Environmental Photos: The Chef

  Chef Josh Green department chair and faculty for LBCC Culinary, featured for environmental week. Chef Green has been working professionally in kitchens for over twenty two years. The summer after highschool he worked as a dishwasher and the fast paced ever changing environment sparked his intreuge. Working his way up from dishwasher to ingredient prep, and eventually lead cook. Josh never considered culinary before his summer dishwashing job but influenced by another coworker he discovered culinary school was an option and pursued it full steam ahead. 

 Chef Josh took up teaching after the birth of his daughter, working sixty to eighty hours a week and being on call twenty-four/ seven was not conducive for starting a family. As an educator Josh is inspired to continue learning at all stages in life. He states that he has learned alot from his students amd enjoys the shared experiences. 

  

  Chef Josh works directly with second year students. The core of the course Josh has developed centers on running a kitchen in a professional setting. The second year students spend much of there time to facilitate the success of both the Santiam Cafe and the food truck on campus. Students are on a rotation for diffrent stations and responsibilities in the kitchen. Students learn the importance of time management and organization so that all sections of the kitchen run smoothly. Students are responsible for making orders, submiting menues and every step from concept to table. 

  Outside of the classroom his passion for culinary continues with experimenting with perfecting his skills in a wide range of culinary dishes. The most recent hyperfixation has been sourdough perfecting his recipee and trying diferent strategies from proofing to steaming. During covid Chef Josh sold pizzas from his home, not as a business indevour but out of bordome and to perfect his pizza crust and as his family would grow tired of pizza he offered pizzas to his neighbors at the cost of ingredients. At one point he was lagistically cordinating mutiple pizza pickups throughout the day. 

   

  “Most People don’t like specific foods because they’ve never tried them when they’ve been made right” - Chef Josh Green 

    

   Chef Josh reflects on how as a child he disliked mushrooms and how an instructor during his time in culinary school taught him how to make cream of mushroom soup and it opened his eyes to the importance of texture in conjecture to taste. He was able to demonstrate this concept with his spouse, as she claimed to have a stron dislike of boiled eggs, after demonstrating a properly cooked boiled egg to his spouse she discovered that throughout her childhood her mother had overcooked the eggs creating a textural nightmare and she infact enjoyed boiled eggs. So the next time your in the kitchen experiment, maybe the foods you grew up despising just need to be cooked differently. 

 “ Cheff Josh Green, Age 40, Santiam Cafe kitchen , Calapooia Center , LBCC Campus Albany, Oregon 

October 28th, 2024”