Author: Brooke Lucy

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.

For Mazama Store owner Missy LeDuc, it’s all about keeping things fresh and lively. From the produce to the pastries to the housewares to even the employees themselves, everything and everyone in the iconic Mazama cafe and general store seems to be infused with an internal bit of pep. Missy herself is no exception and is, in fact, quite likely the origin of the Mazama Store’s positive buzz of energy.

It’s hard to put your finger on it, but there’s a certain feeling you get when you walk through the doors of the Mazama Store. It’s an air of possibility, a hint of the unexpected, a whiff of indulgence, and mostly, a sense that whether you’re a daily regular or you’re stopping in for the first time, you are welcome in this place. This neighborly atmosphere is no accident; at the Mazama Store, it’s tradition. From its humble roots as a tiny 1920s way-station at the end of the road to its current iteration as an intimate marketplace with a surprisingly broad selection of food, beverages, kitchen implements, and gifts, the Mazama Store has for nearly a century been a watering hole in the hinterlands, a gathering spot for Mazama locals, and a place where, as the store’s motto promises, you can get “a little bit of everything good.”

When current owners Rick and Missy LeDuc bought the Mazama Store in 2007, it was with the specific intention of carrying out the Mazama Store’s tradition of providing quality edibles and hard goods in a community environment. Missy had worked at the store as an employee for the better part of a decade and “really loved the community feeling”; it’s partly what motivated the LeDucs to buy the store. Missy says that prior to the purchase, she took some time away from the store and “felt lonely in the community.” She continues, “you really do get a connection to Mazama by working at the store. In Mazama we can all just get isolated down our own driveways unless we get involved in things.”

Missy’s other incentive for owning the store was, of course, the food. “I just really love food,” Missy says without apology, voicing a sentiment shared by–oh, basically every living creature. “I really appreciated that so many of the products in the store were homemade,” she says, “and I was interested in exploring the food aspect of things at the store.” And explore she has, in the form of expanding the bakery, offering a wide selection of soups and sandwiches daily, and keeping the display cases full of irresistible pastries and breads, from rustic loaves to fruit pies to bagels to sel de mer baguettes. Everything in the kitchen is made from scratch, using the best ingredients Missy can source. For grains, naturally, Missy turns to Bluebird Grain Farms, not just because the Mazama Store’s chief baker is Polly Lucy, Farmer Sam’s sister, but also just because Bluebird’s grains make the freshest and best-tasting whole grain flours available. “Our Emmer Loaf is one of our most popular rustic loaves,” says Missy, noting the bread’s heartiness and nutty flavor derived from Bluebird’s organic emmer flour.

Missy is such an advocate of Bluebird’s grains that she says “We wouldn’t even do a whole grain bread if we didn’t have Bluebird flours.” She continues, “You can taste the difference. It’s very obvious. You use a whole grain flour from somewhere else and it just tastes dead; Bluebird’s flours are fresh and lively. You can’t compare anything else to Bluebird.” Missy notes that the Mazama Store sells a lot of whole grain bread, all of which is made using Bluebird flour. “People really look forward to it and reserve it ahead of time,” she says. “We truly feel that using Bluebird products makes a difference to our customers.”

Other things that make a difference to Mazama Store customers? The inviting atmosphere, check! The fresh locally-roasted java from Blue Star Coffee Roasters, check! The impressive selection of beer and wines, of gifts, of bulk food items, of Husky ice cream, check! The summer pizza nights on the patio, check! But it’s the employees who really give the store its character. “They’re really lovely people,” says Missy. “I enjoy working with them so much.”

Missy continues, “I want my employees to have the best pay they can get. We want to keep them; they’re part of our family.” But she acknowledges, “It’s still so hard to make a small business pencil out. We are constantly working to keep the business profitable while paying our employees a living wage.” This concern feeds into what Missy refers to as “the 3 prongs of sustainability”: longevity of the employees, longevity of the business, and longevity of the planet. To address planetary issues, the Mazama Store has taken a close look at the waste it generates. “We look at how things come to us and we try to minimize packaging,” says Missy. “When you own a store you really see how things arrive. We make many ordering decisions based on not just the quality of the product, but also the amount of packaging involved.”

Where the store has really been able to make a difference is its approach to food waste. First of all, employees strive to minimize, if not eliminate, true food waste. “We are very creative,” says Missy. “With the bulk items, we don’t like to let them sit in the bins too long before we incorporate them into the kitchen. Same with produce–we only want the freshest things out in the store, then we take the older items back into the kitchen to be made into soups. Fruit is made into pies, or apple butter, pear butter, or pastries.” It’s the reason there is no published menu at the Mazama Store; the kitchen needs to have the creative freedom to look at what needs to be used and design menu items around those ingredients. Food scraps are composted by locals who pick up buckets of food waste; someone else picks up leftover milk from the espresso machine and feeds it to her pigs. “It’s very rare that we throw anything out,” says Missy.

Mazama Store employees hold regular sustainability meetings, coming up with solutions for reducing waste. One employee idea resulted in the store re-using shipping boxes to send customers’ groceries home with them; another employee came up with the system of using canning jars for to-go soups, instead of disposable containers. “We don’t even think about those things anymore,” says Missy, “we just do them. And then we’re on to the next idea. It’s creative for everyone–it keeps us energized.”

The Mazama Store gracefully dances the line between folksy and sophisticated, with a carefully curated selection of clothing, mugs, glassware, gifts, and toys augmenting food offerings that would rival those in a chic urban market. Both the store’s shelves and its website promote the work of Methow Valley artisans and growers. This is important to Missy. “The quality of what we offer would decrease if there weren’t local and regional growers out there being successful,” she says. “We feel proud and notice the difference in taste, we see the difference in quality.” Missy believes that more collaborative promotional efforts amongst local providers would benefit everyone; it’s why she devotes a significant amount of website space to other local businesses. “We should all be doing this in the valley,” she says.

Despite a solidly upscale range of products, the store retains a comfortable character. It’s not just the scuffed floors, battered by ski boots. Nor is it the fact that the employees seem to greet nearly everyone by name. It’s more just the atmosphere that comes only from an independent business–a mom-n-pop store, where you know that mom and pop (and in the LeDucs case, most of their children) actually work there and care deeply about the business.

For the LeDucs, the Mazama Store is truly a family business, with Rick, Missy, and their 4 children all working at the store at various points. Although their youngest daughter, Sylvie, is in China, the other 3 LeDuc adult children all work at the store, as well as being involved in the community. Missy manages to find a balance between home life and work life by getting outside whenever possible, and taking little trips out of the valley with Rick here and there. (“Although when we travel I am always looking at other general stores, getting new ideas,” she admits.) But much of Missy’s energy is derived not from being away from the store, but from being right in the thick of it. “I have to put a lot of time into the store,” Missy says. “It’s like an organism that’s changing and growing. I need that, otherwise I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Missy says that customers, too, feed her energy. “We have really wonderful customers,” she says. “We have our locals who we know and love, who come in to visit and talk about things weighty and trivial. And then we have our part-time customers. The part-timers work really hard in their other lives to be able to come here, so when they’re in Mazama they’re in a really good mood. They want to say hello at the store, they want to enjoy the outdoors.” She continues, “We don’t seem to be just a convenience store for the part-timers. They know our employees by name. They want to get to know the locals. It’s really special for me to watch.”

Missy appreciates the Mazama Store’s customers in the bigger picture as well, because they are choosing to support a family-owned independent business. “In this world of WalMart, Amazon, and Costco,” she says, “you need to value your small businesses. If you don’t actually physically go and support them, they will disappear. New laws don’t favor small businesses. You need to go to your local store, get to know the people there, and support them.” This is no selfish request, motivated by personal gain. Missy reminds us that small businesses like the Mazama Store allow employees to earn a living locally. “These small businesses are supporting the people in our community,” she says. “Our employees–this is our community. We’ve seen other places where small businesses close and people have to move out of the community to find work. We see it back east. To me this is a big blinking red light–you need to cruise your towns and support your local stores.”

For more information about the Mazama Store, visit their website or stop by Mazama Junction and experience the Mazama Store for yourself.

It’s fitting that Bluebird is featuring Ecliptic Brewing on this first full day of winter. The Portland brewery and pub unites Oregon craft brewing icon John Harris’s two passions: brewing and astronomy. The centerpiece of the pub is a massive light fixture in the shape of the Analemma (the figure-8 that depicts the sun’s path in the sky through the year) and much of the brewery’s beer and food are in constant change throughout the year. In fact, the seasonal menu rotates every 6 weeks according to the old world calendar: on the solstices, the equinoxes, and Samhain, Brighid, Beltane, and Lammas.

