Author: Brooke Lucy

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.

by Ashley Lodato

staff writer, Bluebird Grain Farms

photos courtesy of Sage Mountain Natural Foods

As if farming, running a fermented vegetables business, teaching in Wenatchee Valley College’s sustainable agriculture program, and raising three kids under the age of 12 weren’t enough, Danielle Gibbs had to go and buy herself a natural food store.

Buying Sage Mountain Natural Foods wasn’t, however, a hobbyist move for Gibbs; it was a strategic decision that positions her as a change agent in food systems. “I wanted to be a part of getting more healthy food to people,” says Gibbs. As a farmer for her husband’s family farm (Gibbs Organic Farm in Leavenworth, WA) Gibbs grew healthy, organic food on a small scale. As an instructor for the Wenatchee Valley College (WVC) system, she reached a receptive but small segment of the population. But it is in retail food sales that Gibbs believes she can reach the biggest and broadest audience, reinforcing the importance of making choices at all levels–proverbially, from farm to table–that change our food culture.

Gibbs grew up in suburban North Carolina and later earned a degree in philosophy (“useful for everything and nothing,” she notes). Although her family was not particularly outdoorsy, they were interested in healthy eating. “We shopped at health food stores ever since I was little,” Gibbs says. “All these shops with crystals everywhere in the 1980s, my parents giving us tons of herbs.” After college, Gibbs worked on a farm in Massachusetts before making her way out to Washington to “see the west and learn what it was like to farm in this region.” Gibbs interned on the Gibbs farm in 2001 and soon became the garden manager at Leavenworth’s Tierra Learning Center in 2003 before returning to the Gibbs farm in 2006.

Interspersed with farming, marrying, and bearing three children, Gibbs started fermenting vegetables and producing three flavors of live sauerkraut as a value-added product for the farm, as well as teaching for WVC and managing the campus greenhouse. It was during her tenure at WVC that Gibbs first encountered Bluebird Grain Farms, when she took a class on a farm tour with Brooke and Sam Lucy. “I’d tasted Bluebird’s products before and loved them,” says Gibbs, “but seeing the farm and hearing how passionate the Lucys are about organic, sustainable farming–it really registered for me what quality products they offer.” When Gibbs purchased Leavenworth’s 21-year-old natural food store, Sage Mountain Natural Foods, Bluebird was one of the many local suppliers to whom she turned in her quest to offer her customers the best ingredients at the best prices.

Gibbs was aware that the store was for sale for a number of years before she purchased it, inspired in the end by the thought of creating a place full of healthy food options, grown by local and regional producers, in an environment welcoming to and nurturing of the local community. “As Leavenworth gets more touristy,” Gibbs says, “those of us who live here full-time feel the need for places that are for us, places that have our needs and values in mind. I want Sage Mountain to be one of those places.” Visitor business is seasonal and ephemeral, says Gibbs, “but it’s the locals who sustain us.”

Sage Mountain Natural Foods is a feast for the senses for anyone who visits, from local to tourist, and even those just passing through and unlikely to buy the ingredients to make a meal from scratch can find many delights to take home, from soaps to wildflower mixes to gifts to deli and bakery treats. Local shoppers can stock up on everything from bulk cleaning and beauty products to grains to dairy to produce. And shop for produce they have indeed. Gibbs says “Our produce sales are six times what they were when I first bought the store.”

Produce, it seems, is not just Gibbs’ passion, it’s also her secret superpower. “I was in that world, and I know many of the produce growers,” Gibbs says. “I sold at markets with them. I know who grows what well.” Gibbs calls herself “picky” when it comes to produce selection, and despite the fussy negative connotation of that description, being picky–or discerning–translates into gorgeous produce available to her customers. “I select exactly what I want to buy from each farmer,” she says. “I encourage them to grow the things they grow best and enjoy growing.”

To support the store’s increased emphasis on produce, Gibbs also installed a new cooler and assigned produce to a larger area. She keeps prices low by participating in a natural food cooperative that gives her access to steeper discounts on fruits and vegetables. And, Gibbs says somewhat apologetically, “I do the produce myself. I like to control the display and how it looks.” She is, however, training another store employee to pinch-hit for her on occasion. “We have the best produce in town and people come in for that,” Gibbs says, adding that “Dan’s Food Market [another local grocer] also has a great selection.”

