This past Sunday was the Birchwood Cafe’s annual Earth Day Dinner, and it was phenomenal. Seven courses of creativity, each paired beautifully with very different Minnesota beers.

I’m really not embellishing when I say that I loved each course, but I did have favorites. Like at the Valentine’s Day dinner earlier this year, I thought the BW’s Executive Chef, Marshall Paulsen, did an amazing job with the early courses in particular. This time around a beet and chevre terrine with tangelo and melted leek sauce had a great mix of flavors. The pairing with Lift Bridge Brewery’s Farm Girl Saison was perfect as well.

Beet and Chevre terrine

The next course was spot on as well: trout with coppa cured at neighboring Craftsman Restaurant, fiddlehead fern, sunchoke chips, parsley almond pesto, and wild ramps, paired with Lake Superior Brewery’s Kayak Kolsch. Beautiful mix of textures, and I couldn’t get enough of the coppa.

Fried Fiddlehead Ferns

Trout with Craftsman Capa, ferns, parseley pesto, and wild ramps

As with all events at the Birchwood, this one put all the emphasis on the local, the creative, and the communal. When owner Tracy Singleton got up to speak, it was to draw attention to the farmers in attendance who supply the restaurant, Peace Coffee, and Eureka Recycling – who composts over 90% of the Birchwood’s waste. Just a super fun, delicious evening, liberally lubricated with great Minnesota beer.

Marshall Paulsen and his kitchen crew cranking out the plates

Plating of the Bison Ribeye

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When I showed up at the Birchwood kitchen door the other day to photograph Zach – April’s BWood employee of the month – he told me that he hadn’t taken everyone’s advice to shave and get all groomed. Personally, I think that doing so would have violated some kind of kitchen oath. Don’t get me wrong. . . kitchen people aren’t across-the-board scuzzy. It’s more that when you work behind the scenes, one of the benefits is that you don’t have to get yourself all nice and presentable every day the way you do when you work the front of the house. And any job is all about the perks.

Birchwood All Star Zach, wrist-deep in goodness

The other cool thing about Zach is that I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on a shift when we hung out, but he got a bunch of stuff done. And he was good about sharing his ’sweet’ knives with the counter staff.

I call this one, 'I dare you to make a move for that sandwich.'

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The best thing about photographing food is that sometimes you get to eat it when you’re done. But that is not, in fact, the only good thing.

A lot of what I do is story telling through environment: somewhere in the frame is a person, and all around that person is their world. I may tweak things a little, but I value photographing people’s lives as I find them; I generally don’t see it as my job to create an idealized version of a person. I think it’s much more fun, and more effective, to reflect as much reality as possible. That’s where I feel like I bring the most value as a photographer. But I digress. . .

Food pictures make you look a little more closely at the things in a very small area. Which is fun, because you get to see how much attention, expertise, and care are packed in to a piece of food. And for the food maker, the stuff on the plate is a small bite of their life. That’s what I was thinking about photographing the process of making the delicious little creations cranked out at BT McElrath Chocolatier last week.

Chocolate truffles waiting to be packaged

Chocolate bars in their molds

Artwork getting applied to truffles

Truffles coming off the line

Some of BT McElrath's signature pieces

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