Bon Appétit Management Company

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, so is that day when the feast is over and the guests have gone home – and you have a giant dish full of leftover turkey sitting in the refrigerator. Sure, you could make turkey sandwiches — the classic way to use up leftovers — but the Bon Appétit team at Cisco-San Jose in San Jose, CA, has some more creative ideas. Since guests often ask for recipes from the chefs, this holiday season the team proactively provided customers with ideas of how to get the most out of their Thanksgiving meal.

With such student organizations as Farm Club, a brand-new cooking student organization headed by young Swedish chef Vayu Maini Rekdal, and Food Truth, considered the most active group on campus, it’s no wonder Carleton College students flocked to compete in the campus’s first annual Sustainable Iron Chef Competition, hosted by Bon Appétit Management Company in honor of the first national annual Food Day. Cooked up by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day is a movement for “real food” across the country.

By Kristen Rasmussen, MS, RD For this month’s Well Being Challenge, we encourage you to replace an unhealthy saturated fat or refined carbohydrate with a healthy unsaturated fat source once a day for one week. Demonstrate your commitment to embracing healthy fats in your diet by posting photos or comments about your healthy fat substitutions on our Facebook page wall. Here’s a recipe to get you started.  Walnut-Sage Pesto Makes 1 cup

By Kristen Rasmussen, MS, RD For this month’s Well Being Challenge, we encourage you to replace an unhealthy saturated fat or refined carbohydrate with a healthy unsaturated fat source once a day for one week. Demonstrate your commitment to embracing healthy fats in your diet by posting photos or comments about your healthy fat substitutions on our Facebook page wall. Here’s a recipe to get you started.  Cod with Braised Celery and Tomato

For a special fundraiser for the Seattle Art Museum on Friday, November 4, Bon Appétit’s TASTE Restaurant team worked with internationally renowned chef Mario Batali. Projected to raise $300,000 for the Seattle Art Museum, this extraordinary epicurean event featured a family-style dinner with Batali as well as a panel discussion among Batali; Thierry Rautureau, The Chef in the Hat™; and Steve Pool of KOMO News. Guests enjoyed signature Batali dinner platters, hors d’oeuvres, and desserts. TASTE’s menu was designed to bring Batali back to the Northwest, where he grew up, drawing ingredients from farms close by.

By Kristen Rasmussen, MS, RD For this month’s well being challenge, we encourage you to replace an unhealthy saturated fat or refined carbohydrate with a healthy  unsaturated fat source once a day for one week. Demonstrate your commitment toembracing healthy fats in your diet by posting photos or comments about your healthy fat substitutions on our Facebook page wall. Here’s a recipe to get you started.  Chocolate and Avocado Brownies Makes one 9×13’’ pan Ingredients 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 3/4 cup white sugar 3/4 cup brown sugar 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup mashed avocado 3/4 cup lowfat cow’s milk or soymilk 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or coconut oil, plus more for greasing baking dish 1 teaspoon vanilla extract To Prepare 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9×13″ baking dish with oil. 2. Mix together the flour, […]

Second Harvest Food Bank runs a number of crucial programs that feed more than 240,000 people in Silicon Valley each month and as the recession continues, there is a higher need for funds. In the fall, Brocade in San Jose, CA, led a real team effort to raise money for Second Harvest.

  How local can you go — food wise? That was the challenge taken up by dozens of Bon Appétit Management Company chefs in 31 states for the seventh annual Eat Local Challenge on Tuesday, September 27, 2011. Some cooked a meal from 99.9% local ingredients, with salt as the only allowable non-local ingredient. A few went 100% local — meaning they even foraged for salt from within 150 miles of the café. Others focused on serving one excellent local meal. The reasons to source local ingredients are simple but important if you care about sustainability: it tastes better, is more nutritious, encourages biodiversity, preserves open space, and protects the environment, just to name a few. The companywide Farm to Fork program has helped Bon Appétit accounts learn about what’s available in their area throughout the year, and how to use […]

The Eat Local Challenge has become one of my favorite celebrations each year. While many of our usual holidays come with prescribed dishes, such as turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving, brisket and matzoh ball soup for Passover, and cookies topped with red and green sprinkles for Christmas, the Eat Local Challenge menu is always different — year to year, chef to chef, and region by region. The challenge is to create an whole menu where every ingredient (except for salt) comes from within 150 miles. While this is no easy task, I also find the challenge to be encouraging. Whether a chef or an eater, it encourages everyone to explore unusual flavors – found on our local farm and range lands and in our forests, lakes, and oceans, to learn about new producers, and tap into our inner creative spirit.

This video is the first in a series highlighting Bon Appétit employees across the country and the wonderful work they do. Here we are proud to introduce a man who brings a smile to countless faces every day—Arthur Curtis, line server at Bon Appétit at Washington University in St. Louis.