Getting nutritious and delicious foods into the hands and bellies of locals was important to Gibbs, but so too is supporting small-scale farmers in the region. To this end, Sage Mountain Natural Foods supports Regenerative Agriculture, which Gibbs describes as a movement that focuses on farming according to environmental principles of enriching soils, protecting water sources, and regenerating ecosystems (which pretty closely matches the Regenerative Agriculture’s definition of the “system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services”). It’s a holistic approach, Gibbs explains, where farmers put a lot of energy into “nourishing their land, rotating crops, and maintaining buffers.” Instead of focusing on food production first, Gibbs says, you focus on regenerating the land. “When you harvest you remove crops and take away from the land, which takes away nutrients. You need to give back to the earth.”

“We believe that farmers are an essential part of a healthy community,” Gibbs continues, “and we want to keep our farmers viable. We also want to keep the money in our local economy. So we buy from local farmers as our first option, and Charlie’s [an independent regional produce company] next, then other Pacific Northwest growers, then California growers.”

In addition to a robust and appealing produce display, Gibbs worked more fresh fruits and vegetables into Sage Mountain by opening a deli in the store, offering wraps, baked goods, salads, and soups. “It’s all about cooking seasonally and creatively,” she says, “And we have some consistent options and some options that are constantly changing.” The deli has been a big draw to the store, Gibbs is pleased to report. A long-time fan of Seattle’s PCC Community Markets, Gibbs found herself saying “We need something like PCC’s deli.” Once she realized that she had the venue to turn that idle wish into reality, she immediately contacted a deli manager she had in mind, who had managed the deli at The Food Co-op in Port Townsend; that employee now fully manages Sage Mountain’s deli.

Through her work at Sage Mountain, Gibbs has learned how many people really do cook from scratch, despite popular impressions that Americans are all about quick and easy these days. “We’ve offered quick meal packages,” Gibbs says, “but we don’t sell a lot of them. People are buying really basic ingredients from us.” Some of those basic ingredients are somewhat surprising, like Bluebird’s wheat berries or rye berries, for example. As delicious and nutrition-packed as they are, organic Methow Hard Red Wheat Berries are not exactly an impulse buy. Less surprising are the Bluebird Grain Farms Organic Einkorn Flour and Organic Emmer Farro Flour, which Sage Mountain customers scoop up with gusto, indicating widespread baking projects at home.

Cooking from scratch may seem a small gesture, but it’s an important one, giving people like Gibbs hope for a growing population of citizens who value fresh, natural foods grown in a sustainable, regenerative manner. An indication, perhaps, that bigger changes in food systems are afoot. Sage Mountain Natural Foods may be small, but this treasured and vital piece of Leavenworth’s healthy economy and healthy community is making its mark.

Visit Sage Mountain Natural Foods on Facebook, or stop by the store at 11734 Hwy 2 in Leavenworth.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

photos by Aubrie Pick

With a resume that includes culinary leadership at restaurants named for the Pacific Northwest’s most renowned explorers, Executive Chef Dolan Lane might be mistaken for a man who favors hardtack and pemmican. After all, the namesakes of Portland restaurants Clarklewis and Meriwether’s survived quite happily on such fare for more than two grueling years, making their way across plains and over mountain ranges in the quest for western expansion. But although Lane’s menus feature more carefully curated and varied cuisine, there’s one thing Chef Lane has in common with the crews of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark, whose parties hunted and foraged their way across the western territories from 1804-1806: he’s partial to locally-sourced, seasonally-available ingredients.

Chef Lane’s culinary roots lie in the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. A south Seattle suburb latchkey kid in the 1970s and 1980s, Lane learned to fend for himself early, coming home after school and making omelets for himself and, often, a few friends, to tide over the hunger pangs until dinner. “I still have a thing for omelets,” he says.

Although Lane’s parents worked full time, his mother always cooked and the family ate at 5pm without fail, winter or summer. “My mom had a great repertoire,” Lane says. “It was always very straightforward and consistent: pork chops, pot roast, a green salad with every dinner. Once a week we’d go out for dinner.”

Before his mother got home from work, Lane would experiment in the kitchen. “My mom would come home and there would be spaghetti noodles stuck to the wall,” he says, “because I’d read that that was the way to test if they were cooked.” (It’s not, and Lane now knows that.)

Lane took his first cooking job at a mom and pop Italian restaurant when he was 17, making pizzas. “Even at that age,” he says, “I loved it. I knew I wanted to be involved in restaurants.”

But instead of following work he found fulfilling, Lane went to photography school. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t stick with it. “I just wasn’t feeling it,” he says. Instead, he spent a summer working at a friend’s resort and subsequently was accepted at the California Culinary Academy. When he graduated, Lane says, “I was young, I was just out of school, and I hadn’t traveled much.” So he got a job cooking on cruise ships, sailing around the Caribbean and Mediterranean working with a crew of 11 in the kitchen to provide meals for nearly 200 guests on the ship. “I had a great time,” Lane says, “and we did a pretty good job with the food, cooking in that environment for so many people.”

After a stint on a local cruise line running trips from Portland, OR to Lewiston, ID in 1998, Lane spent some time in Portland and has been there ever since, working as chef de cuisine and later executive chef at Bluehour, in addition to Clarklewis and Meriwether’s.

Cooking at Clarklewis was instrumental in Lane’s development of a reputation as a chef with strong ties to farm-to-table philosophy. “Clarklewis really came with a big history,” he says. “That’s when I really started meeting farmers and foragers. We were going to farmers markets three days a week, hand selecting produce, and writing menus on that.”

At Meriwether’s, says Lane, he would walk around the restaurant’s Skyline Farm with farm manager Caitlin Blood and talk about what she would like to grow and what he would do with the products. On days when Lane couldn’t visit the farm Blood sent him pictures of products like carrots, held in her hand for scale. “Pick them today,” he’d tell her, or “Wait until tomorrow.”

“I developed a deep connection to the farm products,” Lane says. “The farm grew such quality produce. I was able to pass that information on to the restaurant’s guests. It wasn’t just a marketing tool. I was really able to talk about the farm and what we were trying to do with all the amazing different varietals we were able to grow and how we were able to get the absolute freshest ingredients onto the table the same day they were harvested.”

The flip side of farming, however, is that sometimes crops don’t well as hoped, and sometimes they exceed expectations. “And then we ask, ‘What are we going to do with all this basil?’” Lane says. “You can only do so much pesto.”

Lane has long been inspired by other farm-to-table pioneers, mentioning Dan Barber of Blue Hill Farm north of Manhattan, who runs a restaurant, working farm, and consulting company supporting sustainable agriculture and world food systems. Barber’s work motivated Lane to make his own polenta, which involves growing the corn, threshing it, milling it, and making it into a smooth boiled cornmeal porridge. The result is heavenly, quite unlike the commercial ready-made versions available in supermarkets.

Lane was hired as the Executive Chef at Portland’s Red Star Tavern in 2016 with the promise of bringing “lighter and brighter” food to the menus. Red Star Tavern is what Lane calls a “modern tavern,” with modern tavern fare. “Tavern fare” is traditionally comfort food and meats and the “modern” twist to that, says Lane, is “providing balance to heavier dishes.” He continues, “It’s really easy to use butter and rich sauces, but you also need acid, seasoning, and freshness.” For example, the Red Star Tavern lunch menu features a perennially popular mac-n-cheese dish, to which Lane adds pickled peppers. “The pickling juice cuts through the richness,” he says. “It’s nuances like that that tweak the traditional pub food and lighten it up.”

Lane’s wife is influential in his focus on healthier habits at home as well. “My wife keeps us on the straight and narrow,” he says, referring to the couple’s three children ages 14, 8, and 5. “Food is a big thing in our house,” he continues, “but I can’t do the kind of food I do at the tavern at home.” Instead, Lane and his wife focus on a diet low in gluten and dairy, using their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares from Gathering Together Farm, and making soups for the week ahead. And although it’s difficult with his schedule, Lane also commits to a signature ritual from his childhood: sitting down together for dinner every night.

Lane addresses Portland’s solid foothold in the farm-to-table movement. “In the beginning,” he says, “farmers didn’t know how to connect direct and we [chefs] didn’t know how to find farmers. Now it’s easy, it’s all set up by these great chefs who made it all happen. When I got into this business I never thought we’d see what’s happening now, with chefs interacting directly with farmers and foragers.”

The role of the forager, while limited, provides an opportunity to create menus with unique intrigue. “The foragers bring us berries, mushrooms, wild plums, sour plums, watercress, and sorrel,” Lane says.  “The products are short-lived, but we use them whenever we can get them. A bright lemony wood sorrel or the pungent flavor of wild watercress—they’re just so unique.” The products are available unpredictably, based on seasons and weather, and thus provide an unusual challenge to chefs, but the results are worth the extra inventiveness required.

