Aaron Dionne and Joe McGarry bring salt water to the fire for last year's Eat Local Challenge.
Photo courtesy of Bon Appétit

CORPORATE CHEF WITH A CLEAN (AND GREEN) CONSCIENCE
A Profile of Joe McGarry of Bon Appétit Management Company
Written by Liz Crain
For August-September 2006

When making a list of the most influential food folk in Portland you’d probably include a slew of executive chefs from our most renowned restaurants, a handful of food business entrepreneurs and maybe a couple of local food writers. Chances are, you wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to the cooks and chefs populating the kitchens of our numerous colleges and universities, corporate cafes and other large-scale dining operations.

Well, you should.

Joe McGarry, regional chef for Bon Appétit Management Co., a progressive on-site food service company based in California (but in many ways conceived in Portland), has been rocking the Portland food scene for nearly 10 years with his sustainable vision of what large-scale food service should be.

SALTY CHARACTER
McGarry and I met up a couple of months ago at one of his favorite neighborhood coffee hangouts—Tiny’s Coffee at Southeast Twelfth and Hawthorne. At 36, McGarry’s style is casual, his personality friendly and laid-back, but his food agenda, as well as his job track, cuts right to the chase.

We chatted about his colorful cooking past and how he first got into food service. After working at various restaurants—first washing dishes at a 1950s-style diner, and later dicing and spicing at an esteemed Mexican restaurant—McGarry knew that he wanted a career in cooking. He moved to Portland from the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1990s and took an entry-level position with Bon Appétit at its Oregon Health and Science University on-site restaurant. In less than two years McGarry was Bon Appétit’s executive chef at Intel’s Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro.

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Posted by Laura Ford at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

KIDS ARE STARS OF THREE RING FARM'S CIRCUS
Story and photo by Luan Schooler
For August-September 2006

When Pat Morford bends over to move the hay feeder in the pen of young goats, three of them rear up to put their front hooves onto her back and shoulders as though they are about to climb atop her. She finishes cutting free the feeder and shakes off the climbers, laughing, “Get off of me, you beasties! You’re monsters, all of you!” The kids back away for the moment, but it’s clear they’re just waiting for her to turn around so they can do it again. They think of her as their mother, Pat explains.

“They treat their mothers like trampolines. If she lies down, her kids will start jumping on top of her and sliding down her sides.” When Pat climbs into each of the other pens to fix the hay feeders, there’s another little gang of goats waiting to play.

Pat has Three Ring Farm in Logsden, Ore. and makes River’s Edge Chevre. Through long experience, careful attention to husbandry and lots of patience, she has developed prized breeding lines of bucks that she sells internationally and nannies (more politely known as does) that consistently produce excellent milk for cheese.

The farm is in a beautiful spot, up against the rolling Coast Range. The house and barn sit side by side just off the winding Logsden Road, and the pasture opens up behind them and then trails off into the wooded hills. Pat’s dogs Bobo and Fang race to the driveway to greet visitors and then trot off for a long, lazy game of tug-a-war with someone’s sock.

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Posted by Laura Ford at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Written by Ellen Jackson
For August-September 2006

“What’s in season?” you ask. What’s not?! According to my calendar, we’re closing in on the lazy, hazy days of summer, and yet we continue to be overwhelmed by fresh, ripe, local choices every time we’re in the produce aisle. The riot of color and flavor in our gardens and markets suggests that summer might be endless after all.

It’s tough to pick a favorite from so many—eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, melons, zucchini, raspberries, figs, nectarines, peaches, plums—but I’m going to do it… cast my vote and make an impassioned pitch for corn. Sweet corn.

I know, I know. We’ve all read Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, or know someone who has. As a result, corn’s become the new WMD for conspicuous U.S. consumers. Ardent Pollan supporters can recite the litany of unsettling facts and figures he foists on his readers: Corn is the keystone of our industrial food system, a grain second only to wheat in acres planted and sustenance given worldwide. Our country is blanketed by 80 million acres of corn monoculture, a single crop that’s remade our landscape at the expense of animals, people and agricultural diversity.

Ninety-nine percent of what most Americans eat, especially if it is industrial food (rather than food produced locally or organically), can be traced back to corn; each of us consumes one ton per year. Oddly enough, of those 10 billion bushels of corn harvested each year, we eat less than one bushel per person as corn—on the cob, as flakes in a cereal bowl or baked into corn muffins, chips and tortillas.

Continue reading " Edible Seasonals - Ah, Corn—Quintessential Food of Summer " »

Posted by Laura Ford at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )