Author: Brooke Lucy

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

When Jim and Judy Evans, Bainbridge Island residents since the late 1960s, decided to develop a pub on a waterfront piece of property on the island’s north shore, they had two distinct objectives. Jim, who was born and raised in England, “envisioned an English-style pub as a community gathering spot without TVs and jukeboxes like their American counterparts–a place for lively dialogue fueled by the small but growing craft beer industry of the time,” says Harbour Public House general manager Jeff Waite. Meanwhile, Judy imagined a friendly pub that welcomed and served women, regardless of whether they were in the company of men. After all, in 1985 when Jim and Judy began planning the new pub, Washington State had only very recently abolished a law that prohibited unescorted women from being served while standing at a bar. Ultimately, the Evanses sought to nurture and maintain community through “heritage and hospitality.”

Harbour Public House‘s ethic of hospitality is a legacy of  Jim and Judy, who built Harbour Marina–a 45-slip pleasure craft moorage facility–in 1982. The boating community that emerged from marina residents living aboard vessels was a collegial one, cultivated by Jim, a college professor, and Judy, a primary school teacher. Opening parts of their own on-site home to marina residents and friends, the Evanses encouraged gatherings, reading and board games in their day room, and offered yard space for communal gardening.

The building’s heritage is a post-Civil War story. Built by war veteran Ambrose Grow and his wife Amanda in 1881, the homestead was the site of the Grow family’s fruit and vegetable gardens and free-ranging cattle. In 1991, Jim and Judy completed a five-year construction project and opened the Harbour Public House on the footprint of the home where the Grows had homesteaded a century before, and even re-purposed some of the old-growth fir found in the walls and floors of the original building.

Although local residents soon warmed to the pub, initially they were wary of a new drinking establishment in the neighborhood. Says Waite, “The hard-drinking, seafaring past with a nearby bar named the “Bloody Bucket” was not yet a distant memory.” The pub opened as a non-smoking, 21+ only tavern and has remained that way ever since. Neither Jim nor Judy had any experience in the bar or restaurant industry, but they had a knack for creating community and confidence in their two adult children, who had been part of the construction and completion of the pub and who slowly assumed its managerial duties. When Jim and Judy eventually retired, their daughter Jocelyn held the reins.

Jocelyn, who had scrapped law school plans in favor of joining the family enterprise, brought one of the pub’s regular patrons into the family fold, marrying Jeff Waite–now general manager–in 1994. It was Jocelyn who hired the pub’s first kitchen manager, who in turn added two enduring items to the food menu: Pacific Cod Fish & Chips, and the Pub Burger. They kept Jim Evans’ commitment to local craft beers as well.

Along with Jocelyn and Jeff Waite, Chef Jeff McClelland of the Culinary Institute of America embraced a local and regional ethic for the pub’s kitchen. “Long before ‘farm to table’ even had a name,” says Waite, “Chef Jeff has been working to shorten our delivery miles as much as possible. During that time, we have established relationships with local farmers and local producers that have enriched our lives and experiences along the way. The kitchen manager’s interaction used to be a weekly dialogue with two major food delivery distributors. Today, over 40 farmers, producers and suppliers call on him. It has changed all of our jobs quite significantly.” Later, Waite says, as price points improved, pub management applied the local and regional ethic to its wine and spirits offerings.

With the bounty of the Pacific Northwest at its fingertips, Harbour Public House’s menu is a cornucopia of products sourced regionally and locally. The pub buys much of its meat “on the hoof,” says Waite, and is “particularly proud of its products from a Spanaway beef ranch and a Port Townsend goat ranch.” Much of the pub’s green produce comes from an island farmer. The Puget Sound basic and the Washington coast provide cheese, clams, oysters, grains, legumes, and dairy, while the pub’s cod and tuna is Pacific-caught and humanely treated by Bainbridge resident fishermen. Farro items on the menu come from Bluebird Grain Farms’ Organic Emmer-Farro. While diners are used to seeing such high-quality products on fine dining menus,” Waite says, “it once was very rare, and still is today for casual restaurants to take up the challenge as extensively as this.”

This commitment to quality ingredients is a bit of a double-edged sword in the restaurant business, as patrons often have difficulty understanding the relationship between food quality and prices. The market demands inexpensive food, yet increasingly customers want to eat and drink products with integrity: locally grown or sourced, organic, humane. Restaurant prices, then, reflect not only the quality of the food, but also the cost of preparing it thoughtfully.

Jim and Judy phased out of the family business in 2006 and for nearly a decade, Jocelyn and Waite owned and ran the pub together. In 2015, however, Jocelyn began teaching at an island Waldorf school, while Waite remained the General Manager of both the pub and the marina operations and grounds. Despite these larger managerial roles, Waite still prioritizes giving line-item attention to the menu, in collaboration with Chef Jeff. Most recently, the Jeffs have turned their focus to wheat. Both were disappointed with most American varieties of wheat, blaming it for increasing levels of inflammation in their joints; in fact, both had been avoiding American wheat in their personal diets.

After becoming acquainted with Bluebird Grain Farms at one of the early Chef’s Collaborative F2C2 gatherings and incorporating emmer-farro into their menu, in 2019 Waite began experimenting with Bluebird’s Einkorn in his bread baking. He liked the results, and convinced Pane D’Amore, which provides the pub with all of its bread and buns, to develop a custom 100% Einkorn bun just for Harbour Public House, which hit diners’ plates in the summer of 2019. Later, Pane D’Amore added 5% wheat back into the bun to help with consistency. “It’s a work in progress,” Waite says.

Like the Pub Burger’s bun, some things at Harbour Public House are evolving. Others, however, remain consistent, such as the atmosphere of the pub as a welcoming spot for excellent food and beverages, a strong community, and lively conversation. To this end, Waite notes, with a nod to the pub’s roots, “No TVs or juke-boxes have ever been permanently installed and women continue to be a large percentage of its clientele.”

To learn more about the Harbour Public House, visit their website.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Although Marlene Beadle was met with “moans and groans” from her family when she introduced a new, healthier way of eating at home, Marlene was undeterred. “Our family came to realize how fresh and flavorful the meals were that she was making,” says Marlene’s daughter, Lisa Gebhardt, who gives her mother full credit for the food philosophy she developed and still holds to this day.

Marlene’s interest in whole grains, natural sweeteners, and abundant fresh produce soon extended beyond the family dinner table, however, when Marlene purchased a tiny health food store in Federal Way in 1976, later naming it Marlene’s Market & Deli. “She immediately doubled the inventory with foods made from natural and organically grown ingredients,” says Lisa, noting that the founding principles of sourcing organic, sustainably-produced and socially-responsible products were and continue to be the underpinning of Marlene’s Market & Deli (MMD). “Commitment to organically grown, non-GMO, environmentalism, support of the community, and helping people was a complete circle for [Marlene] that all together built health in an individual, a business, a community, and the world,” says Lisa. “This is what we continue to believe at MMD. We work to teach our employees to help us carry on our commitment to Marlene’s founding belief.”

Marlene’s belief in quality natural foods anchored MMD, but it was “her caring for her customers was the basis for a business that continued to grow over 43 years,” says Lisa, who started working with her mother at MMD while she was in college, packaging bulk foods and grains in the back

room, and who is now the business’s general manager. “I discovered I took after her in my enjoyment of helping people and running a business, so I continued to learn every aspect of it. After 43 years, I’ve done every position except making espresso!” Lisa says.

The legacy of enthusiastic customer service and high-quality products was not the only thing Marlene passed down to Lisa, however, “I learned how to make amazingly yummy cookies with natural ingredients,” says Lisa, who carried that tradition on with her daughter, who, according to Lisa, “now has a reputation as making the ‘best’ cookies!”

The steady and thoughtful growth of MMD over the past 40+ years is a testament to the vital role it occupies in the communities it serves. Twenty years after the flagship store opened in Federal Way, Marlene and her crew launched a new market in Tacoma, which proved as successful as the original store. Lisa

attributes the market’s popularity to its commitment to quality. “Our customers appreciate that we buy from local companies committed to exemplary quality,” she says, adding, “Marlene’s has always supported local, small businesses.” She calls this a “win-win-win”: the small businesses win, MMD wins, and the customers, who benefit from the range and quality of products available at MMD, also win.

One example of the 3/win scenario was when MMD came across Bluebird Grain Farms during product research. “Our then Bulk Category Manager, Michelle, happened to be traveling through Winthrop and saw Bluebird Grain Farms products in the community,” Lisa says. “What a great connection to make! We brought Bluebird Grain Farms products in shortly after that – right now, we carry whole grain emmer and whole grain emmer pancake and waffle mix.”