Lane became acquainted with Bluebird Grain Farms products in 2008, through Provista Specialty Foods. “I started using the organic whole grain emmer farro,” he says, because of its versatility. “At first I was just connecting it with lamb, because it’s such a natural fit with lamb.” But then, Lane says, “You can do so many other things with it. I started studding it with dried fruit or nuts, or arugula and roasted beets. It’s a warm salad or a cold salad. You can marinate it and it absorbs the flavor. In the summer you add tomatoes, or you add steak and kale for bolster. There’s just so much you can do with it.” The Red Star Tavern dinner menu currently features a lamb meatball, with ground lamb and smoked farro.

“We’re lucky to have smart diners,” says Lane of his Portland and visiting clientele. “We get people looking for nuances and twists. We want to highlight for them the best of what we offer in the Northwest.” To this end, Lane works closely with Red Star Tavern’s head bartender, Brandon Lockman, to connect the dots between food and drink, so whether clients are ordering a local craft beer or a high-end Japanese whiskey, their drinks and food work well together. “People can come in and get some of the best beers, wines, and craft cocktails available, paired with seasonal menus,” Lane says. “We’ve got a great team working hard to provide that experience.”

Red Star Tavern, Lane continues, “has remained relevant. We provide a quintessential modern Pacific Northwest tavern experience.”

To learn more about Red Star Tavern, visit their website.  (Sadly they closed since this post was written).

by Ashley Lodato  / Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

In these times of corporate conglomerates, independently-owned businesses are a welcome prospect and employee-owned co-ops are downright refreshing. Sno-Isle Food Co-op (Sno-Isle) located in North Everett, WA, is one such breath of fresh air. The 21-year-old non-profit retail food source is democratically governed by a board of elected trustees representing the more than 5,000 families who belong to the co-op and is dedicated to offering high-quality local and sustainable products.

Connecting individuals with the local food system are paramount for Sno-Isle, says Retail Manager Stephanie Davis. “We can help people understand the importance of and value in sourcing food directly and regionally. Sno-Isle offers a sensory experience that other grocery stores lack. We want people to feel connected to their foods and their communities.”

Davis grew up in the kitchen with her grandmother and says that her grandfather always had an impressive tomato garden, giving her an early taste for the perfection of a home-grown, sun-ripened tomato: a product rarely found in large mainstream grocery stores but readily available in season in co-ops like Sno-Isle. Although her immediate family was not focused on local or organic foods, says Davis, “they did put a lot of energy into preparing whole foods for the family to enjoy together. Those hours spent in the kitchen as a young person undoubtedly shaped my love for food and my desire to improve our food system.”

Sno-Isle’s retail department‘s practices reflect this desire. The buyers’ top priority is in “sourcing local and sustainable products.” With the goal of ensuring the ongoing preservation and betterment of the Earth, buyers consider “biodiversity in farming, products packed in compostable materials, and companies that recycle limited resources” when making their sourcing decisions. Sno-Isle is also committed to organic and non-GMO foods, even going so far as to require all products that are found on the Top Ten GMO crops list be certified Non-GMO or be in the process of gaining said certification.

Sno-Isle is invested not just in the health and longevity of individuals, but also that of communities. To that end, Sno-Isle offers classes & events, recipes, tips for healthier living, and it supports and sustains local non-profits through efforts like its Register Roundup program (members can round their purchase totals up and Sno-Isle puts the difference into member-selected non-profits) and its grants program, to which local community organizations apply for funding. It also promotes local growers and artisans by selling and displaying their work, and features an Artist of the Month. Says Davis about this community focus, “A strong commitment to community is a base value of any true co-op. Co-ops are formed when community members come around an idea and work together to create a viable solution that serves the identified need. It’s about the WHOLE serving the individual and that individual supporting the whole.” Sno-Isle takes this very seriously, says Davis. “We work to provide high-quality food and education for our owners, their families, the community at large, food producers, farmers AND our staff.”

Sno-Isle works collaboratively with its members to best serve their needs. “We’re always learning from our customers,” says Davis. In fact, Sno-Isle started carrying Bluebird Grain Farms products when a customer introduced co-op staff to their grains. “A few years ago a customer came in raving about Bluebird Grain Farms,” Davis recalls, “and the rest is history. We presently carry a variety of whole grain products in bags and in bulk, as well as some of the fabulous mixes and flours that Bluebird offers.” The products introduced by the customer proved popular and, says Davis, other customers who try the products “keep coming back!”

