The Bon Appétit Blog

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By Liz Sullivan, Bon Appétit Management Company project assistant High school students aren't usually gung-ho about the idea of attending summer camp, but here's a new option that just might have them drooling. The Culinary Institute at Penn is a hands-on summer program that is attracting students from all over the world. Applications for the program, which runs from July 4  to July 23, are accepted until June 1 — or until the program is full.  Bon Appétit Management Company, University of Pennsylvania, and Summer Discovery (which specializes in offering innovative summer camp programs on university campuses worldwide) have collaborated to launch the new, three-week program. It's geared to high school student interested in learning more about where their food comes from and its impact on the environment. Students will learn how to prepare healthy and delicious meals, and the important […]

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By Vera Chang, West Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation An art project in Cornish Cafe by a sculpture student Written in honor of a creating a more peaceful world through eating alongside one another and low carbon choices  When you combine an arts school and a socially responsible food services company, the results can be interesting. Last Thursday, on April 14, Bon Appétit Management Company celebrated its fourth Low Carbon Diet Day, and Cornish College of the Arts transformed this annual event into an occasion in which eating was revered as art, and art added another dimension to sustainable dining.

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Yesterday Bon Appétit Management Company held its fourth annual Low Carbon Diet Day across the country. To celebrate, the kitchen team at the University of Maryland in Baltimore tempted their guests’ palates toward climate-friendlier pastures by reinventing a dish that has gained a reputation as the cheap/quick/greasy go-to of most college students: the pizza.

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By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation   “I love a good competition!” With these words, Cristin Ashmankas entered herself into a Bon Appétit Sustainable Cooking Challenge at Lesley University, where she is an assistant professor in the earth science, natural sciences, and mathematics department. Cristin grew up in a family of great cooks and says she is known among her friends (her “test subjects”) for her culinary experiments and what has become known as “Cristin’s secret ingredient.” The day of the event, Cristin arrived wearing a cupcake-dappled apron and a big grin. Her competitor was Diego Mejia, a Bon Appétit cook at Lesley University. Born in México, Diego spent most of his childhood eating his mother’s savory dishes of tortillas and beans, tomatillo and mole sauces. After arriving in the U.S., he started working for […]

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Thanks to the popularity of last year’s Chopped Competition, the challenge made a repeat performance at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI. Just like in the popular Food Network show, Bon Appétit’s Chopped contestants show off their creativity and cooking skills under the pressure of a ticking clock. The competition is made up of three segments – appetizer, entrée, and dessert. After each session, two teams are “chopped” from the competition.

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Industrial-scale agriculture often exacts a steep human cost. That was one of the lessons I learned last week from farmer Bob Knight and farmworker Marco Franco of the Inland Orange Conservancy, Bon Appétit at the University of Redland’s first Farm to Fork partner. They were the guest speakers at one of our Stories from the Fields events, held at the University Club.

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By Carolina Fojo, East Coast Fellow for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation In this video, Katherine Ecker gives me a tour of Legacy Manor Farm, where animals don’t just roam the pasture, they roam the driveway, the house…and anywhere they want! One hen insists on laying her eggs in the back of Katherine’s car, and the Eckers have woken up to find a horse standing on their front porch. As part of our Farm to Fork program begun in 1999, Bon Appétit Management Company purchases fresh, seasonal produce from small, local farmers around the country. We recently celebrated the milestone of 1,000 such suppliers. As a Fellow for Bon Appétit, I get to travel to these different farms and learn about the joys and challenges farmers today face — and share their stories.

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By Helene York, Director, Strategic Initiatives Above: Grilled radicchio, three kinds of local potatoes, and spigarelli broccoli. It’s a rare Saturday when I get my bones out of bed at 5:45 a.m. or anything close to that. But last weekend was Bon Appétit's semi-annual Northern California Chefs Exchange, where 40 to 50 really talented chefs get together to learn, laugh, and do what they do best: cook great food from scratch. The aromatic, house-made chai at Cisco Systems in San Jose helped start the morning off nicely. Photo by Cara Brechle Then, Santa Clara University Chef David Anderson (above) gave a terrific tutorial on how to carve a 200-pound pig. He had sourced the pig from a local farm, Douglas Ranch outside of Hollister, CA, and was determined to let everyone know that only 2 pounds – just 1 percent […]

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The Oxfam Hunger Banquet is the only banquet I’ve ever attended where I was served just rice and water. The banquet, held March 7 at Seattle University, makes the inequalities of our world vividly clear in order to raise awareness about the experience of hunger and get people thinking and talking about how to take action to fight poverty. I used it as a jumping off point to also talk about the injustices experienced by female farm workers.