MMD recognizes that newly-harvested and milled grains are best eaten in their most fresh condition, so, Lisa says, “we have a specially built bulk room that maintains the optimal temperature grains, nuts, seeds, and flours, which ensures that Bluebird Grain Farms products are as tasty and fresh as possible.”

With nine departments (grocery, refrigerated, frozen, bulk, mercantile, body care, supplements, produce, beer/wine/spirits), two locations, and 100 employees, MMD has come a long way since its original 1000 sq.ft. storefront in Federal Way. It now hosts classes featuring naturopaths, nutritionists, chefs, authors and other leaders in the natural healing community. MMD offers recipes, catering, a deli, and a bakery that uses organic flours and unrefined sweeteners to create treats like vegan chocolate cake, black bottom cupcakes, lemon sour cream pie, and zucchini bread. And if you seek vegetarian, vegan, wheat-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, and/or raw dishes, you’ll find a delicious variety at MMD; they even bake gluten-free bread to order.

Ultimately, what Marlene’s Market & Deli has supported for two generations is a healthy lifestyle through products that promote positive and beneficial choices for the things we put into and onto our bodies. What began around Marlene’s kitchen table as a sustainable approach to living has blossomed into a community resource that is the foundation of a healthy way of life for thousands of individuals and families in southern Puget Sound.

by Ashley Lodato, Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Arriving at Kirkland’s Cafe Juanita feels a little bit like arriving at the home of a friend. A friend who is an exceptional cook and fantastic hostess, with a fabulous house and enviable yard. Although the mid-century modern house has served as a restaurant for more than 30 years, it was, indeed, once a family home, and it still retains the intimate ambiance of a welcoming, familiar space. Remodels in recent years have opened up several previously private or unused areas within the home, and now, still within its original footprint, the restaurant boasts a patio alongside Juanita Creek, a main level dining area with adjacent private dining room, a revitalized entrance, and enhanced lighting for the entire property. “The house,” says owner and chef Holly Smith, “is a full-fledged member of the team. [It’s] a great space with lovely energy.”

Smith herself seems possessed of lovely energy as well. Since opening Cafe Juanita in 2000, a whirlwind of glowing restaurant reviews, awards, stars, and magazine features thrust Smith into the culinary spotlight, which still illuminates her with great regularity. But Smith has never lost sight of her main focus: the guests’ experience. “Everything matters and everyone is important in helping achieve a happy guest. No one are is more important [than the others].” says Smith. Staff meet and discuss guest hospitality frequently, which “really frees us up to work independently at times to the same end,” Smith says. “Servers don’t need to ask permission to do the right thing, spoil a guest, or fix a problem. Same as for a cook, who knows they use only the best and freshest items and that each plate matters. [It’s more important for it to be as delicious as possible [than for it merely to] ‘get done.'”

Smith’s holistic approach has served Cafe Juanita well, and it’s one that she cultivated during an externship in Ireland after culinary school. “Chef [Peter Timmins] was a master chef so everything was based on Escoffier,” says Smith, referring to George-Auguste Escoffier, a 19th century French culinary artist who was revolutionary in upgrading the culinary arts and fine dining experience, from recipes to service to kitchen environments to sanitation. “Proper technique and history were combined,” says Smith of Chef Timmins’ teaching. “It was great to work with such amazing raw ingredients–the best butter, wild game.” She continues, “The art of hospitality was also important. In Ireland, culinary schools teach front of the house proper service, so it isn’t just the chef’s perspective, but a guest-centric hospitality.”

A career in culinary arts was not always on Smith’s life plan, but with a degree in Political Science and a background in working in restaurants, Smith began to realize the creative outlet cooking provided for her. “I have always been interested in politics and governing,” she says. “To have a business and creative combined was a great thing for my personality.” Smith “governs” Cafe Juanita, but it’s a compassionate rule. The family feel of the home the restaurant occupies is echoed in the familiarity of the staff. Indeed, Smith refers to her team as “family,” calling herself “fortunate to be surrounded by talented and passionate professionals, who strive to create an authentic dinner experience.”

Critical to this authentic dinner experience are “the finest ingredients from local and Italian artisans,” says Smith. A trip to Northern Italy when Smith was in her late teens was “eye-opening,” and provided her with “a foundation of food experiences to draw from” when she first began as a creative professional cook. Smith honed Cafe Juanita’s menu over years of studying regional Italian cooking and traveling to Italy. And of Italian food as Cafe Juanita’s focal point Smith asks rhetorically, “Who doesn’t love Italian food?!”