This is just one example of the autonomy that Davis and her colleagues have at Sno-Isle: the ability to respond quickly to a customer suggestion and better serve all customers. The co-op structure makes this possible. “We aren’t tied down by off-site corporate rules,” says Davis. “Instead, we are able to work in a way that allows us to truly reflect the needs, desires and assets of the community we are serving.” In fact, one of the line items in Sno-Isle’s mission is to “encourage members to contribute and participate.” The Bluebird connection shows that members are indeed active in the co-op.

As for those who harbor the notion that food co-ops are exclusive and expensive, Davis dispels the myth. “Our knowledgeable staff can show you how to shop the store economically. There is something for everyone here. We are family friendly [and every child who visits the co-op gets a free banana!].” Davis urges customers who care about their food’s quality and sourcing to visit Sno-Isle. “Come in!,” she says. You can be a part of making a difference.

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

Some 1960s-era newlyweds took up golf together or joined bridge circles, but for Gail (some call him Pete) and Judy Prichard the mutual hobby was baking bread. “When Gail and I got married we just started baking bread,” says Judy. “We were baking long before we had kids.”

Judy explains that baking bread using organic ingredients sourced as locally as possible was part of the ethic she and Gail shared early on in their marriage. “We planted a garden and grew as much food as we could,” she says. “It was all part of our intention to eat as well as we could.”

Although Judy grew up with a mother who baked bread regularly, Judy didn’t really learn to bake until college. “In my early college years, both of my parents were very ill. I had to cook for them one summer. My mother kind of walked me through it.” Taking up bread baking with her new husband, then, was a perfectly logical next step. “Now it feels like something I’ve always done,” Judy says.

Through her middle child, Susan, who lives in the Methow Valley where Bluebird Grain Farms is located, Judy learned about Bluebird Grain Farms. “It was so wonderful to learn about their family farm and to be able to buy grains from a family that is doing a really good thing,” says Judy of Brooke and Sam Lucy. “We just really wanted to support them in what they do.”

“And their products are just so good,” Judy continues. “We love the taste of their fresh-milled flours and cereals, as well as the whole grain emmer farro.”

These days, Judy mainly bakes whole wheat bread for hers and Gail’s consumption. “Unless it’s Christmas or the grandkids are coming,” she says. “I don’t bake a lot with just 2 of us now, but when I do bake I always use Bluebird Grain Farms products.” For her signature whole wheat bread, Judy uses Bluebird’s Methow Hard Red Wheat flour. For pie crusts, biscuits, muffins, scones, buttermilk hotcakes, and banana bread, Judy likes the Pasayten Hard White Wheat flour, although she is quick to acknowledge that the Organic Emmer Farro flour and Organic Einkorn flour add a nutty flavor and chewy texture to quick bread like banana bread. “We really like the Einka flour,” she says.

Judy notes that she and Gail routinely substitute Organic Whole Grain Emmer Farro for rice, finding it a far more nutritious carbohydrate than rice, as well as one with a hearty flavor and robust texture.

Judy didn’t deliberately train her own 3 children in the art of baking, but threads of her passion for good grains were passed on to her kids in different forms. Her daughter Susan bakes stacks of cinnamon whole wheat sweet bread to give away at Christmas. Her youngest, Karin, orders Bluebird’s Organic Old World Cereal blend to be shipped to her home in California.

And with a nod to the single degree of separation that seems to be the norm of social relationships in tiny communities like the Methow Valley Judy notes, “It’s neat to be able to buy your organic flour from a farmer whose daughters are in piano recitals with your own grandkids.”

by Ashley Lodato

Bluebird Grain Farms staff writer

photos by Ashley Loyer

The “farm to table” movement has swept the country by storm in recent years, but for those brought up like Chef Cameron Slaugh (rhymes with “raw”), farm to table isn’t a movement–it is a way of life. Raised on a rural Utah subsistence farm, Slaugh grew up eating gorgeous produce served raw or prepared simply, freshly-laid eggs, and whole grains. So even while his peers were slurping up popsicles as an after-dinner treat, Slaugh found pure pleasure in the form of a warm vine-ripened tomato or a handful of berries for dessert. And at the impressionable age of 8, Slaugh began seeking inspiration in the kitchen, surrounded by the bounty of his family’s farm and the freshest ingredients he could ever hope to handle.

At 12 Slaugh started washing dishes at a small local ski area, then helping with banquets, then serving in the dining room of another ski area. “At 17 I finally found my way to the kitchen,” says Slaugh. “I’d always had that desire to cook. Cooking made sense to me.”

