Taste of Yesteryear

If anyone in Ventura County still engages in that quaint custom known as the “Sunday drive,” the Market Lady has a two-for-one offer that Sunday drivers can take advantage of seven days a week. It’s a scenic outing that will evoke the California of yesteryear--at least the ‘40s and ‘50s.

The bonus is the fruit, nut, flower and produce stands you can dally at along the way--with wares as pretty and tasty as any in the county--maybe in the state.

Somis, a Chumash word that may simply be a variation on the word “Chumash,” is just west of Moorpark and north of Camarillo, sort of at the corner of Highways 118 and 34 (which is also the home of the Somis Produce stand).

But since it’s unincorporated, Somis is more of a mailing address amid winding farm-to-market roads lined with fruit orchards, newly tilled fields, tree farms, 100-year-old farmhouses and towering fat palms, with the foothills of Los Padres National Forest for a backdrop.

Also known as Los Angeles Avenue, Highway 118 leading into Moorpark’s outskirts may be the premier Sunday drive in Ventura County. It holds its own with Highway 33 north of Ojai.

Depending on whether you’re driving east or west, the Queen Ranch at 3400 Highway 118 is either the first or last fruit and vegetable stand on the drive. Open daily until dark, Queen Ranch grows much of its own tomatoes, peppers and citrus in the fields and orchards surrounding its picturesque premises.

Its luscious fruit displays are as appealing as a Parisian market’s. Local hothouse tomatoes at $1.50 a pound, and persimmons, pomegranates and mangoes are surrounded by cherries, blood oranges, apricots, apples, avocados and bananas.

“We picked Camarosa strawberries at a Laguna Road farm on Thursday,” said Queen Ranch owner Ray Swiertz. “They’ll be a little expensive--$2 or $3 a basket--until Valentine’s Day, when they become more plentiful.”

The stand also carries Mrs. Bennett’s Piru Canyon honey, and her honey barbecue sauce made with avocado honey.

“She delivers it in her bee bonnet,” Swiertz said.

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A mile down Highway 118 sits the well-known Somis Nuthouse, which the Resnik family started 38 years ago as the Ventura Walnut Shelling Co.

“But today, there aren’t that many walnuts to shell,” said Rebecca Resnik Pecsok, whose father and grandmother still spell her at the cash register.

Today, the quirky, amusing old store is both a cook’s delight, filled as it is with such exotica as bulk cooking seeds and filbert meal, and a muncher’s heaven.

Tins of hand-packed peanut and cashew butter are piled by old-fashioned barrels of loose filberts, pecans, Brazil nuts, walnuts and almonds that sell from $1.50 a pound up to $3 a pound.

Bakers can buy sacks of poppy, pepita, sunflower, sesame or chia seeds here.

Did someone mention peanuts? You’ve got your lemon chili peanuts, your Cajun devil peanuts and your garlic-flavored peanuts at the Nuthouse.

The Nuthouse ships anywhere a nut can be shipped. And don’t walk out the door without buying a can of the hand-packed peanut butter--the best you’ll ever eat.

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Attached to the Somis Nuthouse is a charming, newly opened flower stand and art gallery called Once Upon a Time at 4475 Highway 118.

“We have 60 to 70 types of flowers,” said Onalee Ames, who co-owns the little “European-type” shop with her husband, David.

The floor is covered with buckets of unusual cut flowers, such as delicately pink anthurium, Ecuadorean roses, French tulips and dried artichokes.

The shop’s walls are covered with paintings of flowers and fruits by Ventura County artists.

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The massive, outdoor Underwood Farm Market at 5696 Highway 118 is well-known to anyone who frequents the county’s several certified farmers’ markets--it sells at four markets a week.

Underwood Farm grows its own produce and also sells it at this permanent stand, open seven days a week. No one in the county grows more beautiful varieties of lettuce than Underwood.

TIPS OF THE WEEK

A bouquet of genestre, as delicate as baby’s breath but lovelier, imported from Italy, at Once Upon a Time.

A Braeburn apple from Queen Ranch.

A head of green leaf lettuce from Underwood Farm Market.