Thursday, April 12, 2007 - Writers' Reading Night

The Seaweed Café proudly presents a
Benefit for California Poets In The Schools.

Dinnertime will start at 6:00 PM and performance at 8:00 PM.
Jackie Hallerberg will introduce us to the creations of poets who are teaching in California and to the poetry of young talents that are in their schools.
25% of the proceeds of dinner will benefit this much-needed organization.

For reservations please call 707 875 2700.

Friday April 13, 2007
The Seaweed Café proudly to introduces
Joe Szuecs in his latest incarnation as Star Guest Chef.

Joe Szuecs -- pronounced SOOCH is, beside many other things, the owner of Renga Arts, a significant north California gallery dedicated to functional arts made of reclaimed, salvaged and recycled materials. To get a glimpse of Joe’s interests please check http://www.renga-arts.com. For those of you lucky enough to have tasted his cuisine, Joe’s reputation doesn’t need to be established. We all know that Joe is a perfect renaissance man who amongst many talents has mastered the art of cooking and has set the standard of taste and hospitality in West County. For those of you who haven’t yet tasted his creations, this is a unique opportunity to meet this accomplished chef at the table.

For all of us who are interested in multifaceted creative lifestyle, please pencil your calendar and call for a reservation at 707.875 .2700 with the Seaweed Café on Friday the 13 to enjoy Joe’s cooking.

For this evening, we will serve a $80 prix fixe five courses dinner. Dinnertime will start at 6:00 PM. With this exceptional dinner we will serve the Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc Russian River 05 and the just released Radio Coteau La Neblina Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 2005. For those of you who want to bring a selection from their cellar, corkage fee will be waived for this special evening.

Slow Food Turin - Terra Madre
Saturday, October 26 - 30, 2006

In Turin, Italy, between October 26-30 2006, the Seaweed Café will be represented by Jackie Martine at Terra Madre - the world meeting of food communities which is also held concurrently with the sixth edition of the Salone del Gusto.

This major event will see the participation of 1,700 communities from 150 countries all taking part in thematic workshops, meetings and conferences.

The goal of this meeting is for the slow food communities to exchange experiences, problems and projects, establish relationships and create a supportive network.

One of the principal innovations of the 2006 edition of Terra Madre will be the involvement of 1,000 chefs from all over the world.

In the words of Daniela Corso one of the organizer of this event:
“ A restaurant's kitchen is, in effect, a small food community: like a farmer, it lives by seasons; like an artisan, it manipulates and transforms products; and like a purveyor, it deals with supply problems. In our opinion, it is vital that the food service and hospitality sector become fully aware of the situation in the agricultural world, the continual erosion of biodiversity, the risks of homogenization brought on by a globalized market and the new generation's alarming ignorance with respect to these themes.”

As Daniela Corso says:"Chefs shouldn’t need to transform themselves into global catering professionals, where the food industry dictates the rules of the kitchen rather than the chef and individual inventiveness and passionate research are overrun by a transnational system that determines the timetables and means for acquiring supplies and for making choices.”

At the Seaweed Café, we are very proud to be part of this event and are grateful that the Russian River Slow Food Convivium nominated us to be part of the Terra Madre 2006 gathering .We want to thanks all the members of this convivium and all our friends for helping us to go to Turin.

As many of you know the Seaweed Café gets most of its food supplies from within a 30 miles radius from Bodega Bay. Each week, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we go on the road to get our shellfish, our produces, our cheeses, our meats, our herbs and our wines. This year we have been able to get the vast majority of our fish and shellfish directly from boats from Bodega Bay. We believe that our direct knowledge of the producers of these ingredients allow us to bring on your plate foods of tremendous integrity. And it is thus with great anticipation that we are looking forward to meeting other like-minded chefs from all around the world. We are looking forward to meeting people who are taking practical steps against vanity foods and kerosene foods. People who are dedicated to seasonal, local, organic, non GMO foods, and are taking the risk of doing business while upholding these values. We are also looking forward to meet chefs who –like us- are providing to their guests convivial service that fosters human community around the table and are staying away from the servility of service associated with vanity foods.

It is for these reasons that the Seaweed Café accepted the invitation of the Russian River Slow Food Convivium to participate in the Terra Madre event.

With this we would like to call on our readers to take this opportunity and join the Slow Food Convivium of their locality.

We recommend visiting the Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto sites at www.terramadre2006.org and www.salonedelgusto.com.