Good point. If any more people in the western Washington area loved Italian food, you’d never be able to get a table at Cafe Juanita. As it is, business is brisk, and growing. In fact, August 2019 was Cafe Juanita’s busiest month in the 19+ years it has been in operation, due in part to word of mouth recommendations and in part to a continued presence on culinary award lists. But Smith responds to the media attention and public demand differently than she did in the early days, when critical acclaim came at an almost overwhelming speed. In the first few years, Smith says, “It was not very enjoyable for me. As much as I was grateful and happy to be doing well and be appreciated, I found it all a bit too much. The constant feedback on sites like Yelp took me a long while to navigate.”

Smith says she learned to “consume the feedback in a healthier way.” She and her team have focused on the restaurant culture and prioritized improvement on existing things: the space, the menu, the service. “There are plenty of ways to improve and grow in our one spot and I think that has helped sustain growth and maintain quality,” she says. “I want and expect us to be all trying to be better today than we were last week.”

Quality and sustainability are top priorities for Smith when sourcing ingredients. She looks for local and regional organic products that showcase the Pacific Northwest’s bounty, as well as sourcing Italian food and wine. In Cafe Juanita’s kitchen, Bluebird Grain Farms‘ organic emmer farro is featured in a vegetarian/vegan entree with local veggies, house-fermented shio koji, and, seasonally, locally foraged mushrooms, as well as accompanying roast game birds and soups: elements sourced from international flavors, traditional appetites, and adventuresome palates. And these eclectic and harmonious pairings seem so fitting–because this pedigreed grain that originated in the Middle East’s “Fertile Crescent” and is today considered Italy’s premiere rustic staple has been brought to the dinner table of an Italian-inspired Pacific Northwest restaurant by a North Cascades grain farm.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

photos courtesy of Cow & Clementine

Like many people, Cow & Clementine bakery owner Joe Cowan found himself having trouble digesting wheat. But unlike many people, Joe sought and found a solution. After consulting with his father, the renowned holistic physician Dr. Thomas Cowan, Joe began baking bread using the natural fermentation method outlined in the Tartine Bread book. “My dad said ‘if you prepare bread the real way, your problems may be alleviated,'” says Joe. They were. “My dad turned out to be correct.”

A pathway to eating wheat was not the only thing Dr. Cowan gave Joe. He also gave him a grounding in a philosophy of making food. A founding member of the Weston A. Price Foundation–a pioneer organization for information about nutrition and health–Dr. Cowan specializes in helping people heal through natural medicines and, with his sons, started a business to create and market organic, nutrient-dense vegetable powders. Joe manages operations for the family business, Dr. Cowan’s Garden, and through this work continues to support a tradition of nourishing foods.

In the process of learning how to make a nice sourdough loaf, Joe says, he learned a lot. And “over the years playing with recipes, reading more, and figuring out the basics of dough I got good enough at it to start a business.” Fortuitously, Joe and his wife, Emily Clemetson, had just relocated to Morgantown, West Virginia–an excellent place to open a bakery. Emily, a physician, had recently begun her residency in West Virginia University’s internal medicine program, and Joe was still on active duty with the Marine Corps, which he had joined after college. Joe moved into a space previously occupied by a gluten-free bakery, and Cow & Clementine was launched.

“The place was really easy to move into,” Joe says. “The nuts and bolts were already in place; it was already built to fire code, the ovens were there, and it didn’t need anything structurally.” The building’s owner, says Joe, had a great vision for Morgantown and local business. “It was a really good fit.”

Joe’s business model was somewhat unconventional in the bakery world, but has proven to be quite successful. In addition to operating a retail bakery, Joe also runs a brisk mail order business, which means that customers all over the country can enjoy fresh Cow & Clementine sourdough bread any day of the week. “We cater the recipe for shipping,” Joe says, by ordering whole grains and milling them ourselves. We grind it on one of our stone mills and then we let it ferment overnight before baking it. The fresh-milled grain holds up to the shipping process in a way that fluffy processed flour won’t.”

