Southern Sonoma Country Life

Kay's Tips to Tease and Appease a Festive Appetite

Feeling somewhat deflated when it comes to the prospect of whipping up another jolly festive spread? No one other than Southern Sonoma County's empress of taste - the inimitable Kay Baumhefner knows more instinctively how to muster up a tripple whammy of inspiration, creativity and blessed ease for a spot of apres-Noel, New Year's cuisine.

Check out Baumhefner's Come Home to Cooking site for a sumptuous, yet simple instruction on how to effectively 'platter and scatter' the goods to go along with a spot of New Year's bubbly.

The lauded lady's delightful and inspirational West Petaluma kitchen cooking classes have taken on a cult status here in the south county, attracting students from far and wide.

When penning your New Year's Resolutions for 2011, don't forget to put a little more culinary adventure into your daily life.

About a third of the way into As Always, Julia, The Letters of Julia Child and Avis Devoto, I'm finding this the perfect read for rainy late December evenings in the armchair by the fire. In part a captivating time capsule from the 1950s of Paris, France and Cambridge, Mass, a friendship formed of mutual passion for endless communication, good humor and delicious home cooked food echoes warm affections for the circle of likeminded dames I've been fortunate enough to have in my life here in humble P'Town and beyond(and you all know who you are!). KB, if you don't already have this treasure on your bedside table, it's an absolute must-read for January's long evenings after you've turned off the kitchen light. 

 

Beach Blanket Babylon - Big Hair Spectacular Holiday Show

 

Photo Credit: Rick Markovich

Teens, pre-teen in tow, plus extrovert Auntie from Philly who makes a living as a leading light in wild and wonderful hair artistry, as well as an Italian husband, where better to take a mixed bag of a family group for holiday theater in the Bay Area than one of Beach Blanket Babylon's few big hat festive matinee shows? 

With most all of Club Fugazi's North Beach 36-year-run exclusively geared to the over 21 crowd, it's key to book well ahead if planning on pulling up a pew with teens in your entourage.

Steve Silver's legacy of the Bay Area's most steadiest of slapstick, glitzy comedic musicals doesn't miss a beat. From dancing Christmas trees to legendary (snow-capped), flashing San Fran skyline hats that fill a good half of the stage, the secret to the show's ongoing success remains in its stellar reputation for keeping up with the sizzling celebrity latest and greatest, not least the nation and state's most appalling political bloopers.

Parking was a breeze in a $10 lot around the corner on Powell Street and plenty of great little Italian pizza and pasta joints on Columbus were vuying for custom from strolling after-show family groups. 

Beach Blanket Babylon, Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd., San Francisco. Show lasts for 90 minutes. Tickets range from $25-$80. Call (415) 421-4222

 

Fourth Day of Christmas - Wassailing in Full Swing

Wassail, Wassail, all over the town

Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown

Our bowl it is made from the good maple tree

We be good fellows all; I drink unto thee

The Gloucestershire Wassail

The spirited old custom of drinking communally from a big wooden bowl carried from house to house for refills by Carol singers, hails from the Anglo Saxon toast of Waes Heil (Good Health).

Householders tended in days of old to fill the wassail bowl with a warming beverage called "Lamb's Wool". According to the mid-17th Century records of one Mistress Watkinson's Book, to make Lamb's Wool, one would heat a pint of white wine with a quart of good ale, adding cinnamon, grated nutmeg and sugar, topped with floating, roasted crab apples.

Top Movie Pick for the Third Day of Christmas - The King's Speech

Had your complete fill of Christmas specials, one more sugary take on the holiday family flick? Refreshing, top pick for serious movie-goers this end of the holiday season is the newly released The King's Speech.

An absolutely gorgeous rendition of a remarkable, true story behind the making of a king. Chronic stutterer, George VI, father of England's present long-reigning Queen Elizabeth II was stuck between a rock and a hard place to say the least after his errant brother Edward (David - to the Royal Family) fell hook, line and sinker for one Mrs. Wallis Simpson of Baltimore, two-time divorcee.

George (Bertie) reluctantly assumed the throne following his brother's infamous abdication (long before the scandals of grandson Charles and his Camilla). In order to get the better of his crippling speech impediment, the skills of an unorthodox self-trained Aussie speech therapist, Lionel Logue were a last, desperate resort for a monarch facing the onset of war.

Colin Firth is sublime as 'Bertie' and on-screen wife Helena Bonham Carter's reprieve from the sorts of  blood-curdling roles she's favored of late (Harry Potter, Sweeney Todd) was pure casting brilliance.

