Baking My Way Through the Bon Appétit Fellowship
When I was a student at Seattle University, a poem by Ignatian priest Pedro Arrupe became part of the campus culture. Jesuit schools are funny like that — old Catholic sayings can suddenly catch on and spread like wildfire among a bunch of largely secular college kids. The final line of the poem presents a simple directive: “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
Participating in a cracker and flatbread demo taught by Dawn Woodward, owner of Evelyn’s Crackers in Toronto, at the Cascadia Grains Conference
Of course, being a priest, Arrupe isn’t talking about romantic love. He’s talking about finding your calling, that thing that makes you want to jump out of bed every morning and get to work. I figured out a while ago that for me, that thing is food: studying it, writing about it, talking to others about it, and above all, making it (okay, eating it isn’t half bad, either). Before I started the fellowship I had dabbled in several roles, each of them offering a different entry point to food: I was a baker, a food writer, and I even worked short stints volunteering in a children’s kitchen, and living and cooking on a sheep farm in France.
When I landed the Bon Appétit fellowship, I was thrilled, but also a little worried. It was a sustainability fellowship, after all, and I hadn’t majored in environmental studies. Instead of covering fossil-fuel divestment for the campus newspaper, I wrote restaurant reviews. Would my eyes glaze over during long conversations about compost? Would I secretly wish I were in the kitchen working on a loaf of sourdough instead? In the year since graduating, I’d been lucky enough to fall in love with my work, and I hoped I’d be able to stay in love.
Luckily for me, those worries were quickly put to rest. After meeting the rest of the Fellows, I realized what an incredible diversity of experience they represent. Everyone has a different passion and point of view. Not only was it okay for me to have a specific interest in cooking and baking — it was encouraged.
I sometimes miss baking professionally, but this work has given me the opportunity to connect others to where their food comes from and how it is made, something I never could have done if I had stayed in the kitchen.
So I took my passion and ran with it. From organizing a hands-on cooking class and participating in a panel on affordable, sustainable eating at Seattle University, to visiting Washington University in St. Louis’s unique bakery headed by Pastry Chef Starr Murphy, my Fellow events have never strayed too far from the kitchen. I even attended a heritage grains conference in January to meet some of the bakers, brewers, farmers, and policy makers revitalizing the Pacific Northwest’s grain economy.
During my fall visit to Seattle University, some awesome student volunteers helped me execute what may have been my favorite Fellow event of all: a screening of an episode of Michael Pollan’s Cooked, all about sourdough bread. A baking Q&A immediately followed. Students even got to take home their own sourdough starters! As we snacked on a loaf of sourdough I’d made and students brimmed with questions about how Bon Appétit supports local farmers and artisan bakers, I fell more in love with my work than ever before.
I sometimes miss baking professionally, but this work has given me the opportunity to connect others to where their food comes from and how it is made, something I never could have done if I had stayed in the kitchen.