‘Sustainable’ food programs grow on campus

Thar’s gold in them thar greens. The food sustainability movement — and the growing demand for locally grown produce — has inspired community colleges to create new agriculture and culinary arts programs, reports Community College Times. 

Food is generally considered to be “sustainable,” according to Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, if it is produced, processed and traded in a way that contributes to thriving local economies, protects the diversity of plants and animals, avoids damaging natural resources, and provides safe and healthy products.

At Metropolitan Community College in Nebraska, horticulture and culinary arts are in the same department. Culinary students work in the campus garden, using carrot and onion peelings to create compost.

MCC has an aquaponics system creating a food loop, with nutrient-rich water from a fish tank full of tilapia circulating to fertilize salad greens and herbs, then flowing back into the tank.

Culinary students learn how to cook the tilapia, as well as produce and herbs grown by horticulture students, in a student-run bistro and catering service. Horticulture students raise crops in a “hoop house,” a garden that can be closed up in the winter, creating a 10-month growing season. A patio herb garden showcases “edible landscaping.”

Some students are working on degrees in small-market farming with plans to specialize in such areas as orchard production, viticulture or small animal husbandry, (culinary coordinator Jen) Valandra said. Others want to start their own business producing specialty meats and sausages; cheese; honey; or raising small animals, such as ducks, squab or rabbits.

Students visit different kinds of farms, from a Cargill plant that processes 350 cattle an hour to a small farm that raises lambs.

Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn grows tomatoes, peppers, herbs, kale and lettuce in raised beds on its urban campus. Culinary students compost kitchen waste to help the garden grow, then cook the produce in class. Whatever’s not used in culinary classes goes to the college’s food bank to help needy students and local residents.

Top chef trained at community college

Richard Rosendale, chef at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, hopes to be the first American to win the Bocuse d’Or cooking competition in France, reports the Washington Post. Rosendale and chefs from around the world will compete Jan. 30 “in the world’s most challenging and prestigious culinary competition,” which is held every two years in Lyon, France. French and Norwegian chefs have dominated the competition.

In an age when many aspiring young chefs head to the Culinary Institute of America, Rosendale enrolled in the culinary program at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, Pa. He earned his associate degree and entered the Greenbrier’s apprenticeship program, the one he now oversees. This led to apprenticeships with several certified master chefs, training in Europe and sous-vide training at the French Laundry.

Rosendale’s rise shows that “college” can mean real-world vocational training, writes Ben Wildavsky on The Quick and the Ed.

The current requirements for the degree Rosendale earned include not only baking, beverage management, and so forth, but also college writing, microcomputer concepts, social science or math, and more. Students also work many hours as apprentices in restaurants, hotels, or resorts. This culinary arts program . . .  combines practical classroom instruction, an out-of-the-classroom apprenticeship, and classes that focus on some core skills that could prove useful to students in many settings.

It’s not that “too many” Americans go to college, writes Wildavsky. “College” broadly defined — job training as well as Plato —  can benefit many more people.

Culinary arts program opens bistro

Cole’s Bistro is a restaurant — and a classroom for culinary arts students at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland, reports the Baltimore Sun.

Lynn Brown, who was “cooking pot roasts in the third grade” for his mother, is training to be a chef at the bistro, a partnership between AACC and the Laurel-based Woodland Job Corps Career Development Center.

Cole’s Bistro serves three-course dinners twice a month; online reservations are required.

“Some of our students have never been away from home or have never been to a really nice restaurant,” (culinary arts instructor Monique) Williams said. “As close as they get is our bistro.”

Students staged a soft opening this month with a menu that included a crab appetizer, French onion soup and braised veal shanks with brown sauce, risotto and vegetable.

As a graduation requirement, culinary arts students prepare an on-campus luncheon inspired by their favorite chef.

AACC’s cooking and restaurant program draws students from as far away as Puerto Rico and California.

Iesha Wright, from Rock Hill, S.C., said that she heard about the AACC program while at a Job Corps program in that state, but her knowledge of restaurants was limited to working in fast-food venues.

She’d never eaten Italian or French food before coming to Maryland. “Here, I’ve tried escargot and alligator. It’s a new experience for me.”

Chef’s advice: Don’t go to culinary school

Should aspiring chefs go to culinary school? “The short answer is no,” says chef Anthony Bourdain, a graduate of Culinary Institute of America, in his new book, Medium Raw. Serious Eats explains:

It’s not that Bourdain thinks culinary school is an inherently bad idea. But he warns that even a degree from the very best school is no guarantee of a job, and there’s serious debt involved. If you’re not quite young and not quite fit, a career as a chef may not be for you. If you crave a predictable hours and a manageable level of stress, it may not be for you. Before you sign up for all that debt, he says, you should go work in a kitchen and make sure you really, truly want to be a chef.

In an excerpt on Michael Ruhlman’s site, Bourdain warns that quality restaurants don’t hire graduates of  “the Gomer County Technical College of Culinary Arts.”

A degree from the best culinary schools is no guarantee of a good job. A degree from anywhere less than the best schools will probably be less helpful than the work experience you could have had, had you been out there in the industry all that time.

A new chef with an elite culinary degree — and a pile of debt — will start at $10 to $12 an hour, Bourdain warns.

Some graduates of for-profit culinary programs have trouble repaying federal loans because of low starting salaries, writes Education Sector’s Ben Miller in Are You Gainfully Employed Setting Standards for For-Profit Degrees?

Blind student earns culinary degree

Tiffany Romero is losing her vision, but not her dreams. The vision-impaired student has earned a culinary arts degree with honors from Pueblo Community College in Colorado.

“Don’t let anyone say you can’t do things, if you know in your heart you can,” says Romero.

She’s trying for an internship with the Sara Lee Corporation, and one day hopes to open her own bakery.