Using the Tips of Trees

To the rescue: “Thanksgiving is the time of year many men are called upon to carve or cook,” notes Russell Armstrong, chef/owner of Trees. Therefore, he’ll offer how-to tips at a free one-hour seminar at the restaurant--440 Heliotrope Ave., Corona del Mar--Tuesday at 4 p.m. He hastens to add that women are welcome: “Nobody wants a potentially glorious meal to be an, um, pioneering experience.” Seminar reservations: (714) 673-0910.

A fiesta to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Avila’s El Ranchito restaurants will benefit the USC Mexican American Scholarship Fund on Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Santa Ana El Ranchito, 2201 E. 1st St. Mexican cuisine, mariachis and “fun surprises” will mark the festivities. The original Avila’s El Ranchito was founded in Huntington Park in 1966 by Salvador and Margarita Avila, natives of Guanajuato, Mexico. It remains a family business, with Orange County locations in Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Laguna Hills as well as Santa Ana. Fiesta reservations: (714) 262-2924.

The sixth annual World of Wines Festival, a four-day celebration of food and wine, will unfold today through Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point. For $615, you get a Celebrity Chef charity dinner (benefiting Olive Crest, a home for abused children in Orange County), five educational seminars, two luncheons, two evening wine and food tastings, a champagne brunch, a Lifetime Achievement Award black-tie dinner and a farewell breakfast. Or, you may a purchase tickets on a single-event basis; prices range from $25 for a Food and Wine Matching presentation by wine writer and editor Joshua Wesson to $150 for the Celebrity Chef dinner tonight (the celeb chefs include Nancy Silverton of Campanile and the La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles; Patrick Clark of Bice, Beverly Hills; and Bradley Ogden of the Lark Creek Inn, San Francisco). Sunday, past Lifetime Achievement Award winner Robert Mondavi will present this year’s award to Times’ wine columnist Robert Lawrence Balzer. The hotel is at 33533 Ritz-Carlton Drive. Information: (714) 240-2000.