Jackie Martine and Slow Food in San Francisco Chronicle , Oct 30 2006

Monday, October 30, 2006 (SF Chronicle) Slow Food movement has global outreach/Farmers, producers share knowledge at Italy convention Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff Writer (10-30) 04:00 PST Turin, Italy -- Americans who think of Slow Food as an elite supper club for snobby food purists would be stunned by the scene unfolding inside the former Olympic speed skating arena here over the past four days.

Senegalese cereal farmers in purple satin and matching headdresses trade packaging tips with Peruvian potato growers in traditional red embroidered garb. Goat cheese makers and Hmong long-bean growers from California find common ground with their Italian and Eastern European counterparts.

Israeli and Palestinian farmers, along with Iraqi and American food producers, share space and the excited chat that food never fails to stimulate.

This is Terra Madre, a gathering that is the Olympics of the international movement to deindustrialize food production. That means putting taste back at the heart of food, saving heirloom fruits, vegetables and animals, keeping small farmers in business and in local communities, and pushing farming back on sound environmental ground.

Mingling with the farmers are prominent Bay Area names in the sustainable food movement -- Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters, UC Berkeley journalism professor and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" author Michael Pollan, Full Belly Farm's Judith Redmond, Boulevard Restaurant's Nancy Oakes, Incanto's Chris Cosentino, Mourad Lahlou of Aziza and the entire A16 restaurant team, just to name a few.

Invited to cook next door at the Salone del Gusto, the giant artisanal food fair that showcases some of Terra Madre producers, were hot Spanish chef Ferran Adria of El Bulli and renowned Piedmont chef Cesare Giaccone.

More than 5,000 small farmers and food makers from 130 countries, plus 1,000 chefs -- including more than a dozen from the Bay Area -- are in Turin to eat, network and build what Waters called "a global counterculture" in her address to the opening session.

It's the second such gathering organized by Slow Food International, which is based in the nearby town of Bra. The first Terra Madre, in 2004, generated an astounding force field around the ideas of Slow Food, which started 20 years ago as a way of saving inexpensive Italian restaurants serving tagliarini with butter and sage and other traditional foods from the wave of nouvelle cuisine that put salmon with dill on plates around the world.

Now, Slow Food has grown into an international movement, with 80,000 members in 50 countries, including 12,000 in the United States.

About 500 Americans were invited as delegates and observers, more than a quarter of them Californians, including a contingent of organic farmers from the Capay Valley in Yolo County who are familiar faces at San Francisco's Ferry Plaza and Berkeley farmers' markets.

Health problems like obesity and diabetes, widening economic disparities across the world and environmental issues like global warming show that the current system "defined by speed, abundance and waste" can no longer sustain itself, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini told the conference, which concludes today.

The time is ripe, he said, to bring food economies back to their local roots.

For a group of Hmong, Latino and African American farmers from the Central Valley of California brought to Terra Madre with help from the Davis-based Community Alliance With Family Farmers, that meant connecting with farmers from around the world. Ali Shabazz, an African American herb farmer from Fresno, helped a Tanzanian farmer who wanted technical advice on equipment. Va Moua, who says many of the Hmong farmers in the Central Valley use lots of fertilizer, talked to farmers who don't. "Now we'll find out if we can do it naturally," he said.

The point, said Blong Lee, a representative of the Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission, is to get Central Valley farmers thinking about ways they can distinguish themselves and their crops, and to get their products into the local economy instead of the global one.

At one point, the California farmers found themselves dubiously eyeing a plate of cured meat called capocolla from the southern Italian town of Martina Franca.

Its maker, Costantini Angelo, had ideas for the California farmers, most of whom grow just one crop, sell into the wholesale market, but fail to make enough to gain a real foothold in the Central Valley economy. Angelo feeds his pigs only acorns from his home region, so his meat has the unique taste of its soil. That's a value-added intangible that helps him sell directly to stores and obtain the price he wants.

Moua and Cindy Mai Xiong, farmers who grow jujube -- a kind of fruit -- on 4 acres near Fresno, touched the acorns and heard the advice -- but they were distracted by their growling stomachs. This was their third day in Italy and amid all this beautiful Parmigiana Reggiano and prosciutto di Parma, they were starving.

"We went to a fancy restaurant last night," said Lee of the Fresno commission. "We tried to order pizza with pepperoni and they didn't have it, and lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs, but they didn't have it. It's not the type of Italian food we expected."

