April Lance

Backyard Beekeepers  are installing their hives in increasing numbers this year, right in town and around the county. Perhaps people are staying more at home during this COVID 19 pandemic and many are really developing their interest in beekeeping as well as planting gardens, installing fruit trees and growing their own vegetables. Many have searched for an “at home hobby” that only takes about one hour per month and are undertaking Backyard Beekeeping. Keeping bees helps our earth, your own vegetable garden, as well as assisting your neighbors’ efforts. Fruit trees are also more prolific. A hive of honeybees go out up to five miles daily gathering nectar and accomplishing pollination. One hive usually produces double the amount of local honey the bees need to survive, so they have ample extra honey to share with the individual or family that provides them with a hive box and a small space in the backyard.

Local Beekeeper, ApriLLanceBees.com is helping several hundred individuals this Spring set up their own backyard honeybee hives and provides local, gentle, easy to manage honeybees and their well-bred 2021 Spring Queen, ready to go to work for you. Backyard Beekeeping is one of the most popular new hobbies this year. The website: ApriLLanceBees.com has wonderful information. Click on Sweet Notes to new Beekeepers and learn how to get started, where to obtain bees and equipment or check out Interesting Facts About Honeybees for you and your children.

On April 24, 2021 Michael & Beverlee Laird will celebrate 50 years of marriage. They met in 1970 when Beverlee was working at First National Bank of Ontario & Michael (employed with Southern Counties Gas) came in to buy U.S. Savings Bonds for his two young children. One year later at the young age of 21, they married and blended their two families. In 1974, looking to get out of the L.A. County smog & ready for an adventure, they moved north to Sonoma County living in Healdsburg for over 22 years. In 1997 they settled in Cloverdale and fell in love with the small-town charm, great restaurants, art, music, & theatre and wonderful people.

Being a real estate agent, Michael previews properties for clients and happened to take Beverlee along up to Preston Heights. They fell in love with the park-like feel of the single level home on over an acre & headed back to the country for one more adventure 3 ½ years ago! Their seven chickens, cat Moa, deer, resident squirrels, flocks of turkeys, and the occasional fox or coyote have kept them entertained during Covid-19. The large garden provided the opportunity for more home-canning and plenty of “COVID cooking”. Their mutual love of gardening has created a tropical oasis (behind the deer fencing!) with an outdoor tiki-bar overlooking the pond. Having daughter Charlene, son-in-law Lee, and grandson Shane in Cloverdale allowed for the occasional masked, distance visit. They all hope that a family celebration planned by son Sam & his husband Marc can happen next year, possibly in Hawaii, when travel can be done more safely.

Craig Clark
If you’re flying and concerned about COVID and germs, here are 8 ways to avoid them.
1. Wear a mask
2. Research airline policies around social distancing
before booking
3. Wash your hands
4. Pack an alcohol-based hand sanitizer
5. Wipe down your area
6. Consider going snack-free on short flights
7. Get the flu shot
More airline news, according to Elliott Advocacy: last year the airlines deliberately slowed down the pace of refunds of over 9 million air travelers— for obvious reasons. Keeping your money meant it had enough cash to continue operating.
By the time the federal government caught on to this trick, the industry had already weathered the worst of the storm, thanks to these interest-free microloans from millions
of customers.
You don’t have to become one of 9 million aggrieved air travelers this year. The trick? Know your rights to a refund — and don’t be afraid to let your airline know.
You have the right to a refund if your flight is canceled.
According to DOT (Dept. of Transportation) regulations, your airline must refund your money within 7 business days if it
cancels your flight. It may offer you a replacement flight, but you are under no obligation to accept it.
You have the right to a refund if your flight is rescheduled. If your airline makes a “significant” change to your flight and you decide not to fly, you get a refund. The DOT — not your airline — gets to define “significant.”
If you get downgraded. If you have a confirmed seat in
business class and the airline tries to send you to the bleacher seats, guess what? You get a refund if you decide to cancel
your trip. But what if you decided to cancel your flight
because it isn’t safe to travel? If you initiate the cancellation, you have to accept a nontransferable, expiring ticket credit, and you may have to pay a ticket change fee.