Geoffrey Rush as Logue gives Firth a run for his money in Golden Globe and no doubt Oscar nominations. The King's Speech is a delicious treat for English language lovers and period drama addicts.

 

December 27th - St. John's Day, Patron Saint of Booksellers, Publishers Printers and Writers

Saint John's Day (December 27th) is the Second Day of Christmas, the first not falling on the 25th as one would imagine, but on the 26th, or Boxing Day as we Brits like to hold tight to with tradition.

Attending one of apparently several swell Boxing Day parties around town here in abundantly English/Irish populated Petaluma, CA yesterday, the scene of a discarded snow-flocked Christmas tree repurposed from one neighbor's curbside to another's porch struck a chord in that the American culture is quick to be done with Yuletide festivities after the 25th. Never mind the Twelve Days of Christmas and all that.

And so that brings us back to Saint John, apostle and gospel-maker, one of the favored few and the patron saint of booksellers, publishers, printers and (appropriately) writers.

According to one Gervase Markham in The English Husbandman of 1635, observance of the weather on the second day of Christmas predicts what we have in store for us come February. The weather on the third day of Christmas is a foreteller of March, the fourth of April and so on through the year.

 

 

A Kind of Hush - From Farm to City

This week's activities have taken me and mine out on a one track road to pick up a Christmas turkey from Tara Firma Farms and into the city for a San Francisco holiday theater special.

Rain stopped at the exact moment of a detour into North Beach via Lombard Street. Spot the rainbow over Coit Tower. It was spectacular.

Time for you and I to turn off the computer and focus on the practicalities of Christmas Eve. Whether it's a Southern Sonoma Country Christmas for you this year, or you're celebrating somewhere white and frosty in the world, all the warmest seasons greetings to you and yours.

 

Seeds of Change in Child Nutrition as Oliver's Food Revolution Hits California

Three years of dedicated focus from parents, health, education, anti-hunger groups, members of Congress, and First Lady Michelle Obama culminated in President Obama signing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law last week.

The bipartisan bill represents the most significant improvements to the child nutrition programs in decades, allocating $4.5 billion (over 10 years) in new funding, without adding a penny to the federal deficit.

Such an investment in child nutrition and obesity prevention is set to deliver enormous benefits to children and families for the future.

News on how this will bill will effect classrooms in the Petaluma area to follow in January.

The Little Things

Hopefully, by this stage of the game, you have called it a wrap on the holiday shopping for the season. If it's not all done and dusted by now, it's time to pair it down to your nearest independent boutique-type stores such as Petaluma's One Planet Fair Trade Store .

Strolling around town this week, there's been a friend or neighbor at every turn, on the hunt for those last little things to make the season a tad brighter for another.

We made it through the Lunar Eclipse, then the longest night and shortest day and have entered the final stretch toward the last week of the year.

With all the crazy weather conditions around the world right now, according to The Knowledge of Things Unknown (1729), it's key to keep an eye on the day upon which Christmas falls and the climate.

"If Christmas falls on Saturday," claims the old teaching "the winter with great wind, snow and cold, the Summer good, there shall be war in many lands." Think I prefer the Sunday predicition: "If Chrismas Day fall on a Sunday, that year shall be a warm winter,the summer hot and dry, peace and quietness shall be plenteous among married folks."

 

 

 

Beat the January Blues with the Best of Folk Music Live at Petaluma Arts Center

Holiday Decorating with Greenery

(Holly photo snapped by friend and regular reader Rachel Ayala on a walk through West Petaluma)

While its tempting to deck the halls with natural greenery days ahead of Christmas, superstition calls for keeping cut holly and ivy at bay inside the house until Christmas Eve.

By far the most popular of winter evergreens, holly, with its crimson red berries has long since been considered in Christian lore as a symbol of the crown of thorns and blood of Jesus.

As far back as Pagan times holly was considered a preservative against witchcraft and lightening and was frequently planted outside farmhouse doors. I miss the swaths of holly and ivy that typically drape European household mantles and doorways. Though   a rather hopeful English holly bush has been slowly growing in a pot in the yard for the past year, it might be a decade or more before the branches are big enough to cut come Christmas time. In the meantine olive branches and lingering grape vines will have to do the job, alongside cuttings from the Douglas Fir.

English ivy's black berries that ripen in mid-winter is akin to the grapevine in that it was considered for its many medicinal qualities a plant of Bacchus.

Hang natural decor cut from Sonoma County evergreens away from heat sources and out of direct sunlight to preserve freshness. Mist daily with water.

For those reading in Petaluma, don't miss out on a free photo with Santa at the Petaluma Market today (Monday, December 20th).