Tag Archive for 'california'

This Just In – Magruder Lamb

Starting tonight, we’ve got some delicious lamb on the menu from Mac Magruder. Mac says he got his stock from “an old guy across the valley. They are a Suffolk cross-breed. He didn’t do anything for them, they’re organic by neglect.” Mac lucked out though, because they turn out…

Tomato Dinners Alert – new dates announced!

Gearing up for this year’s Tomato Dinners (originally scheduled for the end of August) we started asking our farmers about how the season was progressing and what we kept hearing back was, actually tomatoes weren’t happening…yet.

Say “Bonjourno!” to the first Cinta Sonoma

you can imagine Oliveto’s excitement when we learned that our friends at Front Porch Farm in Healdsburg, CA (who have played an important role in helping to develop a local grain economy here in northern California), are also the first farmers outside of Italy to be raising this breed of pigs. Because the name, Cinta Senese…

Update From Brookside Farm – Spring 2012

We always love an inside look at what’s happening on the farm, and Welling Tom has always supplied us with some of the best insights into the day to day, season to season, happenings at Brookside Farm in Brentwood, CA. Here’s the update he emailed us from last week, complete with a Steely Dan quote: [...]

This Just In: 15 Guinea Hen

The kitchen just received delivery of fifteen Guinea hen from Tres Sabores Winery in Rutherford, CA.

Owner and winemaker Julie Johnston sees these hens as an integral part of the winery’s ecosystem. Along with the help of sheep, birds, bees, insects, the hen help maintain a delicate balance that…

Wheat Tasting – A First Step Towards Creating A Vocabulary

On January 10, we hosted a wheat tasting in the Oliveto dining room. Our plan wast to begin establishing some basic vocabulary for how to talk about the flavor components of wheat and flour as well as discern how those components vary between different varieties. In attendance were some of the most highly-tuned palates we know…

Tastes Like California Wheat

When we first got involved with locally grown grains over four years ago, one of our long term goals was the pursuit of identity preserved wheat. By this we mean a particular variety grown by a farmer we know and trust, and milled into flour without being blended with other varieties or wheats from other [...]

Market Report #8: Tomato Speculation With Bill Fujimoto

We hit up the Derby Street Market last Tuesday with our favorite produce guy, Bill Fujimoto.

We checked in with Full Belly, Lucero, and…

From Fencerow To Fencerow

After a couple of years of dilly-dallying with our beloved Red Flint ‘Floriani’ corn (growing one acre in 2009, then five acres last year) we’re finally taking the plunge with a much larger crop for 2011. Eighteen acres were planted in Woodland, CA along with another ten acres in Lodi, CA.
Also in the mix are…

It’s Beef Season

UPDATE: See the revised schedule It is late spring and this is the time to be eating beef. The steers have been eating plentiful amounts of green grass (from our plentiful rains) and several important ranchers have presented us with offers too good to turn down. First, Mac Magruder’s 8-month-old veal came in a couple [...]