The mastermind behind Ecliptic’s menu is executive chef Michael Molitor, a native Pacific Northwest resident who came to Ecliptic after attending Scottsdale Culinary Institute and cooking at several Portland landmark restaurants, like the Heathman Restaurant and Pazzo Ristorante. As a teen, Molitor cooked in Italian restaurants in and around his hometown of Boise, ID, but hadn’t really considered cooking as a career until many years later. “I was chipping away at a political science degree during the day,” he says, “and working the line at an Italian restaurant at night. I always enjoyed cooking, but then I started to get into restaurant culture. The work really appealed to me: the fast pace, the stress, the people, the controlled chaos…it was all very exciting.”

The transition from political scientist to executive chef was an evolution–one that confirmed Molitor’s eventual career path. “I learned a lot about myself over those couple of years,” he says. “I realized that my future belonged in restaurants.”

Although Molitor comes from a strong background in Italian cooking, at Ecliptic he uses that background as a footing, rather than an anchor. “A good working knowledge of Italian cooking is an excellent foundation to build upon,” he says. “I use that foundation to help build future menus. I respect the Italian sensibility of using a handful of seasonal ingredients, doing very little to them, and letting the food speak for itself.”

When designing the Ecliptic menu, Molitor says he wants to have fun, but also provide consistent items that people come to expect (“although with a twist,” he says). “I have divided the menu into essentially 2 halves,” he says, “one of which is fairly reliably the same, the other changes every 6 weeks. If you come in and are craving a burger, you will not be disappointed. Our burger is consistently ranked one of the best in the city.” The “twist” in this case, is the option to vary from the brewery’s traditional burger and savor the Ecliptic burger, which is made with beef, pancetta, and gruyere, served with Russian dressing on a potato bun.

Molitor says “the versatility of the rapidly changing menu allows me to explore different cuisines and flavors. If you want something seasonal, maybe a little more whimsical, I want to offer that.” Molitor’s exploration into different flavors led him to Bluebird Grain Farms‘ organic whole grain emmer farro, which he discovered through Provvista Specialty Foods, which seeks to provide Portland restaurants with the best quality food products at a fair price. Molitor was familiar with Bluebird’s other products and “was impressed with the quality,” he says; the farro was a natural fit with the Ecliptic menu. It’s important to Molitor to have a vegan option on the sandwich/burger side of the menu, and the farro burger satisfies both vegans and carnivores. “The farro burger is one of our most popular items,” he says. “I have changed the style of the sandwich over the years, but the farro patty remains the same.”

“Farro is a grain that works well with many different cuisines,” Molitor adds. “And I enjoy dipping my toe in the water of different cuisines at Ecliptic. I think that is an outlook on cooking that transcends geography.”

When Molitor eats out, he says he wants restaurant staff to care. “I want someone to acknowledge my presence when I walk in. I want the server to be engaged with our table. I want the cooks to care about executing the menu.” This attention to the quality of the customer experience is something Molitor thinks about as he designs and facilitates the Ecliptic dining experience. So whether Ecliptic customers are families with young children or couples looking for a night out, Molitor and the other staff at Ecliptic focus on reading each individual situation and adjusting the service to accommodate. “We are just looking for genuine effort and quality,” he says.

Ecliptic’s delivery of effort and quality is matched by the caliber of its beer and the standard of its food. “We are not just a brewpub,” says Molitor. “We have amazing beer and some pretty damn good food to go with that beer.”

Along with “damn good” consumables, Ecliptic also offers tours and events both public and private. To learn more about Ecliptic Brewing, visit their website or check them out on Facebook and Instagram.

Chef Dave Miller of Portage Bay Cafe has jokingly commented that in his family, his career choices were entering the service or restaurant work. He’s only half joking. “I’m the first male in my family not to join the military in 7 generations,” Miller says. “Growing up I thought I was in boot camp.” He adds–again, only partly in jest–“The first half of the movie ‘Full Metal Jacket’ was just like my childhood.” Military life did not call Miller, but fortunately his family’s restaurant ties did. “I got started in [my father’s restaurants] at the age of 11, washing dishes and bussing tables. Through the years I worked on my knife and line position skills to where I could branch out and away from the family restaurant and learn from someone else.”

By high school Miller was quite certain that he wanted nothing to do with the military, but he still wasn’t sure if he would make a career out of cooking. So he moved to Seattle in the late 1980s, intending to attend dive and underwater video/photography school. He needed to pay for school and he landed a job at Ray’s Boathouse (still an iconic Seattle seafood eatery), which is where, Miller says, “Something happened there that made me realize what my true calling was. I never did attend the dive school.”