Joe sources nearly all his grains from Bluebird Grain Farms, about whom he learned through his father. “My dad knew about Bluebird years ago,” Joe says. “When I was starting to bake and didn’t want to use an all-purpose grocery store flour, my dad showed me Bluebird Grain Farms and said ‘this is the one you want to use.'” Joe complements the full flavors of Bluebird’s grains with his wild leaven, which provides a rich and earthy taste to his sourdough breads. “When I moved to Morgantown I lost the previous leaven I had been using,” he says, “but I started a new one as soon as I got here, by mixing flour with water and letting it ferment, and that leaven has been going strong for three years now.”

Joe says that he was drawn to Bluebird because of the variety of grains they grow and the superiority of the product, as well as their farming ethics, which he says are the best in the industry. “I really like the varieties,” he says. “The dispersion of heritage varieties, the hybrids. In the summer I like to use the Pasayten Hard White Wheat, in the winter we use the Methow Hard Red Wheat.” The bakery also features an Emmer loaf, an Einkorn bread, and a Heritage Dark Northern Rye. Joe notes that bakery and mail order bread customers tend to fall into two camps. “People want their bread to be dense and sour, or they want it light and fluffy. Cow & Clementine caters to those two camps.”

For Joe, purchasing whole grains extends the shelf life of his mail-order breads, so they arrive fresh to his customers’ houses. He has a couple of stone mills that he runs continuously for the first hour of each day; milling the grain is not an onerous task. But for most consumers, who can eat or freeze their bread the day they bake it, it makes more sense to purchase Bluebird’s fresh-milled organic flours rather than whole grains.

Cow & Clementine is more than a retail bakery and mail order bread company; it’s also a Morgantown hot spot that hosts art exhibits and occasional events, such as Ikebana classes, tie-dye sessions, and knife skills training. “The space is so large that I am only using 1/4 of it for bread,” Joe says, “so it makes sense to share the space for other purposes. Morgantown is cool and lively. There’s a lot going on here–art walks, farmers’ markets, gallery openings.”

As if a baker’s and a medical resident’s schedules weren’t hectic enough, Joe and Emily added baby George to their family four months ago, prompting Joe to hire another baker to work with him. “We hired and trained Chris while Emily was pregnant,” says Joe, “and it came right down to the wire. He baked his first successful loaf the week before George was born. It takes a long time to understand the nuances of sourdough–there’s barometric pressure that changes bread, and a lot of other variables. You can control the variables, or they can control you and spoil the batch.” With Chris assuming some of the baking duties, Joe can both spend time with George and work on growing Cow & Clementine, as well as continuing his work as board president of the legendary Mountain People’s Co-op.

Long term, Joe would like to decrease his oven-to-doorstep delivery time by opening regional bakery distribution centers. Such centers would also allow him to expand Cow & Clementine’s customer base. He’d also like to start making a sourdough pasta–the way pasta is supposed to be made, he says. “Any grocery store has whole aisles of dry unleavened pasta,” Joe says, “but you’re supposed to ferment it first. It tastes better and keeps longer.” And finally, Joe would like to add even more varieties to Cow & Clementine’s bread repertoire. “That will happen soon,” he says, “it’s just a matter of time.”

For more information, visit Cow & Clementine’s website. And to mail order small-batch artisanal bread, visit Cow & Clementine’s store.

Since this was posted Cow & Clementine closed and Joe and Emily moved to Yarmouth Maine where they hope to set up a bakery someday soon.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Imagine these items on a menu: Asian Beef Rice Bowl with Broccoli Spring Roll, Chicken Cordon Bleu Sandwich, Chicken Yakisoba. Vegan Chickpea Masala. Sounds like the kind of place you’d want to eat, right? Then imagine those menu items created from scratch using locally and regionally sourced ingredients. It sounds like the lofty goal of a trendy bistro but it is instead the vision the Bellingham Public Schools (BPS) has for its food services program. Called the “Bellingham Good Food Promise,” the mandate seeks to “encourage a lifetime of healthy eating by serving students nourishing, delicious, whole foods in a welcoming environment.”

Says BPS Executive Chef and Food Services Director Patrick Durgan, “we want to make sure every kid eats nutritious and tasty foods at school.” And the way to best accomplish this aim, says Durgan, is to change the school food culture from one of processed foods to one where entrees are prepared from scratch–a long-term goal that he and his staff are focused on, even as they go about their daily task of providing breakfast and lunch to 6,000 students in the BPS.