When Slaugh decided to pursue cooking full time, at 20, he proceeded full steam ahead, jumping onto a train bound for New York City–a place he had never before visited–and entered the French Culinary Institute. He got a room in the dorms, started school, and almost immediately found a job cooking at Park Avenue, a restaurant with a seasonally rotating menu then located in New York City’s Upper East Side (it has since moved downtown).

“Everything really started for me there,” says Slaugh. “I loved the way that everything changed with the seasons at Park Avenue,” he says. “The uniforms, the menu, the dining room decor. It was very refreshing.” Mentoring with the acclaimed Chef Craig Koketsu at Park Avenue, Slaugh learned to maximize the flavors of each season’s freshest available produce.

Slaugh’s next job was at NYC’s renowned Eleven Madison Park, and landing that position took special effort. “I basically annoyed the chef at Eleven Madison until he let me into the kitchen as a sous chef,” Slaugh says. But it was worth the effort; being part of the culinary team at Eleven Madison Park’s kitchen was both professionally rewarding and personally meaningful. “I took so much away from that experience,” says Slaugh. “The detail and organization, the technique and creativity.”

But most of all, Eleven Madison’s lasting impact on Slaugh were the lessons he learned about cooking from the heart. “In an intense environment like Eleven Madison you can forget about that,” Slaugh says, “but the best advice I ever got there was to cook with heart and soul. Your technique can be flawless, but the best food has to also be delicious, and you can really only get that if you invest yourself in the process.”

In the fast-paced, stress-filled kitchens of the world’s finest restaurants–of which Eleven Madison Park is one–preparing meals takes on game-day proportions, day after day after day. “Being one of the best restaurants in the world doesn’t come without sacrifice,” says Slaugh, “but while in many restaurant kitchens there is a pervasive fear of failure, Eleven Madison wasn’t about that.” Instead, says Slaugh, at Eleven Madison the kitchen team worked toward common goals, with a high enjoyment factor. Still, “It’s like a Super Bowl every day,” says Slaugh. “You have to push yourself, it’s like you’re pushing through battle every day, sprinting to the finish. But you feel like you accomplished something. And when you look back you see the growth.”

Slaugh and his wife eventually moved back west to his mother’s hometown, Los Angeles, and Slaugh began cooking at Osteria La Buca, a country Italian tavern focusing on “grassroots Italian cooking.” Slaugh’s legacy at Osteria La Buca is the West LA farmland he leased and used to grow produce for the restaurant. This allowed Slaugh and his team to plan seasons ahead in their menus, planting what they wanted and creating menus around the daily harvest. Restaurant staff picked produce just hours before it was to be served to La Buca diners. “It was a different way of thinking about menus,” says Slaugh. “It was more spontaneous. Sometimes we had no idea what a dish was going to look like, but we grew the best produce, and we bought the best of everything we couldn’t grow: from salt to grains to caviar to oil.” Quality ingredients make quality food.

This implementation of farm to table in its most literal sense brought Slaugh right back to his childhood. “We ate so much in a raw state at home,” he says. “Tomatoes sliced with vinaigrette, peas just shelled, the sweetest carrots.” Slaugh says he fell in love with cooking all over again at La Buca.

In early 2016, Slaugh ran an Osteria La Buca pop up restaurant in Yakima. “We did it in the Icehouse Bar,” he says. “There were 8 seats. We did 4 dinners–2 dinners each day for 2 days. We sold them all out. There was no menu; guests had no idea what they were going to get. They just signed on to this journey with us.”

That visit to Yakima turned out to be fateful for Slaugh; he was recruited shortly after by Cowiche Canyon Kitchen owner Graham Snyder to move to Yakima full time and embark on a new restaurant with a farm-fresh mission. The rural aspect of Yakima appealed to Slaugh, but he also sensed a hunger–both literal and figurative–in Yakima patrons for his style of cooking. “There was a community desire for adventuresome eating,” he says. “I just connected with it.”

Not long after Slaugh joined the Cowiche Canyon Kitchen as its executive chef, he and Snyder launched Restaurant Wahluke. Although the concept of a four-course prix fixe menu served at a family-style 14-seat table is not new, it’s not exactly commonplace in rural areas like Yakima. But to assume that rural diners are not sophisticated enough to embrace a micro-restaurant like Wahluke would be narrow-minded; Yakima diners filled the dining room night after night for the 90-120 minute dinner services.

