Portland Chefs Collaborative

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With the 2012 Farmer-Chef Connection fast approaching, we want to hear from you about what workshops and panels you’d like to see/hear/participate in this year.  Send an email to Piper with your ideas!

The 12th annual Farmer Chef Connection will take place on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at Clackamas Community College. Co-hosted by Portland Chefs Collaborative and Friends of Family Farmers, the steering committee is diligently planning this year’s event, coordinating sessions, food and raffle donations, and volunteers.

The Farmer Chef Connection is always a sold out event, bringing together over 300 chefs, farmers, ranchers, and fisherman to learn, make connections, and eat great food. The event is from 7:45AM to 4PM, and we’ll serve a light breakfast along with a lunch donated by local farms and prepared by chefs. The entry fee is worth the amazing lunch on it’s own!

We’ll also have multiple learning sessions, a keynote speaker, and raffle prizes donated by local businesses. Don’t miss this great event – we look forward to seeing you there!

Details of a Sustainable Seafood panel will be coming soon…   In the meantime, here is a great poster to help figure out when the fresh seafood that we get in the great Northwest is available.

Fresh_Fish_dates_2011 – download

Thanks to everyone who participated, both as attendees and as all the volunteer work that it takes to pull this off!  Great products donated to the lunch and the raffle, tons of work preparing all the great food, the many tasks that had to be done throughout the day to make the event run smoothly…

The steering committee behind the Chefs Collaborative is David Barber of Pickleopolis/Three Square Grill, David Yudkin of HotLips Pizza & Soda, Jon Beeaker of New Seasons, Jaret Foster of Portland Farmers Market, Sarah Curtis-Fawley of Pacific Pie Company, Tricia Butler of Sasafrass Catering, and Michele Knaus of Friends of Family Farmers.

Clackamas Community College always steps up by providing the great event space and a bunch of fantastic volunteers from their Horticulture Program.  New Seasons provides an incredible amount of staff support in addition to being our biggest sponsor, after Friends of Family Farmers and the Portland Chefs Collaborative.

Online registration is closed so that we can get badges printed off, but you can still join us tomorrow at the Farmer-Chef Connection.  Just bring check or cash  ($20, $10 for each additional employee/family member), and we’ll make up a badge for you at the door.  Scroll down to the previous post to see the schedule and agenda, it should be a great day!

Location: Gregory Forum, Clackamas Community College (Main Campus), Oregon City

8-4pm, includes a great lunch and a raffle ticket!

Email portlandchefscollaborative@gmail.com or call Michele at 503.841.0305 with last minute questions.

7:45-9:15        Registration & Networking

8:00-9:00        Early Morning Workshop: FCC 101 – McLaughlin Auditorium

9:15-10:15        Keynote Panel: Pioneers in Portland Local Sourcing

- Gregory Forum

10:15-10:25        Friends of Family Farmers – Kendra Kimbirauskas

(Mobile Meat Slaughter Project & State Legislation) – Gregory Forum

10:30-12:30        Mid-Morning Workshops – Gregory Forum & McLaughlin Auditorium

12:30-2:00        Lunch & Networking – Gregory Forum

2:00-3:30        Afternoon Workshops  – Gregory Forum & McLaughlin Auditorium

3:35-4:00        Closing Remarks & Raffle – Gregory Forum  Raffle Prizes!

Keynote Panel – 9:15-10:15

Pioneers in Portland Local Sourcing – Gregory Forum
A discussion of the original motivations for forming Portland Chefs Collaborative and Farmer-Chef Connection; with the current awareness and popularity of eating local and “sustainably” at new levels, how to best stay true to the goals of a place-based, economically viable, environmentally sound, local food community…

David Yudkin (Hotlips Pizza), Greg Higgins (Higgins Restaurant), Linda Colwell (founding Co-Chair of the Portland Chefs Collaborative), Sheldon Marcuvitz (Your Kitchen Garden)

Early Morning Workshop – 8-9am

Farmer-Chef Connection 101 - McLoughlin Auditorium
The art of buying and selling direct.  Learn the do’s and don’ts when interacting with food producers and buyers.

Anne Berblinger (Gales Meadow Farm), David Knaus (CREST Farm; West Linn Wilsonville School Dist), Kelly Myers (Nostrana), Abby Fammartino (Abby’s Table)

Mid-Morning Workshops – 10:30-12:30pm

Sustainable Seafood – McLoughlin Auditorium
Local sourcing seafood in Portland; sustainability perspectives and suggestions from Oregon experts.  Farmed fish, frozen seafood, what customers should know and ask, and the challenges of selling direct will be discussed.

Paul Shively, (Pew Trust Pacific Forage Fish Campaign), Bryan Szeliga (Chef), Reid Ten Kley (Iliamna Fish Co), Brandon Hill (Bamboo Sushi), Laura Anderson (LocalOcean), Lance Schultz (Newman’s)

Farmer-Chef Connection 401: Overcoming Conflicts Between Values and Scale - Gregory Forum
Distribution, Production, Marketing, & Sourcing – the pros, cons, and necessity of increasing scale in order to provide economic stability and stable supply chains.   Join a conversation that will discuss the values inherent in local food supply and the impact that increased production has on those values.

Piper Davis (Grand Central Bakery), Laura Ohm (Grand Central Bakery), Mark Anderson (Champoeg Farms), Scott Laney (Eat Oregon First), Amanda Oborne (Food Hub)

Afternoon Workshops – 2-3:30

Season Extension Using Food Preservation for Chefs and Farmers – McLoughlin Auditorium

In August and September, our farms produce an incredible bounty of vegetables. This panel will describe some farmer-chef partnerships to preserve the harvest and explore both potential products and ways to structure deals. We encourage chefs and farmers with experience in this area to attend this panel as there will be opportunities to share your ideas.

Tricia Butler (Sassafras Catering), Erin Meeker (Sassafras Catering), Clare Columbus (Gervais School District), Anne Berblinger (Gales Meadow Farm)

Local Specialty Flours: A Willamette Valley Update - Gregory Forum

Stallford Farm’s transition to organic agriculture and to local grains on a large scale,  re-establishing the infrastructure needed.  Getting the grain to the baker:  the milling process, the marketing, adapting Willamette Valley wheat flour, and baking with whole grains.

Charlene Murdock and Richard White (Nana Cardoon/Murdock & White), Willow Coberly (Stallford Farms), Mary Ann Jasper (Greenwillow Grains), Kim Boyce (author Good to the Grain)

Thanks to a good suggestion from an attendee, we set up FCC 2011 as an event on RideShare.us.  You can post there for free (you just have to register) if you have space or if you need a ride.  Happy travels, see you on the 7th!

http://www.rideshare.us/page.php?next=eventdisplay&lookup=FCC2011

logo designed by farmer Evan Gregoire

You may now register for the 2011 Portland Farmer-Chef Connection by going here>>.

For our keynote speakers this year, we are looking as close to home as possible and celebrating the journey that has helped to make Portland the amazing food and restaurant city that is today.  We will be hearing from some pioneers of our local  food system, like Greg Higgins of Higgins Restaurant & Bar – about how they’ve seen the ideas of food sustainability and locally sourcing expand over these last ten years, and what they are working on now.

As always, the next best things after the great networking and connections at Farmer-Chef Connection are arguably the fantastic lunch, and the recently added raffle.  If you would like to promote your products, skills, and business, please consider donating to either or both.  You will have the opportunity as part of the registration process, or you can email us to do so.

We listened to the feedback you’ve given us, and have made our workshops fewer and longer to provide better opportunities for discussion and sharing of knowledge.  The foundation workshop, Farmer-Chef Connection 101, will be held first thing in the morning (8-9am) to give folks who are new to this event and/or new to local sourcing and direct sales a chance to get their feet wet before the rest of the day commences.

Other workshop topics include Sustainable Seafood, Overcoming the Conflicts Between Values and Scale, Extending the Season by Preserving the Harvest, and Local Specialty Flours for Baking: A Willamette Valley Update.

There will be plenty of time in the day to network, check out the tabling, eat delicious food, and make some great business connections.   Please join us, and spread the word!

For more info on the event, use the tab at the top of the website, or link to it here>>

Bryan Szeliga, Chef de Cuisine at Lucy’s Table, approached the Portland Chefs Collaborative last fall about putting together information for chefs and consumers on Sustainable Seafood.  He pointed out that there is a lot of confusion surrounding the issues, and even professional chefs are having trouble sorting through all the information.

The result is a Sustainable Seafood panel scheduled for the Farmer-Chef Connection 2011 event on March 7th, and plans for an evening event, open to the public, in April or May in Portland with a panel of experts on these issues.

Keep your eyes open for more details to come, and in the meantime, check out this link on chefnews.com.