Kathleen Hill: Animal crackers unleashed, Red and White Ball and more

Circus breakers

After more than a century behind bars, the animals on boxes of Animal Crackers have broken out of their cages.

Mondelez International redesigned the boxes of its Nabisco Barnum’s Animals Crackers after giving in to pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Nabisco has been making the popular animal-shaped cookies since 1902. Until now the red-and-yellow boxes with handles always showed animals in cages.

Red & White Ball Saturday night

Dinner and dancing at the Red & White Ball is Saturday, Aug. 25 – a chance to support Sonoma Valley public schools. The event features what could be Sonoma’s first ever West Coast clam bake with Dave Martin’s House Party Dance Band. And don’t forget the raffles, auction and fund-a-need and the Valley Vibes Youth Orchestra.

And good news for people interested in dance only, but don’t know what to put in a picnic on Saturday. Frenchie’s Picnic & Provisions will have a fried chicken dinner to go including buttermilk fried chicken, green salad, potato salad and Crisp chocolate chip cookies for $40 to feed two people. Pick up that day or evening until supplies last.

Frenchies is just two doors down Broadway from Sonoma Plaza and all the Red & White action.

Want a really cool chance for a great cheap date? Buy a $25 raffle ticket at the Red & White Ball, or five for $100. (The real life price wouldn’t be cheap but the raffle tickets are cheap for what you get.)

First on the Education Foundation’s list of raffle dates is dinner with yours truly at Glen Ellen Star, a tour of the Benziger organic and biodynamic garden that supplies Glen Ellen Star, and the clincher – the chance to write your own restaurant review on the food and wine pages of the Sonoma Index-Tribune. Any restaurant you want, but keep it clean.

Other goodies include tours and tastings at Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards, Valley of the Moon Winery, Kunde Winery Mountain Top tour and tasting, and Donum Estate, Sweet Scoops and Six Flags for two, a Gundlach Bundschu music show, SVHS Boosters’ Crab Feed tickets for two, Foursome golf and lunch at Sonoma Golf Club, two cinema passes to 2019 Sonoma International Film Festival, two tickets to a show at Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Oregon, Hanzell Farm tour and tasting, Cliff Family Winery Summer Solstice concert, $100 gift certificate at El Molino, Body Fusion personal training with mimosas at Sunflower Caffé, Picazo Café breakfast or lunch, and Highwaymen Wines tasting for two with lunch at Park 121 Café. Twenty local wineries will share their wines.

Tickets for dinner and dancing $225, dance only $40. Call 935-9566 or svgreatschools.org.

Suite D and Rhône Room members party

Wine club memberships often offer interesting benefits besides delivering wines at regular intervals. Some include discounts on dinners or experiences such as grape harvesting, crushing and bottling, and occasional label sticking on bottles.

Always one to think of treating friends, staff and supporters in unusually fun ways, Sondra Bernstein just did it again at last Tuesday evening’s farmers market.

You might remember her 20th anniversary Girl & the Fig party with dinner for 600 in front of City Hall, or her annual treat of her large staff and families to a Transcendence performance evening.

Last Tuesday Bernstein invited her Rhône Room and Suite D Social Club memberships to gather at a white tent on the grass behind City Hall, and not far from her Fig Rig during one of the monthly jazz performances in Sonoma Plaza.

Guests got to enjoy Girl & The Fig president John Toulze’s charcuterie, fresh vegetables from Fig Farm, dips, olive tapenade and Girl & the Fig rosé and viognier wines along with her French friends’ Mes Amis Français Mélange Blanc and Syrah, and Villa Creek Damas Noir wines. Every guest received a coupon for $5 “Truck Bucks” to use at the Fig Rig as well, which led to lots of leftover crispy fries enjoyed by latecomers.

Soaking it all in were Kristin and Craig Adryan, Selma Blanusa, Micki Goedwaagen, Phyllis and John Gurney, Laurie and Jim Sebesta, Susan Levine and Jim Lauer, Kay and Kevin Austin, and Janice and Dr. Dan Stites.

Restaurant catch ups:

Mary’s Pizza Shack’s two Sonoma Valley locations are offering their Back to School Mary’s family meal deal that includes either a large two topping pizza or a family size spaghetti with three giant meatballs with meat, marinara, or pesto sauce, breadsticks, and a large Mary’s or Caesar salad. All for $29.95 through Oct. 9, 2018. 18636 Sonoma Highway, Boyes Hot Springs or 8 W. Spain St., Sonoma. 938-3600 or 938-8300. Happy hour 3 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Order online at Maryspizzashack.com.

Nibs & Sips

According to Wines and Vines, off-premise wine sales are up through July of this year with rosés leading the pack with a 35 percent increase. Only merlot dropped by a little more than 5 percent. After rosés, sauvignon blancs are up about 7 percent, followed by cabernet sauvignon, red blends, pinot noir, pinot grigio, sparkling wines, and chardonnay with an only about one to two percent increase in sales.

Sonoma’s Tommy Thomson is celebrating that the Texas State Senate just made Western Swing the official music of the state. And he is making huge construction progress on his life project, the Church of Western Swing in Turkey, Texas.

Jerry Seltzer and his father Leo Seltzer were mentioned generously in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “pink” Section last Sunday in a story on roller skating, which mentioned them for creating the Bay Bombers, a super popular and rugged Roller Derby team.

Esther Mobley, wine writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, recommended 21 top California wineries to explore in her “Grand Tour” in Sunday’s paper. The only Sonoma Valley wineries she suggested were Scribe, Gundlach Bundschu, Buena Vista, Hamel Family, Westwood, and Kivelstadt and only mentions Michael Bauer favorite El Molino Central and El Dorado Kitchen restaurants.

Edge offerings from Stone Edge Farm

With more and more openings to the public, Edge restaurant and Culinary Director John McReynolds now offer three-course lunches with estate grown wines every Wednesday at noon ($125 or $95 for wine club members, as well as Thursday night three-course dinners ($150) at 6:30 p.m..

Fridays at Edge bring a tasting of four estate grown wines with paired bites from the Edge kitchen at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. ($95 or $75 for wine club members). Reservations required for each event. Reserve via larry@stoneedgefarm.com.

Celebrity chefs on the move

Many of us saw lots of coverage of Santa Rosa’s celebrity television chef Guy Fieri setting up tent kitchens during our October fires, but a couple of weeks ago he and his son Hunter, 21, packed up and towed their equipment to the Redding area to cook for fire victims there.

Meanwhile, internationally known chef José Andrés took the massive crew of his World Central Kitchen Chefs for California campaign to Lake County to feed evacuees and firefighters in the Mendocino Complex fires. The operation includes professional chefs who work full time with Andrés as well as local volunteer chefs and cooks who have even lost their own homes to fire. Pulled pork, black beans and chipotle tomato sauces appeared to be favorites of everyone involved, whether in Redding or Middletown.

Restaurateur Tim Kilcoyne from Ventura led Andrés’ Middletown kitchen and turned out about 2,200 meals a day distributed by the Red Cross to four shelters and to the Calpine Geothermal Visitor Center in Middletown.

A native of Spain, Andrés has several restaurants and is possibly best known for pulling his restaurant out of Donald Trump’s then-unfinished Washington hotel because of Trump’s disparaging remarks about Mexicans. Following Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, Andrés and friends churned out thousands of meals daily in Puerto Rico.

We, too, enjoyed the culinary kindnesses of many local chefs and those who volunteered from other locales during our fires last October.