Riding Wahluke’s success, Snyder and Slaugh decided to develop an Asian-inspired eatery in what once was Wahluke’s lounge; they opened E.Z. Tiger in April 2018. The dim-sum and noodle house features “the flavors of the Pacific Rim” and caters to a regular local crowd. “It is a better fit for the space, and we had a feeling this might work better,” says Slaugh. “There was nothing in Yakima really like this.”

Meanwhile, Wahluke operates as a pop-up restaurant that will serve season-based menus out of various Yakima Valley venues. Response to Slaugh’s menus has been “huge,” says Slaugh. “Way more than I ever could have imagined. The reviews are off the charts. We are just thrilled by the positivity. We feel blessed to have people that believe in us so much.”

Both EZ Tiger and Wahluke are quite young and are still evolving. It’s this evolution and innovation that feed Slaugh. “I can’t be doing the same thing all the time,” he says. “That’s who I am, that’s how I cook. I can’t grow as a chef and as a person if there isn’t evolution.”

Slaugh learned about Bluebird Grain Farms from the 21 Acres Center for Local Food & Sustainable Living in Woodinville (a center for “conscious consumers who want to learn new, more sustainable ways of living”). “They sold Bluebird products and I tried some,” says Slaugh. “It was the summer before Wahluke opened and we were looking for the best of everything. We needed quality grains, so we bought whatever they had and started cooking with it. I was blown away.”

Slaugh continues, “Bluebird sent me some samples–milled flours, Einkorn, emmer farro–so I started a little R&D, playing with the ingredients. All of the flours, all of the whole grains–everything was just excellent.” One of Slaugh’s most surprising innovations is his popular farro/celery root dish. “That dish was such an unexpected hit,” he says. “It’s almost literally just emmer farro and celery root. People love it.” He adds, “Vegetarians always get short-changed. I want the vegetarian entree coming out of my kitchen to be as special as any of the meat dishes, if not more so.” The celery root farro is indeed that, evidence that Slaugh is honoring his commitment to “cooking properly” for all guests, not just the omnivores.

For Slaugh, “cooking properly” means maintaining a steadfast connection to food sources. He adheres to the basic food principle he learned as a kid, and which was reinforced early in his career in fine dining: the best chef is the one who uses the best ingredients. Slaugh and his wife settled in Yakima with not just a house, but also a farm. His parents moved from Utah and bought a farm as well, where they grow some of the produce Slaugh uses at E.Z. Tiger and Wahluke. “Farmers are the real superstars,” Slaugh says. “If the ingredients are right, we don’t have to do a lot with them in the kitchen. We let the ingredients shine.”

To learn more about Slaugh’s food ventures, follow him on Instagram (Wahluke) and Facebook (E.Z. Tiger).

They say some things are so addictive you can get hooked on your very first try. Patrick Jeannette (aka “Grampy Pat”) had this experience the first time he sampled a true Alaskan sourdough bread, and he’s had nary a sourdough-free day since.

Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Grampy Pat learned to cook beans, tacos, enchiladas, and Mexican rice from his Mexican-American father. The eldest of 6 children, Grampy Pat was the official babysitter and ad hoc parent when his mother and father needed to “get away from the brood,” he says. But Grampy Pat had never really baked anything until he was 17 and his father died, leaving him as the main supporter in the household for his stay-at-home mother and 5 siblings. Still, the “baking” was just Bridgford frozen par-baked breads–a far cry from the gorgeous hand-shaped baguettes, boules, and miches he would later pull hot from his oven.

Still, many years passed between those Bridgford rolls and Grampy Pat’s signature sourdoughs–years that Grampy Pat spent, in his wife’s words, as a “serial entrepreneur.” Life moved at a fast pace in the 70s, says Grampy Pat, and after a couple of failed ventures a successful printing business allowed him to “buy the big house on the hill for my wife and 2 kids,” before migrating north to Alaska to use his design minor to create fabulous kitchens for affluent Alaskans. When Grampy Pat had completed a kitchen, he always cooked the first meal in it for his clients. One night a client said “That’s great–you cook dinner and I’ll bake Alaskan sourdough bread to go with it.”

Well, “OMG,” says Grampy Pat, “for me that first dinner was all about the bread!” The client used a sourdough starter that fed gold miners in 1878 in Ketchikan, AK. He gave Grampy Pat some of the starter and wrote the recipe on the inside of a paper bag, quite possibly unaware that he was unleashing a culinary tornado of leavened bread potential on not only Seward’s Folly but on the rest of the continental United States as well.

A passion was born. “A few weeks later I was holding seminars on baking Alaskan sourdough,” says Grampy Pat.