The chefs, meanwhile, reveled in the Italian Italian food. Incanto chef Cosentino ate his way through all the lardo -- a cured meat made from pig fat -- and prosciutto he could find and sought esoteric ingredients like tuna heart.

Jackie Martine, chef-owner of the Seaweed Cafe in Bodega Bay, who tries to source all of her ingredients locally, made a connection with an African grower of vanilla beans -- something she knows she can never find in Northern California -- from whom she may buy directly. And from a Mauritanian's bottarga di mugine, a salted mullet roe, she was inspired to create a similar product using her native halibut roe "which is usually thrown away."

On a trip through a local farmers' market, though, she was stunned to see that most of the apples were Granny Smith, red delicious and golden delicious, the same ones that dominate American supermarkets. "It's the effect of globalization," she said.

San Franciscan Cosentino, who participated in a panel on meats, said he felt a divide between affluent chefs like himself and struggling farmers from poorer regions -- a divide that Slow Food has yet to bridge. "I complain because we can't get lungs," he said of federal laws that ban what for some is a delicacy. In contrast, a Kenyan livestock farmer on the same panel described how water shortages and power failures decimate his cattle before he can get them to slaughter, threatening his entire livelihood.

"There's this disconnect," Cosentino said of the enormous disparity in resources among participants in the conference.

In the United States, Slow Food leaders are well aware that there's a similar disconnect between the political ideals forged at Terra Madre and consumers' perceptions of Slow Food.

"The media still regards Slow Food as a dining club; they still don't perceive the political content," Pollan told a meeting of the U.S. delegation.

To try to bridge that gap, to take the ideas of Terra Madre home, Slow Food USA is planning an unprecedented gathering of regional artisanal food producers in San Francisco in May 2008, Waters said. The idea, dubbed Slow Food Nation, could be replicated all over the country, she added.

"It's clear there is a political movement growing around food," Pollan said. "And it's about a lot more than food -- it's about health, the health of local economies, the energy crisis.

"People are ready to hear this movement. It seems the important work now is to show that San Francisco is at the center of this movement."

E-mail Carol Ness at cness@sfchronicle.com.
Copyright 2006 SF Chronicle

* The return of the writer’s reading night starting November 9 !

The Seaweed Café is proud to present Rob Swigart the author Xibalba Gate, Little America, The Time Trip, Book of Revelations and other works.

For this evening, we will serve a $ 27 prix fixe three courses dinner . Dinner time will start at 5:45 PM and at 8:00 PM.

Rob Swigart will introduce us to the complex universe of his last creation Xibalba, a novel of the ancient Maya. Please check Rob Swigart on the WEB and make your reservation for this great event.

November 9 2006
Prix Fixe Menu @ $ 27

Marin Roots Farm Beet Salad with Queso Fresco Chicken , Mussels, Chorizo Quinoa Paella
Bitter Sweet Chocolatl Habanero Tart

* Vegetarian and Vegan options available

A Gala Dinner for the Benefit of
Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods
Saturday, October 7, 2006

• $100 per person
• limited to 50 guests
• Contact Stewards at 707.869.9177 or
  stewards@mcn.org for reservatons.
• for a printable PDF brochure please click here.

Second Thursday Writer's Night
April 13th, 2006
After the Rain..............

• Rain, rain, go away,
  Come again some other day
  Little Johnny wants to play.
  Rain, rain, go to Spain,
  Never show your face again.
• The rain is raining all around,
  it falls on field and tree.
  It rains on the umbrellas here,
  And on the ships at sea.
• And all I can hear as I lie in my bed Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

Welcome Back!

The Seaweed Café starts the new year off with another Writer's Night series this Thursday (March 9th). Please, join us for the first of our regular monthly Writer's Night! We will continue the monthly gatherings every second Thursday of the month.

Farewell 2005

It's that time of year when the Seaweed crew takes some time off. We will be closed from January 2nd to February 13th. We'll reopen on February 14th. Keep us on speed dial (707-875-2700) for your Valentine's Day reservations.

July 14th, 2005
6 pm to 9 pm
California Poet Laureate *
Al Young - Featured @ Reader's Night!

*Underscoring the importance of poetry and the literary arts, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 12th 2005 appointed Al Young as California's Poet Laureate.

Born May 31 1939 at Ocean Springs, Mississippi on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Al Young grew up in the South and in Detroit. From 1957-1960 he attended the University of Michigan, where he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area. Settling at first in Berkeley, he held a variety of colorful jobs (folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer) before graduating from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Spanish. From 1969-1976 he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades. In 2000 he moved back to Berkeley.

