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The students at Washington University in St. Louis have never had a sweeter Valentine’s Day.
Famous pastry chef Jim Dodge, Bon Appétit’s director of culinary programs, visited Wash U for two very special Valentine’s Day collaborations with the university’s pastry chef Starr Murphy.
By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation On Tuesday at Gallaudet University, BAMCO Executive Chef Jay Keller stood behind a beautiful spread of ingredients including Pennsylvania purple potatoes, Maryland oyster mushrooms, and tofu from across the street (more photos here). He had just 30 minutes to create a meal from ingredients chosen by the students from this bounty, as part of the East Coast tour of the Sustainable Food Challenge. After a bit of debate (chicken or salmon?), they finally settled on wild-caught Alaskan salmon and chicken produced without the routine use of antibiotics, as well as local oyster mushrooms, Swiss chard, and apples. As Jay went to work, the students, BAMCO staff, and I got to talking. Some highlights from our conversation: “I’ve heard that only half of the meat in the café is […]
Event on Tues 2/8/11, 12:30-1:30pm. See details below. By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation A new challenge is coming to Bon Appétit chefs across the country: Create a delicious meal using only sustainable ingredients that are selected by the audience, and do it in just 30 minutes!
Farmer Bob Knight (on right) with Bon Appétit Management Company Biola University Chefs By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation “Farms are getting huge. Real estate is expensive in California. Farming in the global food economy requires [farmers] to have thousands of acres. Farmers that used to have 10 or 20 acres are now being pressured to buy 4,000 acres.” We are at the Bon Appétit Management Company Student Ambassador Program at Biola University, a kick-off event for thirty students to get to know some of the people behind food: Bon Appétit chefs, staff, and farmers. Executive Chef Peter Alfaro just spoke about the path that led him to work in the kitchen and his passion for making the food system more sustainable through purchases as a chef. Biology professor and head of the Biola Organic […]
Seared Sacramento Sturgeon lettuce wraps with fresh Sausalito watercress By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation Hungry? Join me for a virtual lunch at the University of the Pacific Café! I went there for Bon Appétit Management Company’s sixth annual Eat Local Challenge and it was an event worth experiencing – if only via your imagination. The best part about it? It’s not far off from lunch served there every other day of the school year. First, let’s stop by the all-local salad bar. Grab what you want and remember to top your bowl off with strawberries, figs, and feta cheese. I recommend drizzling it with the creamy honey-goat cheese vinaigrette.
Silky Sea Palms (seaweed) and California Kombu (kelp) This summer, Director of Specialty Culinary Programs Jim Dodge and longtime Bon Appétit friend and author Raghavan Iyer toured the country to help host Bon Appétit Management Company’s Vegan Chef Trainings. I joined the Northern California Training, held at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose. It was a fun and flavorful affair! It was especially exciting to see the variety of ingredients with which Bon Appétit chefs cook. Many, such as seaweed, house-made seitan, and nut butters, are less mainstream but nonetheless nutritious and delicious. In this post, I include two of my favorite recipes from the Training. Please enjoy and let us know what you think!
What, indeed? Well, Peter Murrey, a junior at Washington University in St. Louis (featured above), didn’t seem to think there was anything more appropriate. He was one among many students who decided to celebrate Earth Day 2010 in a bang-out fashion. In fact, seventeen different WashU organizations banded together for a day-long celebration that had everything from face painting and cotton candy to a film screening of Food, Inc. to a presentation about food sustainability by a recent WashU alum (yours truly!). Bon Appétit was also showcasing how to eat a Low Carbon Diet throughout the day, adding to the festivities. WashU has undergone a lot of transformations in the “green” department since I started out as a freshman there five years ago, and this was the biggest Earth Day celebration I’ve seen yet. I’m looking forward to an […]
April 8, 2010 Washington D.C. As I travel along the East Coast, giving presentations about “The Story Behind the Food” that we eat, every audience is different. Some are wide-eyed and silent, asking few questions. Some have seen “Food, Inc.”, or read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and are eager to learn more. And then some groups are all about asking challenging questions. These groups are typically made up of individuals who are very passionate about food issues, and are excited to learn about what Bon Appétit is doing to create change, but are not afraid to challenge us either. I recently went to such a college—I was invited to speak as part of the Green Lecture Series at Gallaudet University, school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington D.C. And I as I gave the presentation I’ve […]
March 23-24, 2010 Boston, MA Do you know how many tomatoes a Florida farmworker has to pick in order to fill one 32-lb bucket? Do you know how many buckets Florida farmworkers have to fill in an hour in order to make the FL minimum wage? These were the questions I asked students at Emmanuel College (Boston, MA) and Lesley University (Cambridge, MA) to answer during a recent visit. As students poured through the doors of the café, pushing past each other and trying to beat the lunch lines, I stood by the entrance shouting “Answer two quick questions and win a free pizza party!” And I was happy to learn that even though I’m almost a full year out of college, some things haven’t changed: students still love pizza, (especially when it’s free :0) The purpose […]
Last week (2/22/10) East Coast Fellow Carolina Fojo visited Oberlin College and Case Western University for two very different but very successful events about social issues that relate to the very food we eat. Here’s a rundown of what happened: Oberlin College: The Oberlin crowd at my event was pretty liberal, well-versed on many of these issues, and asked some good, challenging questions. What made this event unique, however, was that after my presentation we set up a sort of “Foodie Fair”, in which several on-campus groups (animal rights, slow food, carbon sequestration research, composting/gardening, etc.) put together signs, and set themselves up around the room next door. Once my presentation was done, the crowd shifted to that room to continue the conversation about how to improve the food we eat. The “Food Fair” was extremely successful. Here’s one example: […]