Foodie Tout, Inc. buying Mad Will’s; Tarting it up; Sunset magazine homeless; Mary’s opens 20th restaurant; Travels with Henri Episode No. 16

Sonoma-based Foodie Tout, Inc. will become owners of natural and organic food products manufacturer Mad Will’s Food Company on Jan. 1, the latter located in the Sierra foothills.

Headquartered at Ron Lawson’s Field of Greens Watmaugh Road complex that once housed Nicholas Turkey Farms labs, Foodie Tout, Inc. is the umbrella company of FoodieDaily.com, FoodioStudio.com, Foodie5Star.com, FoodieTout.com, and FoodieCrowdFunding.com.

Time magazine published a cover story in 1991 on Karen Foley’s decision to leave the New York fashion world for a simpler life elsewhere, which became St. Paul, Minnesota. She and husband John Foley acquired two historic grocery stores on Lake Minnetonka, which led to her foodie life that grew to include eight restaurants. Since then, Karen served as general manager of Oakville Grocery where she positioned the store nationally. Next step was as senior vice president of sales for Tulocay & Co. in Napa where, among other things, she was head of branding for co-packed products for Tyler Florence, Good Housekeeping, Vineyard Pantry and Nature’s Habit brands.

The purchase of Mad Will’s and its many labels will enable Foodie Tout, Inc. to help first-timers and veteran food producers develop their products from scratch, place them well in retail stores, and market everything in all media, including in ecommerce. With Mad Will’s, Foodie Tout also gets a 16,000-square-foot state-of-the-art video studio. For more information, call 938-8385.

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Chef Sam Kass left the White House this week to join his new wife, MSNBC news anchor Alex Wagner, in New York. Kass was the Chicago chef Michelle Obama chose over Berkeley’s Alice Waters to develop the White House Kitchen Garden. Holding the title of senior advisor for Nutrition Policy, Kass became the executive director of Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, affecting millions of families throughout the country. Kass also brewed the Obamas’ Honey Brown Ale. Perhaps the incoming congressional leadership’s efforts to erase school lunch nutritional requirements hastened Sass’ exit.

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Apparently the price of eggs has gone up, as have American egg exports to other countries, while the number of laying hens has gone down, supposedly because of voter-approved requirements that chickens have more space to move and breathe.

Many egg producers say they can’t afford more land or to change their coop sizes, so they are growing fewer chickens to lay eggs. My background in political psychology makes me wonder if there isn’t a wee effort to get consumers to protest and ultimately demand undoing of the more space rules.

Eggs are still a protein bargain for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and I love them.

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More pop-ups

popping up:

Pop-up dinners are occasional dining opportunities at non-restaurant locations where chefs cook usually prix-fixe meals from menus created for the day. Locally Rob Larman cooks pop-ups at Wendee Smith’s Valley Wine Shack, and Sondra Bernstein and John Toulze present fun and surprise menus not on their restaurant lists at Bernstein’s fun and slightly funky Suite D, a triangular space adjoining their catering kitchen off Eighth Street East.

Rob Larman pop-ups at Valley Wine Shack:

On Jan. 16, chef and former La Poste co-owner Rob Larman will create a cioppino dinner with Dino Kale salad with roasted beets, citrus and goat cheese; fish and shellfish cioppino with polenta; and Hookers House bourbon and sundried cherry bread pudding with bourbon creme Anglaise. $40.

Larman’s final pop-up of this series will be Feb. 27 were he will serve a classic French dinner of green salad of butter lettuce and Dijon vinaigrette, cassoulet of heirloom beans with duck confit and sausage, and Vahlrona chocolate mousse with creme Chantilly. Each dinner $40. 535 W. Napa St., Sonoma. Reserve at Valley Wine Shack, 938-7218.

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Patz & Hall will launch its Art Harvest No. 3, a quarterly art exhibition, on Saturday, Jan. 17, featuring the work of Erin Parish. Patz & Hall calls its elegant facility “Sonoma House” because it was first built as a large home. It is definitely worth visiting. The exhibit runs Jan. 9 through April 8.

The opening reception for Erin Parish’s work will also feature tastes of its Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and chardonnay and artisanal cheeses selected by chef Natalie Niksa of La Saison. Luxe Interiors + Design magazine and Reverie Arts of San Francisco select and bring artists to Patz & Hall. 5 p.m. 21200 Eighth St. E., Sonoma. Reservations required at 265-7700.

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Tarting it up:

Lucky was I to be invited to participate in a rare Tart Class opportunity successfully bid on by Diane Bieneman at Sonoma Community Center’s Muse event at Beltane Ranch and hosted by Gretchen Gardner in her fabulous personalized kitchen.

After many exchanges about who were the real tarts in the group, Judy Mueller, Genevieve Blanchard, Pam Story, Judy Vadasz, Judy Young, Suzanne Brangham, Kimberly Blattner, Gretchen Gardner and I showed up at the Gardners’ home on a recent Saturday to learn to make apple and pear tarts.

