BottleRock Napa Valley To Include Rock Stars and Culinary Stars

The highly successful annual Napa music festival is now in it’s third year. This year’s line up boasts musical icons such as No Doubt, Robert Plant, and Imagine Dragon’s. BottleRock Napa will also have a new stage to showcase some of Northern California’s culinary stars. “Williams-Sonoma Culinary Stage” will feature cooking demos and a variety of other activities with culinary greats such as Dominique Crenn of Atelier Crenn, Masaharu Morimoto of “Iron Chef” fame and Michael Mina of the Mina Group.

This new culinary stage is much like the “GastroMagic!” stage found at San Francisco’s Outside Lands music festival or “The Pit” at West Sacramento’s TBD Fest, which included cooking demos and local chefs battling it out in a culinary competition. The standard fare just isn’t cutting it for a new generation of festival goers.

Here is a list of the other chefs coming to the culinary stage at BottleRock, which runs from May 29 – May 31 at the Napa Valley Expo:

* “Iron Chef” Marc Forgione

* Michael Voltaggio and Mei Lin of “Top Chef”

* Larry Forgione (Culinary Institute of America)

* Brandon Sharp (Solbar)

* Ken Frank (La Toque)

* Robert Curry (Auberge du Soleil)

* Tony Gemignani (11-time World Pizza Champion)

* Bryan Forgione (Buddy V’s)

* Rick Moonen (rm Seafood)

* Tyler Rodde (Oenotri)

* Dario De Conti (Ca’Momi).

* The Williams-Sonoma Chef Collective: Sarah Simmons (Birds & Bubbles), Matt Jennings (Townsman) and others.

Various musicians and other public figures are also getting into the act with these culinary rock stars. Those rumored to participate include: Snoop Dogg, Flavor Flav, Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Joe Kwan of the Avett Brothers, Vernon Davis of the San Francisco 49ers and many more.

download (1)

For more information about the Musical Lineup and the Culinary Lineup go to BottleRock Napa Valley’s website http://www.bottlerocknapavalley.com/. 3-day passes are already sold out but you can still buy 1-day passes.

Batter Up!

Baseball season is upon us! Time to break out the peanuts and enjoy America’s favorite pastime.

I wanted to write a quick article about something dear to my heart. While I love the game of baseball, someone who loved the game more was my late stepfather, Terry Cunningham. His family has been well known around the cities of Benicia and Vallejo, CA, and the Cunningham name holds some weight around the communities.

To honor Terry’s passing in September 2014, the Benicia Oldtimers baseball team is playing a double-header this Sunday, May 17th, 2015, on what they have deemed as Terry Cunningham Day. My stepfather had been a part of the Oldtimers baseball league for over 30 years as first baseman, and was inducted into the Nor Cal Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

The Oldtimers will be hosting both Vallejo and Watsonville teams this Sunday at Fitzgerald Field in Benicia, CA. The Watsonville game starts at 11:00am with the Vallejo game following after at 1:30pm. I’ll be there wearing Terry’s number 13, with my hat, glove, and some peanuts to enjoy the games!

Below is a link to the article written in the Benicia Herald newspaper: