Today, we ran the Mozart Mile – a 5K race where every quarter-mile you pass a performer. The purpose of the race is to raise money for programs at the North State Symphony. It’s a lot of fun, and I hadn’t run in a race all year (I know, bad me!). It was my getting out of an injury rut race, and I ran with Wining Husband, so that was fun.
The really awesome thing about the race is that even though it was the first race after a lot of leg problems, both my husband and I placed! I took 3rd place in the 30-39 year old women category, and the husbs took 2nd place in the 30-38 year old men category. I look forward to the next race opportunity.
It was a busy day. After the race, we set back out on the Sierra Ora Farm Trail for Day two of gathering goodies. We started out day two by heading off to Lundberg Family Farms, where they sell organic rice. The rice dishes and rice chips were very good, and we wound up snatching up some of their rice mixes and their rice syrup, which can be used as a replacement for molasses in recipes.
Following Lundberg, we headed to Lodestar Farms Olive Oil. Their samplings were also tasty. While we liked their olive oil, we are able to find it in the grocery stores around here, and we knew we would be hitting up another olive oil farm.
Calolea Olive Oil blew Lodestar out of the waters for us. Not only were their samples amazing, but as the second time we’d sampled their products (the first time we tried them was at Hickman Family Farms during the Wine Trail) we thought they were consistently excellent. They have standard oils, but they also have garlic, Meyer lemon, and blood orange flavored oils as well. They make very nice salad dressings and they work well in marinades and stir-fry.
We next headed over to Hickman Family Vineyards. As usual, their tasting was very good. They were debuting the Moscato dessert wine that comes in a growler. It was a cross between a good sweet sherry and a white port/late harvest wine. We also had the opportunity to barrel taste the Malbec and some Petit Syrah that had just been crushed. It’s a real neat experience to taste a developing wine.
Following Hickman, we headed over to Morse Mandarin Farms. While it wasn’t quite Mandarin season, we did taste some of their products including a marinade, and the products were good. We also visited Mount Ida Mandarin Ranch. They had cupcakes, but no mandarins. While we were a bit disappointed by the inability to try out the products at these two farms, it’s understandable since it’s just not the right season.
We then came back down the hill from Oroville and revisited both Emerald C and Mooney Farms. The interesting thing about Emerald C was that the wine did not hold up well after the Hickman’s tasting. It was still very good, it just wasn’t as good as we initially thought. We still wound up grabbing their zinfandel, which was a nice wine.
At the end of the farm trail, we had quite the bounty of goods – all locally grown and produced – to restock a pantry that had gone barren in the discovery of my own food allergy.
