When Bison Brewing Company’s bourbon barrel-aged brown ale goes to tap late this spring, the brewery’s owner, Dan Del Grande, may be required by a new law to pay a hefty liquor tax to state collectors. That’s because the Berkeley-based Bison, like scores of other craft breweries in the United States, has been hit by [...]
There is a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco a few blocks from my parents’ house. The Garden is indistinguishable from dozens of other Chinese restaurants in Beijing-By-The-Bay: harsh fluorescent lights, black metal chairs that look like they were stolen from a VFW Hall in Fresno, a pair of grubby tanks in which lobsters and fish await the executioner’s pot. A place where rock cod and appetites come to die.
by Freda Moon
I wrote a sweet little piece of fluff on Fort Bragg’s new artisanal bakery and its hulking wood-burning brick oven. Normally, I’m not one for quaintness. And I especially bridle at the idea that the way to resurrect America’s abandoned downtowns is to rebuild them in the image of the past — as if cutesy [...]
by Freda Moon
I spent most mornings of my childhood standing, with legs splayed like a saw horse, above an old gas floor grate furnace in my dad’s house on the Mendocino Coast. I love that heater. There was a time when nearly every pair of my shoes had grid lines melted into their souls from moments I [...]
by Don Monkerud
Forget about kicking back and enjoying an American beer; a massive wave of consolidation is transforming the industry. According to a recent report by the Marin Institute, a California-based alcohol industry watchdog, a rush of buyouts and mergers in the last years of the Bush Administration has left two overseas giants in control of 80 [...]
People have been asking if the AV Grange Mart will again be in operation this winter. The answer is YES. Several interested vendors have come together to make it happen. The AV Grange Mart is a winter farmers’ market that began last year to fill the gap when the Boonville Farmers’ Market is not in [...]
As promised, here are the plans for Mendocino Permaculture’s 28th Annual Chestnut Gathering and George Zeni Memorial Potluck at the Zeni Ranch on Saturday, November 7, 2009 from 10am until 3:30pm, rain or shine. There is no charge to attend the event. The Zeni Ranch’s 100-year-old dry-farmed chestnut trees are a testament to the sustainability [...]
The Gowan family once again invited every kindergartener and first grade student to come on down and pick (for a tiny fee) their very own Halloween pumpkin right out of the field where they were grown. Teacher Linnea Totten invited me to come along so I tromped through the sticky brown loam with many chaperone [...]
by The AVA
Well everyone, it’s still harvest time and now we’re getting into the hardy winter warming vegetables. If you come to the Boonville Farmers Market Saturday mornings from 9:45 to noon at the Boonville Hotel Parking lot you can purchase some of those delectable vegetables, not to mention fall fruits and so much more. Cindy Wilder will bring her sweet, crispy Asian pears, Petit Teton is once again sharing their juju bees and seckle pears with us and if you’re unfamiliar with seckle pears you MUST try one. The sweet honey-like flavor is like no other pear. Of course, the apple press will be there for all of your leftover fruit after making pies and sauce and jam. Barbara Lewellen was there last week pressing her bounty to ferment into vinegar. (You go girl: resource, resource, resource.) If this is your first year in the Valley you should know it’s also time for Tom Brewer’s chestnuts. He brings buckets of them to the Market along with ones he’s roasted for you to taste. Mmmm!
The Ukaholics provided a musical backdrop for the Boonville Farmers’ market on Saturday morning. They entertained the throngs of shoppers with their barbershop quartet style harmonizing and slapstick theatrics. Actually there were no throngs. The people perus ing from one vendor to the next were no thicker than the steelhead are in the Navarro, these days. [...]
