Josh Muir at the Westside farmers market. Photo by Chip Scheuer
Maybe it was those gorgeous chocolate egg cakes at Kelly’s, all decorated with tiny multi-colored bunnies and chicks. Or the tulips appearing overnight in my front yard. Or maybe it was the drive up the coast for breakfast at Duarte’s in Pescadero, where our favorite scrambled eggs with Spanish sauce tasted as wonderful as ever. But it has definitely started to feel like spring on the coast. And now is the time to put a weekly visit to a local farmers market on your schedule. I never miss the Westside Saturday market, and often browse around the Wednesday Downtown Santa Cruz market, where I’ve been happy to find lots of pepper and water cresses, watermelon radishes, tender asparagus, infant kales and green garlic, as well as tulips and freesias in myriad watercolor hues. It always helps if Paul Rangell’s fiddle is humming in the background while I inhale my weekly slab of pumpkin cake from Companion Bakeshop bakers. We’re lucky to have so many wonderful farmers markets in our area, so don’t be a stranger.
And Now There’s One More: The Scotts Valley Farmers Market will re-open for the season this Saturday, April 6. You can expect the very freshest in local organic produce, artisanal foods, and live music —plus the SVFM plans to host several pop-up breakfasts in the coming months, as part of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Market pop-up breakfast series. The Scotts Valley Farmers Market opens with favorite vendors like Route One Farm, Live Earth Farm, Rodoni Farm, Everett Family Farm and many others. Plus there will be the incomparable seafoods from H & H Fresh Fish, the hand-butchered charcuterie from El Salchichero, the earthy goodies from Companion Bakeshop and the mouth-watering cooked-to-order breakfasts from Back Porch.
The SVFM runs from April through December in the Scotts Valley Community Center parking lot at the end of Kings Village Road (360 Kings Village Drive), each Saturday, 9am–1pm. For more information, visit the market website at santacruzfarmersmarket.org.
Newest Leaf: Sure it’s a year or two away, but it’s good to know that Scott Roseman and company will be opening a new New Leaf Community Market as part of the proposed Aptos Village development. The market will go up where the Apple Barn currently stands. This will give Aptos residents an all-natural, organic outlet to complement the giant Safeway that thus far has been the only game in town…Meanwhile, I’m loving the Clos du Z Rhône-style blend of grenache, syrah and petite sirah from Zayante Vineyards ($14.99) that I found next to the olive bar at my neighborhood New Leaf. This large-scale, easy-to-love red wine talks back smartly, but pleasantly, to any big pasta dish—it especially loves Italian sausage, pork chops, even roast chicken. Rhône-style blends are clearly my house vin ordinaire, since as I ponder my garage/cellar I spy lots of Santa Cruz Mountains Vineyard Grenache, Bonny Doon Vineyard’s Le Cigare Volant, some Odonata grenache and a case of house select Rhône blend from Kermit Lynch. In my perfect world, every talented winemaker in Santa Cruz would be focusing on something in the key of grenache, ideally laced with syrah.