The Kiwanis Cloverdale Vineyard Race makes sure  every penny they make goes to help the children of our community. They have no paid staff, and the vast majority of the work of putting on the race is done by volunteers. All proceeds from this event support the charitable programs of the Kiwanis Club of Cloverdale Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, including fully funding the Cloverdale chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, bringing the gift of reading to the children of Cloverdale.
Their hope is to be able to welcome you to the Cloverdale Vineyard Races on October 24, 2021, however they don’t yet know whether the COVID pandemic will have subsided enough by that time to allow them to produce a safe and enjoyable race. They are in close contact with the local health authorities, and will let people know the status of this year’s races as soon as they can. To keep up with the latest information: sign up for their email list by visiting https://CloverdaleVineyardRaces.org/ or email them:
info@runthewinecountry.org

Cooking with David Maciel

Sponsored by Ray’s Food Place
Quick & Easy Chicken Cacciatore Is a peasant comfort food recipe that won’t break the budget and is sure to please even the pickiest eaters. Use either bone-in or boneless chicken – note boneless meats cook faster so adjust cooking times.

Ingredients
6 each chicken skin-on, bone-in thighs or whole legs
1 can 14.5 ounce can chopped tomatoes
½ cup chopped red green or yellow bell pepper
½ cup onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 Tbs each of tomato paste and chopped garlic
½ cup water or chicken stock, more if needed
½ package of Italian seasoning
½ cup of Marsala wine or red or white wine (water can be substituted)
2 TBS of unsalted butter & brown sugar (optional)
Use large high rimmed frying pan or Dutch oven. Salt & pepper chicken, dredge lightly in flour and brown in olive oil on medium heat. Remove and set aside.
Pour off most of oil. Reduce heat, add the chopped veggies and sauté 6 to 8 minutes. Add the tomato paste, garlic and ½ seasoning package and mix well for another minute or two.
Increase heat, add Marsala wine, scrape pan bottom to loosen bits & pieces. Reduce the liquid to half, add chopped tomatoes and water, and simmer. Return the chicken to pan, cover lightly with lid, simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Remove chicken add the butter & sugar mix, simmer briefly. Salt & pepper to taste. Pour sauce over chicken.

 from Michele Armanino
My grandmother, Vincenza, immigrated from Sicily to Upstate New York in the early part of the last century. Along with that journey came colorful stories, century-old traditions and old-world recipes. Vincenza’s Sicilian cookies were a visual
delight with their bright green and white frosting and sticky fig filling which oozed out of their flakey crusts.
These delectable morsels were also instrumental in bridging a communication gap and showing kindness to those around her. On Easter, Nana piled dozens of crisply-baked colorful Sicilian cookies into a tattered farm basket lined with burlap. Delighted neighbors happily selected a few cookies from her cornucopia as she made her deliveries, door to door.
Vincenza’s Sesame Cookies
½ cup sesame seeds    ¼ tsp. salt
¼ cup water                  ½ cup shortening
2 ½ cups sifted flour     2 eggs slightly beaten
½ sugar                        ¼ cup milk
2 ½ tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease two baking sheets. Moisten sesame seeds with ¼ cup water. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. Cut in shortening untilmixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Stir in eggs, milk and vanilla. Mix until dough is smooth. Form dough into a ball and cut ball into four pieces.
On a lightly floured board, roll pieces with palms of hands, forming long ropes ½” thick. Cut ropes into 2” lengths. Spread moistened sesame seeds on a flat surface; roll cookies over them, coating well. Place cookies, 1” apart, on greased baking sheets. Bake until cookies are browned 10-12 minutes. Make 3 dozen.