Food was, indeed, in Miller’s blood, he discovered. With the transient life of a military family, food provided a stable presence for family life. “We moved every 18 months on average,” Miller says, so being in a new and different environments was the norm. “We were stationed in several states, and overseas,” he says. “Cooking was always the way to bring the family together.”

Living internationally also cultivated in Miller an adventuresome palate. “I grew up eating foods from whatever region we were in, always a little different,” he says. “One of my favorite places we lived was Panama, my time there made a lasting impact on me. Both of my parents were great cooks, and they were always using the local ingredients no matter where we lived.” He credits his parents’ cooking for his inventive style: “I’m sure that’s where I got my creative spark.”

It is also, quite possibly, how Miller developed an interest in regionally-sourced ingredients. Although Miller is quick to note that it was Portage Bay Cafe’s original owners, Amy and John Gunnar, who “were truly on the forefront of the local, sustainable, and organic dining” movement, it’s a commitment that Miller has adhered to during his time at Portage Bay. He says, “It has been very exciting for me to work with so many small farms and local producers. We really take local, sustainable, and organic seriously.” So seriously, in fact, that the Portage Bay menu section’s listing of local producers is called “Eat Like You Give a Damn.”

Given this commitment to quality foods, Portage Bay Cafe and Bluebird Grain Farms are a swell match. Still, Miller happened upon Bluebird quite by accident. “Portage Bay was using Bluebird products long before my time here,” he says, “but my first experience with Bluebird Grain Farms was years ago while whitewater rafting in the Methow Valley. It seemed every restaurant in the valley was using Bluebird flours or grains.” Miller was already sold on Bluebird’s products, but “the fact that Bluebird is local and family-run adds to the attraction of the products.”

Portage Bay’s famous pancakes are made exclusively with Bluebird Grain Farms Pasayten Hard White wheat flour, says Miller. “We also feature the Emmer Farro on our Greens and Grains salad, along with other weekly specials.” He continues, “The customer response has always been fantastic. It makes our job easier to work with great products like Bluebird Grains.”

Portage Bay Cafe has been said to have “the best brunch in America.” Miller says, “Breakfast/brunch customers can be fickle. Some will eat their favorite dish every time, others look for a little more variety.” Portage Bay’s goal, says Miller, “is to be consistent with our standard menu items for those who want their go-to favorites, as well as being creative with our specials to entice someone to try something new. It can be a challenge to keep everyone happy, but that’s what keeps them coming back day after day.”

When Miller dines out, he looks to see what his peers are doing. Creativity always catches his eye. “It’s easy to fall into the mindset that everything’s been done before,” he says. “I really look for what’s next with food. Some call it a trend, but I call it menu evolution. Almost every chef has the same product that’s available, it’s what they do with it that counts.” With 4 Portage Bay locations in the Seattle area, Miller has his hands full, but also has the opportunity to exercise his creativity. That’s why you might find on the brunch menu both a Classic Benedict and a Dungeness Crab Cake Benedict; Shrimp and Grits; Oatmeal Cobbler French Toast. Familiar items, yet with a twist.

Portage Bay Cafe is turning 20 this year and to celebrate, each of the locations will be doing a pop-up 3-course dinner in December. Each location will have a different menu created by the cafe’s chefs. “It will be a fun night for all,” Miller says. Check Portage Bay’s website and Facebook pages for upcoming details.

Miller’s professional life has centered around food, and his philanthropic side leans that direction as well. 17 years ago Miller got involved with Fare Start, a non-profit that provides solutions to homelessness, poverty, and hunger by providing job training and real-world restaurant and catering work to those who struggle with finding or maintaining stable employment. “It’s a program that’s near and dear to my heart,” says Miller. “I’ve been blessed to be able to contribute my time, experience, and skills to them. It is truly rare to have an opportunity to give back to the industry that has given me a career, and to directly see the change you can make to an individual.”

Fare Start students work in restaurant jobs, catering, catalyst kitchens, and mobile meals. Every Thursday, Fare Start offers a 3-course meal for $29.95 at the Fare Start Restaurant. Working under guest chefs such as Miller, John Sundstrom of Lark, and Adam Hagen of Alderbrook Resort, Fare Start students prepare and serve meals with menu offerings as sophisticated as chicken terrine, as comforting as lobster mac and cheese. Of Fare Start Miller says, “It is one of the best things I have been involved with in my life.”

Visit Portage Bay Cafe at one of its 4 locations: Roosevelet, South Lake Union, 65th, and Ballard.