Young has taught poetry and fiction writing at U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Davis, Foothill College, the Colorado College, Rice University, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, the University of Arkansas, and San José State University. In the spring of 2003 he taught poetry at Davidson College (Davidson, NC), where he was McGee Professor in Writing. In the fall of 2003, he will be Coffey Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.  

His honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two American Book Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and two New York Times Notable Book of the year citations.Young's many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, memoirs and anthologies. His work has appeared in the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, the New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Letters, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, and the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. He has written film scripts for Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. In 2001 he traveled to the Persian Gulf to lecture on African American literature and culture in Kuwait and in Bahrain for the U.S. Department of State.

Al Young travels internationally and extensively, reading, lecturing and often performing with musicians. His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, and other languages. Current projects: A Piece of Cake (a novel), Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: Or, Opus de Funk (an account in verse of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb's infamous romance), a screen adaptation of Seduction By Light, his 1988 Hollywood novel); volume two of The Literature of California, co-edited with scholar-critic Jack Hicks, and novelists James D. Houston and Maxine Hong Kingston, and CitiZen: Spirit & Democracy, a collection of column-length dialogues between Young and O.O. Gabugah on the current state of democracy in the U.S. (inspired by Langston Hughes' Simple Speaks His Mind).

Join us for an evening of Art, Wine and Food

Seaweed Café Wine Release Program
Presents Merry Edwards Wines

*click here to see the entire fun filled evening!*

May 21, 2005
Seating at 6 pm
$140.00 per person

Sparkling, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc by Merry Edwards Wines and a 6 course pairing menu by Seaweed Café (menu and wine pairing below).

Fashion is courtesy of Christal Weartherly (from the Berkeley Repertory Theater) and San Francisco Designers, Scatha Allison & Miranda Burns, with local guest celebrity models.

Reserve your seat at the table
by May 15th - 707-875-2700

Seaweed Café Wine Release Event presents the Merry Edwards Fashion Wine Menu

Belugas and Tosakas over Buckwheat Blini Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc – 2004 Calamari with Duck Leg in su Tinta Merry Edwards Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast – 2003 Lamb Shank Salad with Quail Egg Merry Edwards Pinot Noir Windsor Gardens – 2003 Rabbit Civet & Morel Indulgence Merry Edwards Pinot Noir Meredith Estate – 2003 Andante Bouchon with Shiso Merry Edwards Pinot Noir Klopp Ranch – 2003 Bing Cherry Clafoutis Merry Edwards Sparkling - 2000

Some background on the event:

We have been working on creating a new type of wine event that will combine food, wine and art performance. Our intention is to showcase some of the West of 101 wineries on our wine list with an art performance that will compliment the wines and bring an added dimension to their appreciation. We want to capture the spirit of these wines when they appear for the first time to the public, at the moment of their release. We also thought of pairing each specific wine release with the unveiling of our new culinary creations. The concept behind these events is similar to a “vernissage” in an art gallery for the opening of a new exhibit or the “premiere” for a new theater performance.

We are proud to initiate the Seaweed Café Wine Release program in partnership with Merry Edwards Wines. We can tell you in advance that this event will be well attended and we encourage you to make early reservations.

April 14th, 2005
6 pm to 9 pm
Patrick Dillon - (rescheduled)

Hundreds of men travel each year to the Bering Sea, braving frigid winds to secure their livelihoods from the unmerciful depths of the ocean. They go in search of crab, to to a job that allows them to earn tens of thousands of dollars for a few weeks work, but it extremely difficult -- and potentially deadly.

In Lost at Sea, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Patrick Dillon exposes the traditionally remote fishing industry by tracing the events leading up to the worst commercial fishing disaster in U.S. history and examining its impact, both on one small, close-knit community and on the industry as whole.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the families of the victims and other involved with fishing industry, as well as his own experience working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea, Dillon transports readers from the icy bleakness of the northern fishing waters, where the most ruthless forces of nature bear down upon the daring crews of fishing vessels, to the small town of Anacortes, where the victims’ families -- as well as those of others lost at sea -- are haunted daily by inexplicable tragedy.

from: http://www.morrill.org/books/dillon.shtml

March 10th, 2005
6 pm to 9 pm
First of the Season - Readers' Night!

