Beta

May/Jun 2017

Preserving Traditions

Golden State Pickle Works elevates fermented food favorites. In a small industrial kitchen off Lakeville Highway in Petaluma, Samantha “Sam” Paone and her team are busy seasoning tubs of yellow beet slaw. Golden State Pickle Works, the company Paone founded with her husband Anthony, celebrated its third anniversary in May and shows no sign of slowing down. Today, they’ll go through over…
SPONSORED: Oliver’s Markets creates an Employee Stock Ownership Plan

Over the last few years, Steve Maass, founder and president of Oliver’s Market, started thinking about how he might want to retire in the near future. How could he do that, he asked himself, while still continuing the legacy of Sonoma County’s most successful independent grocery store chain? Most owners seek out the highest bid…
Letter from the Editor

I’ll be the first to say that I would be nothing without my community. As a writer, I lean on my friends and colleagues for support, feedback, and cheerleading on the regular. As a mother, I lean on my family and friends for child-rearing advice, chatty playdates, and babysitting when my kid is on spring…
A River Runs Through It  

The Russian River Confluence brought dozens of organizations, county officials, government agencies, and common folks together on March 27 to discuss a unified vision to celebrate and regenerate the Russian River Watershed. In other words, to promote a “beyond sustainability” approach to the watershed aimed at resiliency and renewal. “We need to write a new story for the future of our watershed,” said…
Steers to Skateboards

Youth-driven 4-H clubs from Geyserville to Petaluma grow into the 21st century. On a Saturday afternoon at the 4-H Foundation headquarters in Rohnert Park, the audience for the 2017 Fashion Revue stands for the 4-H pledge. Led by a fresh-faced brunette teen dressed in a stylish jeans jacket and short black dress, the crowd recites from memory: I pledge my head…
Group Hug

At three local spots, food, heart, and community come together as one. We all need that place in our life—more than ever, it seems—where everybody knows our name. A place where conversation and honest-to-goodness human interaction are the norm, where you never know if you’ll walk in to a trivia night, a surf movie session, a political fundraiser, a literary…
Adventures in Cider

Fun, Food & Flights: Sonoma Cider Taproom In 2013, David Cordtz, a cidermaster and wine maker, teamed up with his son, Robert, to “reinvent” the cider industry. From apple tree to bottle, they created organic ciders for all palates, from the delicate to the intense. Five years later, Sonoma Cider is distributed in 24 states. With…
Of Love and Masa

Drinking Atole and Champurrado in Roseland. On Saturday mornings, after dropping my father off at his job, my mother would crawl into my bed and ask: “Quieres champurrado?” She was speaking of the warm, cinnamon drink, thickened with masa (cornmeal dough used to make tortillas) and infused with vanilla, Mexican chocolate, and an unrefined sugar cane called piloncillo. It’s a Mexican…
Flavors of the World

A new book explores the life of Paula Wolfert, local cookbook luminary and renegade spirit. Sonoma County has its fair share of food luminaries, but few have the chops and pedigree of Paula Wolfert. The respected, if somewhat overlooked, cookbook author is best known for introducing many Americans to couscous, Aleppo peppers and other elements of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking. She also…
Locavox

Letitia Henke, Executive Director, The Lime Foundation Letitia Hanke is the owner of a thriving roofing company in Santa Rosa, but the road to success hasn’t been easy. Her childhood in Lake County was marked by severe bullying which lasted until high school, when playing in the school band brought friends and increased confidence. Hanke went on to attend Sonoma…