The 2014 local food heroes of Western Colorado

N O.26 SPRING 2014
EAT. DRINK. THINK.
ANNETTE’S MOUNTAIN BAKE SHOP
THE TRUE COST OF LOCAL FOOD
WHY FARMING AND DRILLING DON’T MIX
LOCAL HEROES | SPRING RECIPES
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online open voting in each of the following
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vote for those who are making a difference
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Each fall, Edible Aspen invites the public to
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By Nelson Harvey
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{ local heroes }
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categories. This year, the individuals and
businesses listed below received the most
nominations. Please join us in celebrating
these winners in the Edible Aspen region for
their outstanding contributions to the local
food movement!
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Jack D’Orio, Hillside Acres
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fter helping to start the Aspen Farmers’ Market, mentoring
scores of young farmhands and supplying the Roaring Fork
Valley with an encyclopedic list of organic produce for 25 years,
Jack D’Orio of Paonia’s Hillside Acres farm is going fishing.
D’Orio, 71, sold his 10-acre organic farm in December to
Kate Rawlinson, a Florida transplant who plans to keep farming
while adding on-farm educational programs for teens.
D’Orio says that although he won’t simply drop farming
this season after a quarter century of nonstop work, he does plan
to phase himself out over time.
“When you sell an institution like this, you don’t get rid of
it all at once, and I will be advising,” D’Orio says. “But I decided
that I wasn’t going to get any fishing done unless I sold the farm.”
D’Orio didn’t start farming commercially until he was 50
years old. By that time he’d already logged 15 years of experience
as an agricultural extension agent based in Eagle, and before that
in California.
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After moving to Paonia and seeding his Lamborn Mesa
homestead, D’Orio began marketing his produce to hungry
customers in the Roaring Fork Valley. He hooked up with local
restaurants of all stripes, and helped to found popular farmers’
markets in Basalt and Aspen.
“Aspen wasn’t exactly pro-market at the time,” D’Orio says.
“I spent a long time in front of the city council trying to make
them see our point of view.”
Over the years, Hillside Acres has always played host to a
rotating cast of young workers, and D’Orio says mentoring them
has helped keep him enthusiastic about farm life.
“When you work a farm like this with a lot of young people
around, you take on the role of old sage,” D’Orio says. “My own
kids are long gone, and I still enjoy that role.”
HillsideAcres.com
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Photographs: Top, Marc Cirrincione; bottom, Trevor Triano
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Avalanche Cheese Co.
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CacheCache.com
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preserving campaign next fall that he hopes will keep local items
on his menu through the winter.
As he continues to fine-tune his restaurant, Lanter has been
sharing his expertise with local young people by serving as a
mentor in the ProStart restaurant education program at Aspen
High School.
For several hours each week, Lanter works with his students
to perfect the three-course meal that they’ll cook before a panel
of judges at a statewide competition this spring. Last year, the
Aspen team took third place in the culinary category, and
this year Lanter says his squad has a real shot at the national
championship.
Lanter also tries to give his students an edge by exposing
them to the farm-to-table ethos—he took last year’s batch of
ProStart participants on a tour of several North Fork Valley
farms that are Cache Cache suppliers.
“The farmers and the restaurants have a relationship; now
we have young students being exposed to that and getting excited
about it,” Lanter says. “It’s really cool.”
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t’s been 14 years since Chris Lanter started cooking at Cache
Cache, Aspen’s beloved French American bistro, and a decade
since he took over as the restaurant’s co-owner.
Cache Cache’s business has more than doubled during
that time, and Lanter says there’s a simple secret to his success:
experiment, innovate and never get lazy.
This fall, Lanter put that mantra into practice when he
invested in a small farm on Paonia’s Lamborn Mesa to boost
his year-round supply of local food. Although Cache Cache
has long sourced a plethora of Colorado produce during the
summer months, Lanter is planning an ambitious pickling and
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Chris Lanter, Cache Cache
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endy Mitchell must be doing something right. Seven years after
she founded the Basalt-based Avalanche Cheese Co., her product
has become so popular that last winter she nearly ran out.
“We are pretty maxed out in the cheese department,” says Mitchell,
reached by phone at her shop in late January. It would be two months before
Avalanche’s spring chevre production began again, and after shipping her
cheese to Whole Foods Markets throughout Colorado and specialty cheese
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shops across the country, Mitchell’s supplies were dwindling.
“If we grow any more at this point, it won’t be by scaling up,
but by introducing new products,” Mitchell says.
As it turns out, that’s exactly what Mitchell plans to do.
After making a name for herself in the world of artisan cheese,
Mitchell is preparing to launch a line of charcuterie (cured
meats) made from a mix of goat and pork this year.
“So far, we have approval for a Spanish-style chorizo, and
a finocchiona [fennel seasoned] sausage as well,” Mitchell says.
“We have always made fresh sausage, and the fresh sausage
is delicious, but it is not the same kind of Old World craft and
skill as cured meats,” Mitchell says.
Thanks to the vagaries of government permitting, it
remains to be seen exactly when Avalanche’s new line of meats
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Honeybee Juice Co.
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will hit the shelves. Yet if the company’s meats prove anywhere
near as good as its cheeses, customers certainly have something
to look forward to.
Since 2011, four of Mitchell’s five signature cheeses have
garnered awards at the annual competition of the American
Cheese Society. The only one that hasn’t, the wildly popular
Cabra Blanca soft cheese, is a product of Mitchell’s invention
that doesn’t fit neatly into any cheese society category.