Converting to cooking from scratch is not an overnight process for a kitchen of any size, but it’s particularly challenging for institutions feeding large groups of customers. Add in local, state, and federal guidelines governing school lunch nutritional guidelines and budget constraints, and you’ll find it unsurprising that most public school kitchens rely on processed foods. But about a decade ago the BPS began to closely examine its food program, and with help from a farm-to-school advisory board and numerous conversations with and surveys of stakeholders ranging from students to parents to teachers to community members, the district determined that it needed to prioritize whole foods cooking, and has been moving methodically in that direction ever since. And for the past 3.5 years, Durgan has been at the helm of this movement, doing a job he seems destined for.

Durgan grew up in Mukilteo, in a family that appreciated the social aspect of food. “My family has always been great about entertaining,” Durgan says. “There are a lot of really wonderful cooks in my family.” Although Durgan loved cooking for others and recognized it as a way to make people happy, he says he never thought about cooking as a career potential. “I didn’t want to lose the love I had of cooking by doing it as a career,” he says. So Durgan dipped his toes in the waters of many other professions, thereby learning “exactly what I DIDN’T want to do”: vacuum cleaner sales, retail, cleaning grocery stores, making espresso, food delivery. He never stopped thinking about cooking, though, and one day in 2000 he thought to himself, “let’s just try it out,” and enrolled in the Western Culinary Institute, which was affiliated with Le Cordon Bleu.

Attending the Western Culinary Institute in his birthplace of Portland, Oregon, says Durgan, was deeply satisfying. “I learned a great work ethic,” he says, “and the art and science of food were such amazing things to me. It became clear that I could never learn it all and know it all. There would always be something new.” Cooking, Durgan realized, “would always bring me joy and satisfaction.”

No longer worried that he’d lose his love of cooking by doing it professionally, Durgan threw himself into the food world. “I did my externship at [Oregon’s] Sun River,” he says, “and I worked all the different elements of the business: cafe, fine dining, banquets.” Durgan fell in love with high-volume production at Sun River, and upon his return to Portland got a job at a convention center, where he “got 20 years of experience in five years of employment.” Menu planning, employee management, food science: Durgan learned about it all. Those were busy years, Durgan says. “I missed reunions, weddings, and funerals.” But he was still young and unmarried, and ultimately, he says, “It was a good sacrifice for my career. I gained a lot of confidence, as well as learning that I’d need a better work/life balance for my own longevity in the profession.”

Seeking this balance, Durgan found a job with a food services contractor at Portland State University (PSU), which operated student dining halls, campus catering, and retail outlets. “It was a step in the right direction,” he says. “And I loved the education world. I loved watching kids grow and learn.” Five years later, this contractor bid on and won food services operations at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, WA, and Durgan was offered the opportunity to move.

Durgan is a man who takes opportunities seriously, embracing the chance to consider what each might do to his life, his path, his family, and his own personal growth. “I was married and had a two-year-old by then,” Durgan says of the Bellingham offer, “and it was a way to reorganize my life and to come back home to western Washington.” Durgan and his family moved to Bellingham, where he spent the next six years serving 40,000 meals/week on campus. Part of Durgan’s job at WWU was to engage with farmers, producers, and growers in the area and help them understand what was involved in providing products for the institutional world. “It was a phenomenal opportunity for the farmers to bring a lot of products to market,” Durgan says, “as well as for us to be able to serve locally grown products on campus.”

Understanding the farm-to-school supply chain later proved even more useful to Durgan, as did his experience weathering two management transitions, one at PSU and one at WWU. “I learned that these transitions are all about the people,” he says. “When things like this happen, there is a lot of apprehension and unknowns. We need to always be concerned about the people.”

Because of his work with farmers and growers, Durgan was asked to join a farm-to-school advisory board that the Bellingham Public Schools had formed to examine its food services program. “As we went through this process, the district realized they didn’t have the right people in position for the transition. They needed a chef with a particular skillset.” Durgan was, to some degree, uniquely suited for this position: high-volume institutional cooking, educational food services background, management transition experience, and proven ability to bring farm products straight to institutional kitchens. And more importantly, Durgan understood that establishing a new food culture would be challenging for the existing staff, fraught with unknowns, and emotionally charged. “I knew I didn’t have all the answers,” Durgan says, “but I wanted to create this path, where together we could move forward in building a kitchen that would serve us well now and into the future.”

Durgan began work as the BPS’s Executive Chef and Director of Food Services on January 2, 2016, and since that day has never stopped thinking about ways to implement the priorities the district and its stakeholders laid out in their strategic planning sessions. “We realize it’s a long, slow road,” says Durgan of their systematic approach. “To do it in a smart way, we needed to take time, and continue to go back to our foundation. We appreciate the patience our community is showing with our process.”

