It’s been a while! Seems like facebook and twitter work better for us to get the word out, but I realize that not everyone wants to be in social media land…So, here ya go!
These days our only permanent location is the Santa Cruz Farmers Market at Live Oak on Sundays from 9-1. We love serving up farm fresh brunchy stuff, and am really please with the response to some of our more unique items, like the Kimchi Thang. The sour cream donuts fly outta the truck. Looks like more Farmer’s Market locations are on the near horizon for us. We have been doing lots of catering and events, and have several weddings (and rehearsal dinners) and parties scheduled for spring and summer. We love being a part of a celebration…people get so excited to have us there and it feels great. We have done some corporate lunches recently, and it’s fun to give people a break from their usual lunch time routine.
I have moved out of my role as Chef du Cuisine at Ristoranti Avanti. The new places are up and running smoothly so it’s time to give my full focus to the truck biz. It was lovely being there with my surrogate restaurant family again (before I started The Truck Stop I had been there for nine years) and I miss being there on a regular basis, with the best, hardest working, sweetest kitchen crew ever and surrounded by people with a deep soulful passion for the place we live and the food that is produced and grows wild here.
The big news is our NEW FARM. We have partnered up to lease two and a half acres in the beautiful Cherryvale area of Soquel. The farm thing has always been part of my vision for the truck business, and allows me to bring together my farming and gardening experience with my food business and create my personal best case scenario: Cooking food that I have been a part of growing, knowing it from seed to harvest– this feeds my soul and gives me the ultimate inspiration to feed all of you. It is not SO different from what I have been doing up until now…getting the most amazing fresh produce from good friends whose farms I know and spend time on (and of course will continue to because we can’t and don’t want to grow everything, and I still want to drink beer with them.). Because we are breaking ground on land that has not been in vegetable production before, we will be mainly cover cropping this year–as a way of reducing the weed bank in successive years and also to feed the soil–but we will definitely have some goodies soon. There are fruit trees on the land, so yes, DONUTS! JAM!
We have some other irons in the fire for new locations, but are taking time to find exactly the right ones…
All in all things are great. More soon about the farm, my incredible farming partner Juan, the amazing mentors and organizations that are offering us every kind of support we could possibly need to be successful with this farming venture. We are feeling quite lucky indeed. We have worked very hard to get here…Now we get to work even harder! Truly a labor of love.
Thanks for checking in!