•Elizabeth Herron
Poet and SSU Professor, Elizabeth Carothers Herron’s poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in Orion, Northern Lights, Wild Duck Review, Revision, and a variety of literary magazines. Her recent work, The Poet’s House, with sculptor Bruce Johnson (formandenergy.com) will be featured as the summer fund raiser for the Sonoma County Book Fair. Current projects include spring performaces of her collaboration with dancer/choreographer Nancy Lyons at Cornerstone and new work with Bruce Johnson.

•Greg Mahrer
Gregory Mahrer’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The New England Review, The Florida Review, The Cream City Review, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse as well as the web site Poetry Daily. He is currently at work on his first collection; A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent.

•Maya Khosla
"I have completed two poetry manuscripts, Keel Bone (“Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Award”, Bear Star Press, Cohasset, 2003), and Heart of the Tearing (Red Dust Press, New York, 1995) and am currently working on my third Breathing This Swale (working title).
I've also been obsessing about salmon for a while, and my guidebook, Web of Water,
about Muir Woods National Monument, was published in 1997.

December 3'st
New Year's Eve

December 9th
Readers' Night
6 pm to 9 pm

December 2nd
Food for Thought Yearly Fundraiser
6 pm to 9 pm

In Sonoma County alone over 1,000 people have died since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. Nationwide we have lost almost 450,000 people. Worldwide 20 million people have died of AIDS.

We will donate 25% of the proceeds from this evening to Food for Thought.

November 25th - Thanksgiving Dinner
6 pm to 9 pm

November 18th - Womens' Night
6 pm to 9 pm

We're planning an evening of companionship and entertainment provided by those in attendance and some of our local talent. Join us for an evening of women enjoying themselves like only women know how!

November 11th - Readers' Night
6 pm to 9 pm

June 10th - To Swoon in June
Writers Reading Night
6 pm to 9 pm

The theme this month is "To Swoon in June". I am confident the writers will do better than I with the rhymes that come to mind.....moon, croon, tune.

Please, join us for a fun summer evening.

May 13, 2004
Writers Reading Night
6 pm to 9 pm

We hope you can make it this month to the Writers Reading Night. The theme this month is "Au Moi de Mai, fait ce qu'il te plait"! Got that? Translated it means: "In the month of May, do as you please".

Now, to me that sounds like the grasshopper speaking instead of the ant and it may not be the best advice but, heck, Spring is here! Let's play!

The second Thursday is already this coming week. With the longer daylight hours 7 pm seems much earlier. Let's enjoy this great season together with readings of our talented friends.

April 8, 2004
6 pm to 9 pm
Stories of the Sea

As people start coming to the coast in greater numbers to enjoy the change of season and welcome the return of the sun, following the spring equinox, we invite you once again to gather, eat, drink and listen to writers sharing their works. This month's theme is Stories of the Sea.

Writers Reading are:

• Joe Hawkins
• Steve Brumm
• Pat Rothchild
• Gillian Parker

March 11, 2004 :
6 pm to 9 pm
Ides of March

What could be more timely, inspiring and community forming than to gather, eat, drink and listen to writers sharing their works with us around the time-honored theme of "the Ides of March"?

Please, join us for our Fourth Writers Reading on March 11, 2004 at 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. We will listen to:

• Frank Dice
• Steve Brumm
• Pat Rothchild
• Zenmai
• and more who will join us.

Tapas, wine, coffee, tea and dessert will be served.

February 12, 2004 :
6 pm to 9 pm
Stories of the Heart

Opening Night at the Seaweed Café

Our third evening of local readers and musicians sharing their talents to kick of the new season. The theme of the evening is "Stories of the Heart, Seduction and Betrayal".

• Bebek McGhee
• Zenmai
• Steve Brumm

December 4, 2003:
7 pm to 9 pm
West County Stories

Ever heard about the mummy cats in the freezer and the big hole?

Please, join us for an evening of "West Sonoma County Lore", secrets and fantasies. The rich history of West County, its traditions, its eccentrics and colorful rednecks is a source of endless stories that will be heard at the Seaweed Café this winter night.

November 6, 2003 :
7 pm to 9 pm
Tasty Morsels

The Seaweed Café is proud to present its first evening of poetry and short fiction. Five local writers will share their writing around the theme of "Tasty Morsels".

Please, join us to hear:

• Chas Abate
• Earlynne DiGiovine
• Robin Johnson
• Bebek McGhee
• Zenmai