“Everyone loves that cheese, and yet it hasn’t won an
award,” Mitchell says. “We call that one the stepchild.”
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Photograph: Brian Klopp
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ith a business that’s entirely dependent on sourcing
fresh, healthy produce all year long, Honeybee Juice
Co. owner Kate Linehan has a vested interest in the health of
Western Colorado agriculture, and she’s doing her part to keep
it vibrant.
Linehan, a native Aspenite, packs two to three pounds of
nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables into each bottle of juice she
sells. That keeps her on the good side of the area growers she buys
from, like Rendezvous Farm, Hillside Acres, Rain Crow Farm
and Eagle Springs Organic.
After two years in Paonia learning to grow food, Linehan
founded Honeybee in 2010 and began selling her juice at the
Aspen Farmers’ Market. Her recipes—an immune juice with
carrot, apple, orange, beet, lime and ginger, for instance, or a
green juice with kale, apple, lemon and cucumber—pleased the
palates of locals and visitors alike, and she soon moved into a
permanent space in Aspen’s Ute City Building. Last year she
expanded further, taking over a commercial kitchen at the Aspen
Club and Spa.
Linehan’s commitment to maintaining the nutritional value
of the enzymes and nutrients in her juices means she’ll never
pasteurize them, and thus can’t sell them in supermarkets. Yet
Honeybee serves fresh juice daily from the Ute City Building
and the Aspen Club alike, and offers free delivery in Aspen three
days a week.
This year, the business is collaborating with the Aspenbased women’s health physician Dr. Dale King to design a line of
juices meant to combat certain ailments: There will be a tonic for
thyroid issues, for example, and a liver-cleansing juice.
Honeybee is also expanding its menu of what Linehan
calls “whole, clean food,” to complement its juices, and Linehan
is designing a structured, multi-day juice cleanse program for
people whose bodies need a fresh start.
HoneybeeJuice.com
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Photograph: Trevor Triano
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The Butcher’s Block
uch has changed in Aspen over the last 40 years, as
the town has transformed from the hippie ski bum
haven of the 1970s to the glitzy international tourist
destination of today.
Yet at least one thing—the neighborhood butcher
shop— remains the same. Now in its 41st year of operation,
The Butcher’s Block of Aspen continues serving up comfort
foods like meatloaf, roasted chickens and lasagna; an array
of well-known soups (local doctors regularly recommend
the chicken noodle); and a wide selection of fresh-cut meat
and fish.
In a town where restaurants seem to come and go
nearly as fast as their transient employees, The Butcher’s
Block stands apart. General Manager Jim Strickbine has
worked at the shop for 27 years, and manager Alix Hoch
has been there for 25. Mike Berenna, who retired last year
and moved to Arizona, had a 20-year career at the store.
Strickbine says he’s stuck around so long because he loves
working with food, but also because Butcher’s Block owner
Jack Frey takes good care of his employees, granting full-timers
decent salaries along with health insurance, transportation
subsidies and a ski pass for those who need their powder fix.
“Because of that, we are able to hire some good people,” says
Strickbine. “Jack takes care of us, and we take care of him, and
we come together and take care of the customer.”
Butcher’s Block customers are a mix of locals who swing
by daily to chew the fat, office workers in need of a quick,
affordable lunch and foreign tourists shopping for their picnic
at the Maroon Bells.
But whoever they are, they know they’re appreciated: At
The Butcher’s Block’s 40th anniversary block party last year,
workers doled out about 1,700 free lunches to a line of eager
eaters that stretched around the block.
ButchersBlockAspen.com
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YouthEntity
Photographs courtesy of YouthEntity
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YouthEntity.org
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“There are fewer and fewer vocational opportunities available
in high school,” says YouthEntity Executive Director Kirsten
McDaniel. “We are always looking for authentic experiences for
students, and we want to point them in the direction of a career
path they’ll be passionate about.”
Last year, teams from the Roaring Fork Valley took first
place in the statewide restaurant management competition,
and second in the culinary arts contest. Local graduates of the
program have gone on to schools like Boulder’s Escoffier School
of Culinary Arts and Denver’s Johnson & Wales University.
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ne night this past January, about 15 students buzzed
around the kitchen in the former Carbondale Middle
School. Some grilled filets of Chilean sea bass on the stovetop,
while others drizzled aioli over scallop appetizers or torched the
tops of tiramisu desserts.
“Section that orange!” called out instructor Matt Maier
as he moved frenetically about the kitchen. “Put a little sear on
those scallops!”
The students, who hail from Roaring Fork, Bridges, Basalt
and Glenwood Springs high schools, were working to perfect the
three-course meal they would enter into a statewide competition
in Denver this spring.
The contest is the annual capstone of the ProStart restaurant
education program, a vocational training initiative designed by
the National Restaurant Association and managed locally by the
Carbondale nonprofit group YouthEntity.
For the last three years, YouthEntity has offered culinary
arts training to local high school students who aspire to
be cooks, pastry chefs and restaurant managers after they
graduate from high school or college. Through ProStart and
a professional baking and pastry program called YouthChefs,
the organization strives to compensate for the decline in local
vocational education programs.
NOMINATE
your favorite Local Heroes
for next year’s awards starting
in September. Watch for an
announcement and instructions
on how to vote in our Fall issue.