Thanks to Ramekins Culinary School, my Carniceria Tours restart on Friday, May 29, with others scheduled Saturday, June 13, and Friday, July 17. Register right away, because these tours of Sonoma’s fabulous and varied Mexican markets are limited to 12 guests and fill up quickly.

We will gather at Ramekins for coffee and carpool from there to a Mexican bakery for pastries, visit some carnicerias (Mexican butcher shops and markets) where you will learn about all sorts of cuts of meats you may not have seen before, walls of spices, bargain citrus, and nice hosts, all in English. We will have lunch at a favorite local Mexican restaurant, visit Jalisco Tortilla “factory” run by local women, visit more carnicerias and the beautiful Flowery School garden, and have the opportunity to buy chicken barbecued before your eyes in front of El Brinquito Market.

We finish the day with ice cream at La Michoacana Natural Ice Cream. $65 inclusive. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sign up at ramekins.com or call 933-0450.

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Hanna Boys Center hosted one of the best party/fundraisers Sonoma Valley has seen last Saturday. The event, attended by 430 supporters, was called “Color Outside the Lines” emceed by Squire Fridell.

Guests were greeted by charming young men dressed in carefully color-spattered painter’s overalls, who shook our hands and greeting us with “Hi, I’m Jack. Can I help you?” meaning guide us to the action, and there was lots of it.

Performance painter Jared Emerson entertained to energetic music, with cheers of admiration part of the accompaniment. Later one of Emerson’s paintings went for $11,000.

Chef Bruce Riezenman. of Park Avenue Catering and Park 121 restaurant at Cornerstone, did a superb job of feeding 430 people who had been sipping wine and real cocktails.

A salad of chopped kale, golden beets, and slightly unwieldy arugula with feta cheese, plus Black Angus New York slices with trumpet mushrooms and what were apparently fried leeks were served on polenta cakes with a baby carrot. GlenLyon, Arrowood, Conn Valley and Korbel donated wines, while GlenLyon’s Squire Fridell did his usual fabulous job of emceeing, wearing his kilt, of course.

In the huge crowd, surrounded by huge crayons, paint spatters, table lighting through paint cans, and generally fun decor, were Sue Albano, several Aliotos, honoree and board president Jack and JoAnn Bertges, Nancy and Jim Bundschu, Mary and Peter Bussi, Jim and Phyllis Carter, Sara and Bill Clegg, Christy and John Coulston, Klara and John Crean, Paul Curreri and Manuel Merjil, Christine Dohrman, Joy and Dennis Donnelly, Diane and Peter Donnici, Sheila and John Fanucci, Millie and Tom Ferrando, Suzy Fridell, Chandra and Bob Friese, Gretchen and Bob Gardner, Susan and Tim Geraghty, Meaghan and Mike Hengehold, Sharon and Jim Lynch, Diane and Jerry Marino, Kathleen McIntyre, Susan and Toby Mumford, Betsy and Ken Niles, Trish Hunter and Ken Skaggs, Yvonne and John Niven, Lois and Frank Noonan, Barbara and Tim Norman, Kathy and Silvano Payne, Karen and Jack Powers, Michele and Sean Tobin, Susan Vick, and Michael Woods. A great success and congratulations!

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Love you Mom and Gna. We miss you.

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