Mayacamas Mountains

We made a special trip to the farmers' market this morning to get baby greens with flowers for a salad for Thursday. We remembered the non-plastic bags, including a special produce one for the baby greens, but the baby greens man didn't have any baby greens! We made do with a bag of flower petals and some lettuce from another stand. I have passed the torch and Jim and Dana are cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year.  My assignment is to make a salad, a couple vegetable dishes and my 'special sauce' for salmon...What? Salmon? Yes, after 40 years of complaining about the fact that I don't like turkey, I have passed the torch, and Dana and Jim (the most ardent supporter of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, and all the trimmings) have come up with a menu that contains not a bite of turkey, or gravy, or mashed potatoes.

The picture is of St. Francis Winery nestled at the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains. Our house is just on the back side at the foot of the hill on the right. The scars from the 2017 fire are taking a long time to heal, probably because of the rocky soil. Most of the vines have lost all their leaves, but still have a pretty russet color. The deciduous trees with no leaves stand out more than they did with leaves on.

Nestled at the foot of the mountain is St Francis winery. They make excellent wines and are also becoming well known for their wine pairing dinners prepared by their resident chef. One could eat a different excellent meal at a different place every night for a month in the Sonoma Valley, and never have the same thing twice. One would, however need to visit one's bank manager to finance it....*

As for us, we're having a minestrone soup with lots of veggies that were harvested from a local farm a few days ago which promises to be just as good  (and a good deal cheaper) with spaetzle made by Jim and some St. Francis Zinfandel...

*It must be said, that many of the excellent Sonoma County chefs pitched in with meals for firefighters, evacuees and fire victims.