Future Farmers of America
Yes we do have future farmers, thank heavens. We need them badly. And we need to learn to grow our own food. So here’s good news. More high school students are taking classes in the Agriculture Department at Sonoma Valley High School than ever. I have met them and they are serious. Again, thank heavens.
Twelve Sonoma High School Ag students have won the state’s highest agricultural honor, called the State Degree for 2025. On March 13, the students and the Ag Advisory Board will hold a BBQ Tri-Tip Drive Thru dinner fundraiser, to send the kids to the 2025 FFA California State Leadership Conference.
The meal, which is only $65 to feed three or four, includes a whole tri-tip, beans, salad, bread and dessert. This year, you order by March 11 and pick up your bag of food at the School Farm from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Get there via Napa Road and turn north on Larkin Drive. Go to the end and get your dinner in the Farm parking lot.
Students who have achieved the FFA State Degree this year include Morgan Briggs, Emily Crews, Emma Curotto, Milan (Lani) Delorefice, Shelby Derickson, Sofia De Torres, Tilly Francis, Hennessy Hernandez, Fiona Lynch, Charlotte Neves, Yesenia Rivas, and Brendan Wrobleski.
How are our restaurants doing?
Many of us have read or heard of restaurants closing all over the Bay Area. But so far, we have not lost any restaurants here in Sonoma Valley and are adding a couple. But some restaurants have limited the hours or days that they are open, mostly due to winter weather and lower visitor numbers. Many local restaurants and tasting rooms had an excellent weekend two weeks ago during the Chinese New Year celebration and the NBA All-Star games and events in San Francisco and Oakland.
Equator Coffee comes to town
Locally, Savory Spice gave up its location north of Whole Foods several months ago in the Marketplace shopping center on Second Street West. Equator Coffee succeeded in getting permission to open its café and serve Equator’s always-fair trade coffee, along with some pastries and pannini or sandwiches.
This seems to be an ideal location for Equator café, next to Darling ice cream, with the finest from Sweet Scoops. Perfect for an ice cream cone or cup and a terrific cup of coffee, with a chain sandwich shop and Bangkok 9 Thai restaurant between the upcoming café and Whole Foods. Many locals like to get Sweet Scoops ice cream here at Darling instead of waiting in long lines at its Plaza location.
Thirty years ago, partners Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell started their little coffee endeavor in their garage, and slowly added locations in San Rafael, Mill Valley, and eventually and modestly in the East Bay and southern California. Sonoma Market also serves Equator coffee in their coffee drinks.
Picazo
Many of us have celebrated the reopening of Picazo Café on Arnold Drive with congratulations to the whole Chavez family.
Stella
Erinn and Ari Weiswasser, and Ashley and Spencer Waite, opened their new Stella Italian restaurant and wine bar last weekend, after completing their long and extensive/expensive remodel of what had been the Café Citti space on Highway 12 in Kenwood. If you had been to Café Citti, you might not recognize the place.
Chef de Cuisine Bryant Minuche has moved from their Glen Ellen Star to be head chef at Stella, creating dishes such as burrata Pugliese, contorni (sides), housemade pastas, and bavette steak.
Loads of antipasti, including prosciutto di Parma, mortadella meatballs, grilled lamb ribs, salads, Yellow Fin tuna crudo, wood-grilled yellow beets and chewy truffle-honey, grilled-garlic sourdough bread. ($12 to $24.) Grilled pork or lamb shoulder chop, roasted chicken, or whole Daurado/Mahi Mahi ($33 to $45). Try fresh pasta, such as bucatini cacio e pepe with toasted black peppercorns, lobster and ricotta ravioli, lumache with chanterelles and pesto, chicken liver ragu, tagliatelle with butter, prosciutto and Parmesan, and sughetto di Pomodoro with Calabrian chili and pecorino Romano ($25 to $31). Sides of wood-grilled mushrooms with a creamy cheese sauce, creamed spinach, crispy potatoes, and cauliflower florets ($16 each).
My friend Cindy Lasar and I tried the meatballs (excellent but not unusual), (four) thin cut grilled lamb shoulder chops (wonderfully tasty), fabulous mozzarella and roasted baby artichoke pieces, excellent Little Gem Caesar salad, wood grilled mushrooms with a creamy cheese sauce, individual baked Alaska, and an artistic tiramisu.
Check out the heated and covered outdoor patio in back and a warm fireplace inside with counter seating for customers to watch the chefs whip and flame your wood-fired food, much like at Glen Ellen Star, and much like a long San Francisco tradition from Vanessi’s to Original Joe’s.