Progress may take time, but changes are noticed. “We celebrate the little things,” says Durgan. “Parents, teachers, staff, and students all were really happy with one of the first initiatives we implemented to get things going in the right direction: a salad bar.” A salad bar is so simple, says Durgan, but it provides so much. “First of all,” says Durgan, “a salad bar allows you to offer, not just serve food. In a salad bar kids can choose what appeals to them, and they’re likely to eat it. If you just serve them something on a tray, they may eat it, or it may go straight into the waste stream.” Salad bars also provide the opportunity to offer more variety of produce, says Durgan.

Other small but celebrated changes include things like the food services staff creating a recipe for “queso cheese sauce” from whole ingredients to pour on tortilla chips for nachos, rather than using the institutional cheese sauce product. “We put in cauliflower and onions,” says Durgan, and the staff and kids love it. “And, Durgan notes, the food services employees are excited by the positive feedback and proud of what they create. “They love these kids and they are proud to serve them delicious food,” he says.

Fairly recently, Durgan was thrilled to hire Chef Mataio Gillis, who owns Bellingham’s popular Ciao Thyme restaurant. “Mataio embraced everything we have in our Good Food Promise,” says Durgan, who cannot praise Gillis highly enough. “Mataio has helped us get almost a full year ahead in our menu planning,” Durgan says. “We are already well above 50% transitioned toward scratch cooking for Fall 2019, and I only expected to be at 10-15%. It’s so exciting.”

In addition to menu-planning wizardry, Gillis also brought to the BPS a grower that Durgan is excited about: Bluebird Grain Farms. “Mataio already used Bluebird’s grains at Ciao Thyme,” Durgan explains, “and he loved it, said it was so versatile. So we tried it at community events and we worked with the product a bit to see what feedback we’d get from kids and community members.” The response was overwhelmingly positive, says Durgan, especially for Bluebird’s Emmer Farro options. “We’re so ecstatic about these products,” says Durgan, who uses farro in grain salads, as a hot grain pilaf, and as texture in black bean burger patties. “You can abuse it a little, but it always resuscitates itself.” The BPS has to “abuse” products, Durgan adds; it’s the nature of institutional cooking. “This grain stands up,” he says.

Emmer farro is also fairly different than what most kids are used to. It’s a grain with texture and flavor, unlike most pastas and rices. “We like to expose kids and staff to new things,” Durgan says. “Even if something looks unfamiliar or unappealing, we encourage them to ‘take an adventure bite.'” Stepping out of one’s comfort zone appears to be a theme for all involved in the BPS’s Food Services Program, from creators to consumers.

School’s out for the summer now, but Durgan and his staff remain busy, serving roughly 16,000 free meals to kids under 18. “It’s a standard bag lunch now,” says Durgan, “but we are hoping to maybe grow our offerings.” Durgan is always asking, “How can we do more? How can we address a need, while still balancing our capacity and our ability to deliver on core things, and our long-term sustainability?” This desire to feed hungry kids was put to the test over the winter, when the BPS had a week of snow days. “We knew there were kids counting on getting meals at school,” Durgan says. “We figured out a way to serve nearly 800 lunches to kids in need. We made things hamburgers and vegan curry. AmeriCorps helped us deliver the meals. Those kids got fed.”

Unlike restaurants, the BPS is not competing for customers. “Our customers are our students,” says Durgan. This makes the BPS well-positioned to be a leader and a resource in a fairly revolutionary approach to institutional cooking. “We want to share recipes and processes with other school districts,” says Durgan. “We want to be an example. We’ve learned a lot and want to share that knowledge.”

Indeed, as a food service program testing with great success recipes like beet hummus and felafel, the BPS Food Services Program under Durgan and Gillis has much to offer. “We’ve taken all these things that used to be highly-processed, like meatloaf and sauces,” says Durgan, “and transitioned those to scratch. We tested, got feedback, revamped.” The kids are so ready for this kind of change, Durgan adds. “They are far more prepared for it than I had dared hope they’d be.” The staff, too, are embracing the changes. “We have such dedicated staff who bring all this excitement to work every day,” says Durgan. “We all own a piece of this change.”

Learn more about the Bellingham Public Schools’ Food Services Program and chefs Patrick Durgan and Mataio Gillis on the district website.