Gabriella Von Stephen was our tart master, a lovely German native and esthetician who grew up baking with her mother and grandmother and now shares her delicate skills with others here in Sonoma. She donated the class to the Community Center.

On arrival, Diane Bieneman made us individual espressos from her new Nespresso machine, and several of us agreed that Keurigs don’t get coffee hot enough, at least some models. She had also made a yummy southwestern egg and chile dish to share along with scones and other yummies.

We each took our place around Gretchen’s large kitchen island. Gabriella presented us with baggies of mixed dry ingredients, which saved time and flour powder on some guests’ black clothes. We had to learn to pulse just right in several Cuisinarts, and peel and slice pears and apples from Gabriella’s and other gardens. The other garden would be that of her “assistant,” hairdresser and creative man-about-town Patrick Jude. Apparently when the fruit on their respective trees ripens they make hundreds of tarts together at each other’s homes.

We all left with pages of instructions and a complete tart to freeze or bake at home. Only one fell out of the fridge upside down, and several guests helped repair it. I took mine to some friends’ home the next day where we baked it for dessert after a nearly orgasmic Dungeness crab dinner. Thank you Diane Bieneman, Gretchen Gardner, and Gabriella von Stephen, whom you might contact to arrange a class at 343-1123.

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Mary’s Pizza Shack just opened its 20th restaurant, this one at 423 N. McDowell Boulevard near the new Friedman’s in Petaluma. This Mary’s has a new stone oven and seven new pizza recipes developed for this location. It has a large dining room, outdoor patio and back room for parties. Vince Albano serves as CEO and Nanette Albano-Lane is design coordinator, keeping the traditions all in the family. The new restaurant’s phone number is 765-1959, which happens to be the year their grandmother, Mary Fazio, founded the Italian restaurant in Boyes Hot Springs.

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Time, Inc., current publisher of Sunset magazine, just sold the magazine’s luxurious 1950s ranch-style Cliff May-designed seven-acre campus to Embarcadero Capital Partners. The sale includes all of the land, gardens, test kitchens and offices. According to Kim Severson in The New York Times, Time, Inc. also recently sold the Birmingham, Alabama, property where Southern Living and Cooking Light magazines are published.

Apparently Sunset staff will work out of the fabulous offices until the end of this year. It will be hard for food editor and friend Margo True to find test kitchens even close to comparable, but the magazine will survive.

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Many thanks to Peg Melnik for the excellent story on Sonoma’s Brown Baggers and the fabulous Elizabeth Kemp, whose personal mission has long been to care for and feed those in need.

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Travels with Henri ?Episode No. 16

Chateau Dumas Chef Charlotte Clement just sent me the real menu for our farewell dinner, which proved to be slightly different from what some of us remembered. Catch this: Foie gras we had learned to make with pepper and fig chutney, boned and stuffed quail on a bed of crispy leeks with souffle of carrots and glazed market vegetables, finished off with raspberry millefeuilles with housemade cardamom ice cream. Want to go? Contact chateausonoma@gmail.com.

At the Matabiau train station in Toulouse the next morning, we found the excellent and historic Paul Bakery in several French train stations, along with fast food, of course. Paul offers excellent tuna and other sandwiches and a divine soft baguette loaded with chocolate chips.

But our companions did not feel the ride on the TGV was worth half a day; chose to ride backwards and got some much needed sleep. The $100 extra that we spent for first class tickets was questionable but included a voucher for “free lunch” at the food car, which was a stand with one attendant. Obviously he had never seen one of these vouchers before and had to look up the rules to find out if he should actually serve us. Most of the food was decent. Facing forward, Henri and I kept wide awake not wanting to miss a thing.

Once we arrived in Paris, we found that both the escalators and elevators to the taxi level were broken and out of service, as was the restaurant in our hotel.

Fast forward to Sonoma two weeks ago. Tony and Suzie Eglin, Henri and I met for lunch at the Depot Hotel and discovered wild boar on the menu. You may recall that while at Chateau Dumas Tony and Aldo Willis, the only men on Sarah Anderson’s Chateau Sonoma trip, formed a mythical “Wild Board Hunters” club. Aldo and Marie Willis were coming to town that weekend because they do business at Travis Air Force Base. This convergence required a Sunday lunch of excellent wild boar over pasta for an impromptu reunion.

We did form some informal hilarious and stringent rules about joining the Wild Boar Hunters. Having actually hunted wild boar does not actually qualify an applicant. Neither Tony nor Aldo has ever owned a gun.

We laughed for two hours sipping only sparkling water, shared a tiramisu, and parted sadly looking forward to the next gathering.

From the Depot Hotel Henri and I walked over to the Depot Park Museum for its model train exhibit, happily crowded with train fans, including Nancy and John Lasseter.

More on Paris and wild boar hunting next week.

Happy New Year!