Excellent, unique wines include Italian and local Italian-style wines, also available at the wine bar on a walk-in basis. Open nightly from 4:30 p.m. (No lunch service.) 9049 Sonoma Hwy., Kenwood. (707) 801-8043. Reservations at stellakenwood.com or on RESY.
The Mill at Glen Ellen
Sanjeev Kumar and Dana Jaffe have extended their special three-course dinners to continue through March. The $49 dinners include the soup du jour, Caesar or green salad; entrée choices of grilled chicken breast, poached salmon, Salisbury steak, or vegetarian pumpkin ravioli; followed by a choice of Dana’s warm coconut Kheer (rice pudding) or a chocolate and raspberry mousse with fresh berries and edible flowers. These specials can change but are available only on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. 14301 Arnold Dr., Glen Ellen. (707) 721-1818.
Kivelstadt Cellars
Kivelstadt Cellars is teaming up with Old Possum Brewing Co. for their first-ever Beer vs. Wine event on March 15, where you will rate, score, and compare both brews and bottles to decide who takes home the trophy.
The evening kicks off with a splash of sparkling wine, followed by three rounds of Beer vs. Wine tastings, all paired with a family-style meal including dessert and more Old Possum. $65 including food and drinks. 5 to 7 p.m. 22900 Broadway. (707) 938-7001.
The girl & the fig’s Suite D dinner updates
Three more of these popular Suite D dinners have popped up for the month of March, including super French Favorites on March 14, fried chicken on March 21, and cioppino on March 28. Specific menus and signups at figcaters.com/store/events.
Who’s running this country, anyway?
As unelected Elon Musk takes his symbolic “chain saw” to the United States government, many Americans are encountering hugely negative side effects amid questions of who is actually running the government.
In the process, he and Donald Trump fired important researchers who are working to get rid of avian (bird) flu as well as experts who protect our nuclear production and nuclear waste sites. After substantial public objection and blowback, the billionaires realized those people might actually do important work. Problem: Musk/Trump had deleted these dedicated workers so thoroughly that they are having trouble finding them to rehire them.
Now the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) cancelled a meeting to select which flu virus they should work on to develop vaccinations to protect the public for next year. And after the meltdown in the Oval Office last Friday, who knows who will come to save us now that Trump has bullied another president, withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, after cancelling a nuclear agreement with Iran.
Why Bird Flu and egg prices?
Chickens are birds and they lay eggs. Eggs are high in protein and highly valued. Millions of chickens have died either naturally from avian flu, or have been killed to protect the public. Supply and demand means fewer chickens laying eggs and millions of fewer eggs. People look for eggs while others hoard whatever eggs they can find to purchase. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Now major national news sources suggest that the large chicken and egg companies are controlling the prices and enjoy that small producers might have to go out of business. According to the New York Times, Cal-Maine Foods “controls about a fifth of the egg market and sells to Walmart and others. Five egg companies control about half the egg market in the United States. Will they ever lower egg prices after flocks are restored?
Robert Kennedy, Jr. is supposed to be in charge of Health and Human Services, of which the Food & Drug Administration is a part, but was he consulted before the Trump-Musk cuts of food scientists?
Donald Trump campaigned promising he would lower food costs on Day One. Instead, prices have increased, and tariffs will probably raise prices more. And while you wait for Trump’s tariffs to take effect, know that most of the frozen vegetables in Dollar stores are produced in China, and some Sonoma residents rely on the Dollar Tree here for certain foods. Will SNAP food stamps be available to those in need?
Farmers, whose markets included sales through U.S.A.I.D., were cut off when Trump ordered the independent agency to be deleted and Musk laid off 1.6 million USAID employees last week, possibly starving millions of people around the world.
And I have heard some farmers say their “grants” will be cut off as well. As you probably know, some farmers have been saved in the past by federal government funds following climate disasters, some farmers are subsidized by the federal government, and others have been paid to not grow anything, something I have seen myself in Indiana. And now, if thousands of federal employees respond to the Musk/Trump emails to justify their jobs, their answers and value will be determined by AI.
Next edition: Lydia Constantini, longtime manager of Sonoma Mission Gardens, will guide us on growing our own food, starting in the next edition of Sonoma Valley Sun.
Personal note: If you had planned to visit the Kathleen Thompson Hill Kitchen Memories Collection at Elizabeth Spencer Winery in Rutherford, Jean-Charles Boisset is in the process of moving it to his DeLoach Winery in Santa Rosa. Will keep you posted on when you might be able to see it there as soon as I know more.
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