Grampy Pat eventually moved back to California and baked for family events and friends. Forever the entrepreneur, he had 3 different businesses going when one day his next door neighbor asked if he could bake her 14 baguettes. “Yes,” he said, “but I only bake naturally leavened sourdough breads, nothing with commercial yeast.” This was not a problem for the neighbor, nor was it a problem for Grampy Pat that he had never shaped or baked a baguette. “I went on YouTube to learn how,” he says, baby boomer in age but millennial in spirit.

Grampy Pat was working by day and baking by night when his wife, now Dean of the College of Arts at California State University, Long Beach, told him “Honey, I can’t sleep with you banging around and baking bread in the middle of the night.” So Grampy Pat quit his day job and started baking in his home, after securing licensing that made him legal and an oven that allowed him to bake 48 loaves of bread at a time. He also acquired a name for his bakery: GrampyPat’s (almost famous) Sourdough Bread, after his grandson said “Grampy Pat, why don’t you start a bakery and call it Grampy Pat’s almost-famous sourdough because someday you’ll be famous.”

Grampy Pat still uses that 130-year-old Alaskan sourdough starter for all of his breads. He began baking for restaurants and breweries, as well as selling at the Orange Home Grown Farmers & Artisans Market, at which–judging by online comments–Grampy Pat has achieved at least a modest level of notoriety, if not outright fame.

It’s a well-deserved reputation, built on the taste, texture, and quality of Grampy Pat’s breads. He creates only 100% organic breads made with high alkalinity water and ancient fiber-rich freshly milled grains. “Enter Bluebird Grain Farms,” says Grampy Pat. He uses Bluebird’s Organic Einkorn Flour in his Einka Sourdough, noting that these breads go through a 48-hour fermentation period. “The longer the fermentation, the healthier naturally,” says Grampy Pat. “It’s baking like our forefathers did; they couldn’t go to a convenience store and buy yeast.”

Indeed, not only does Grampy Pat not buy his yeast at grocery stores, but he doesn’t buy his flours there either. That’s why he says that Bluebird’s reliable shipping process is critical to his success. “Their bread flours are fresh-milled and dependable,” he says, “and I always receive my orders in a timely fashion.”

Grampy Pat admits to a more health-conscious approach the older he gets. It’s why he values the 48-hour fermentation, why he likes Einkorn Flour (what’s not to like about a low-gluten flour that’s rich in protein, phosphorous, vitamin B6, potassium, antioxidants and amino acids?), and why he uses sprouted wheat flour in other breads. (Ok, so maybe his Wine Flour Sourdough with Chocolate Nibs isn’t at the top of the list for a weight loss diet–especially when you can’t help but eat the whole loaf yourself–but if you’re going to eat Wine Flour Sourdough with Chocolate Nibs, you won’t find a more nutritious version than Grampy Pat’s.)

Grampy Pat’s offerings read almost like a full menu: pretzels with mustard seeds marinate in unripe sour grape juice for starters; warm up with sourdough spelt, rye, or whole chili sourdough; cleanse the palate with gluten-free bread before moving on to Asiago cheese sourdough or true Italian biga ciabatta; sourdough baguettes for the main course; and finish with the aforementioned chocolate wine flour bread. For a moment there you could believe that you weren’t just eating a 6-course bread meal.

A few years ago Grampy Pat got the opportunity to bake in a 17th-Century wood-fired oven in Cortona, Italy. It’s a bit of an “Under the Tuscan Sun” memory for Grampy Pat: fresh Italian Asiago cheese, an aged Borolo wine opened the day prior, 16 loaves baked in the village oven, his wife, and friends, in a villa near an olive grove. “It was incredible!” says Grampy Pat, (only he added an expletive before “incredible” for emphasis). “Stupefacente!” the Italians might say. “Amazing!” Read more here about this experience.

Although Grampy Pat’s bread is best enjoyed fresh from the farmers market, those of us out of reach of Orange County, CA, can still experience the flavors and texture of his sourdoughs through shipping channels. “I ship internationally and stateside,” says Grampy Pat. Sourdough is a natural preservative, so Grampy Pat’s breads will last up to two weeks, as long as it’s not too hot, so order away.

In a celebrity-filled place like Los Angeles, fame can be fleeting. But like his 1878 Ketchikan sourdough starter, Grampy Pat is in this baking business for the long haul.

Learn more about Grampy Pat’s (almost famous) Sourdough Bread by visiting his website.