UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Shannon Michele of Cache Creek Catering and Lake County Wine Studio are presenting a monthly food and wine series featuring gourmet appetizers paired with select Lake County wines.

Locally produced foods are proudly featured as key ingredients in recipes created by Cache Creek Catering.

The series is held from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the second Friday of each month. The per person cost is $25 and $20 for Wine Studio club members. Reservations are required.

Sept. 13 will feature a harvest time menu with local pears and chardonnays.

The opening course will pair Wildhurst 2011 Chardonnay with an Alsatian style salad of star crimson pears and heirloom apples on seasonal greens with bacon vinaigrette, followed by butternut squash raviolis in sage butter and roasted pears with Cache Creek Vineyards 2009 Chardonnay.

The final course will be a Bartlett pear sorbet served with the chardonnay based Cuvée de Prestige sparkling wine from Thorn Hill Vineyards.

August’s event featured a vegetarian summer menu pairing zucchini and feta turnovers with Sauvignon Blanc, an heirloom walnut burger slider with aged white cheddar, heirloom tomatoes and rosemary aioli paired with Cabernet Sauvignon, and concluded with a dessert pairing of a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blend ice wine with an apricot and citrus Madeleine with lemon mousse.

Oct. 11 will be the next date to follow for the Local Cuisine Scene event.

For reservations and additional information, contact Susan Feiler at 707-293-8752.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Friends of Lake County Library will hold its quarterly book sale from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at Redbud Library, 14785 Burns Valley Road in Clearlake.

There will be a special “book bag” sale in which supporters can purchase a book bag and fill it with as many books, CDs and DVDs as it will hold for $15.

Proceeds from the book sale support libraries of Lake County and assist in keeping library materials updated.

Proceeds also assist in purchasing needed items for children's sections of the libraries.

Friends of Lake County Library is seeking to increase its membership. Membership categories include student/senior for $15 and adult/family for $25. Other donor memberships also are available.

For more information call 707-994-5115 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The 2014 Middletown High School Sober Grad Committee is holding a fundraising rummage sale and car wash on Saturday, Sept. 14.

The fundraiser will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Middletown High School, 15846 Wardlaw St.

If you have items that you would like to donate, please contact Suzanne at 707-987-9756 for pick up and drop off information.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – KZYX's “Women's Voices” on Monday, Sept. 16, will host independent researcher, author, speaker and activist Genevieve Vaughan.

The show will air beginning at 7 p.m. on 90.7 FM Philo, 88.1 FM Fort Bragg and 91.5 FM Willits, and also can be heard live at www.kzyx.org .

Host Janie Rezner will interview Vaughan about her work, which includes the theory of a maternal gift economy as an alternative to patriarchal capitalism.

Her books include “For-giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange” and “Women and the Gift Economy: A Radically Different Worldview is Possible.”

Consider that we humans have lived successfully without money or the concept of exchange for most of our 100,000 years on earth. Money, I.e. the exchange paradigm, is the cornerstone of patriarchal domination, Vaughan suggests.

“The gift paradigm has the advantage of restoring mothering to its rightful place in the constitution of the human,” Vaughan writes. “What has been wrongly proposed in the construction of gender, with devastating effects, such as the promotion of the values of dominance, competition and hierarchy (which are non nurturing values) can be countered by re introducing gift giving as a social value and interpretive key. Both male and female human beings are basically nurturers. One gender is not the binary opposite of the other. If we reintroduce the gift paradigm into our interpretation of the world, we will find our “gift-giver within” which will then be acknowledged and validated.”

The show will be archived at http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/4206 .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Wine Studio is hosting a wine tasting event featuring wines from Mt. Konocti Winery and artist reception with a collection of colored pencil works of art by Bruce Vandraiss on Friday, Sept. 6, and Saturday, Sept. 7.

The Friday event takes place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday.

The $12.50 ($10/pp for Studio club members) wine sampler and appetizers presented at the studio will showcase the 2011 Sauvignon Blanc and tropical shrimp dusted with thyme on endive, 2010 Rosé with strawberries topped with Yerba Santa Chèvre mousse, the 2009 Zinfandel with rosemary pork tenderloin, and the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon with a candied bacon and dried plum treat. Appetizer pairings for each of these wines have been designed by Cache Creek Catering.

Mt. Konocti Winery began in 1926 as the Lake County Fruit Exchange, an agricultural co-operative that processed 17,000 tons of pears annually. In 1976, it merged with Lake Cove Growers and took the name Mt. Konocti Growers.

As of 2004, they expanded into the wine industry, providing full services for wine making, custom crush, barrel storage, case storage and vineyard management. They created the unique sparkling pear wine called Lady of the Lake using Mountain Bartlett pears and Bosc varieties.

In 2007, four of the farming families that are members of Mt. Konocti Growers began bottling wine and in 2011 opened their winery tasting room in a barrel room at the Kelseyville facility.

The artist for September is Bruce Vandraiss. Vandraiss' interest in art began in childhood, continued through grade school, high school and college in Michigan.

After college he worked at the Ford Motor Co.'s Styling Center in Dearborn, Mich., where he was inspired by the work of some of the most talented and energetic artists of the day.

These experiences led him to begin to create artwork in various mediums, including oils, watercolors, graphite, wood, plastic, stone, and finally, colored pencils.

“Durability and longevity of my work is important,” he said, so he uses archival materials wherever possible.

He presents most pieces in a “painterly” fashion, layering color upon color until few individual pencil
strokes are visible, and then burnishing the final layer to a smooth finish. Each piece is then finished with a fixative specially designed for colored pencils.

Vandraiss said, “It seems to me that while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the creation of something beautiful begins in the eyes of the artist, is interpreted with unique vision, and made material through he efforts of his/her hands. The objective is to enter into a dialogue with the beholder, and communicate the artist¹s vision in an engaging manner. Working with colored pencils allows me to focus my ideas and control the elements of my art as in no other medium. My goal is to represent scenes with dynamic color and movement.”

Lake County Wine Studio is a gallery for display of arts and a tasting room, wine bar and retail shop for the fine wines of Lake County. Artists' shows are held on a monthly basis with art and wine receptions held the first Friday and subsequent Saturday of each month.

The gallery is located at 9505 Main St. in Upper Lake and is open Monday, 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday; and Friday, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The Vandraiss art exhibit will be on display for the full month of September.

For more information call Lake County Wine Studio at 707-275-8030 or 707-293-8752.

SOUTH LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Branch 133 of the Sons In Retirement will hold its next meeting on Friday, Sept. 13.

This is the group's annual picnic, which will be held at Hidden Valley Lake Golf Course, 19210 Hartman Road.

The meeting – which is a week earlier than usual – starts at 11 a.m., with lunch served at noon.

Sons In Retirement is a social organization for men of retirement age who are pursuing the goal of enjoying their later years. It has 142 branches with 18,000 members throughout the state.

If you would like to attend the Sept. 13 picnic or want to learn more about Sons In Retirement, contact Buddy Clayton, secretary, at 707-995-1673, or Bill Brewster, membership chairman, at 707-987-9352.

Visit the organization's Web site at www.sirinc.org .