On a foggy day last February after skiing the Echo Ridge Loppett, my kids and I stopped at the Lake Chelan Artisan Bakery (LCAB) to fuel ourselves up for the drive home. My friend, the owner and chief baker of LCAB, Lindsay Evans, was not at the bakery that day and I didn’t know the employee on duty. As we selected pastries, the employee began–entirely unprompted–singing the praises of the flours and whole grains used by LCAB. “It’s a small family farm up in the Methow Valley,” he told me. “They’re organic, which is enough reason to use their products, but the main reason is that their flours and grains actually taste so good! They’re just so delicious.”

I listened and smiled, and reminded myself to later tell Lindsay about the excellent service and salesmanship of the employee and to tell Brooke and Sam Lucy of Bluebird Grain Farms about this unsolicited endorsement. The employee had no way of knowing that I wrote for Bluebird; nor did he know that I’m a friend of Lindsay. He was simply an employee proud of the quality of products he was selling and eager to share ingredient sourcing information.

The thing is, the employee was spot-on with his endorsement of Bluebird’s freshly-milled organic flours and whole grain emmer farro and einka berries; they really do taste great. That’s why Lindsay uses Bluebird’s products to make LCAB’s daily supply of buttermilk wheat sandwich bread, whole wheat sourdough loaves, multi-grain breads, and farro salads. “I love to use as many local ingredients as possible at the bakery and when I knew I was opening my own bakery I was very excited to use Bluebird products,” says Lindsay. “Not only are Sam and Brooke my Methow Valley neighbors and friends, they product some of the most nutritious and delicious whole grain products available anywhere.”

Lindsay emphasizes the importance of quality, freshness, and nutrition in baking. “Bluebird products are superstars on all fronts,” she says, citing LCAB’s use of Bluebird’s hard red wheat flour and dark northern rye flour. She also uses the whole Einka Farro in her fresh grain and vegetable salads.

Bluebird is just the tip of Lindsay’s efforts to source local ingredients. Local and regional growers and farmers provide her with seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables. Her own parents’ home garden in Chelan sends fresh herbs, kale, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, raspberries, and other produce straight into the bakery. Blueberries for pies and pastries come from Blueberry Hills Farms in Manson, and she serves coffee and espresso from Blue Star Coffee Roasters in Twisp. “The fact that my business gets to help support my friends’ businesses is amazing,” says Lindsay, who sees the economic impact that buying locally and regionally has on her hometown, as well as on the community where she lives in the Methow Valley. “Buying local is important to me to support my local economy and reduce excess shipping energy.”

Lindsay enjoys baking seasonal delicacies year-round, but it’s hard to compete with the bounty of summer. “My favorite things to make at the bakery are things that feature fresh, locally-grown, in-season fruit,” Lindsay says. “This includes our fruit Danish [nectarines, peaches, or raspberries], fruit pies [cherry and strawberry-rhubarb are particular favorites], and our cherry almond tart.”

Since she opened the bakery, Lindsay has balanced the menu with familiar items and new offerings. The response has been positive. “I have received tremendous positive feedback about our salads that feature Bluebird’s whole einka farro,” she says. “Einka was a very new thing to our customers but once the salads caught on we heard many customers express their love for the chewy heartiness of the grain, especially paired with crunchy veggies and our homemade dressings.” Apparently farmer Sam recently suggested to Lindsay that she try the einka in her homemade soups, so stay tuned on variations on old favorites when winter comes.

Lindsay grew up in Chelan and understands the important role a small bakery plays in community life. Quiches and sandwiches nourish the body, while time spent lingering with friends and family over a cup of coffee nourishes the soul. Lindsay calls the bakery “a casual and inviting space to gather with friends,” but it’s more than that. First, it’s a business that was a team effort from the start, with Lindsay’s family, her staff, and even local community members pitching in to help launch the bakery and make it a success. “I’m so proud of my staff and so thankful to the local community and my family for helping me every step of the way,” says Lindsay.

The bakery is also a place where Lindsay’s love of baking is evident in every product in the cases. Lindsay says, “I’ve always loved to bake for my family and baking for my community members is an extension of that.  I get satisfaction knowing that my treats are part of an enjoyable experience for locals and visitors alike.”

For more information about Lake Chelan Artisan Bakery, visit their website or stop by the bakery, located at 246 West Manson Hwy, along the Chelan-Manson highway in Chelan Plaza, between Safeway and the Lakeview Drive-In.