I arrived at the home of Pat and David Barker last week for the Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation and immediately felt like family. We talked (over cookies) for a good 20 minutes before the topic of our shoot even came up, swapping stories of the babies in our lives (their two week old great granddaughter, my seven month old son), and about their passion for helping homeless youth, which grew out of Pat’s tenure as a high school science teacher, when she discovered how prevalent teenage homelessness is.

I saw this picture as I was packing up after the bulk of our shoot, and had to unpack and take another minute to capture it. I’m so glad I did.

The work I do with nonprofits is so important to my professional life. Not only do I get to meet people who do amazing, selfless work, and help tell compelling stories that the public desperately needs to hear, but also I invariably leave nonprofit projects reinvigorated, both in terms of my photography and my faith in the basic goodness of humanity. I’m in the very lucky position of meeting amazing people like the Barkers on a regular basis. It’s the number one reason I’m a photographer.

Large dice any combination of sweet potatoes, rutabaga, parsnips, potatoes, carrots, onions, and fennel so that you’ve got a nice layer on the bottom of a dutch oven. Toss with olive oil and salt & pepper, and bake at 450 for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, take a few of your favorite sausages, slice, and brown.

After 30 minutes of roasting the veggies, add the sausage and 2 cups of chicken broth, and roast for another 15 minutes. Bam!

As with so many vegetables, cabbage is so beautiful because of the textural contrasts – the smooth, almost waxy outer leaves, and the amazing layers that emerge when you cut in to it. Good stuff.

But this stuff beckoned to me, with its color palette and texture. And while it’s not my favorite, make no mistake: I will eat it. Soon. Probably stewed, with sweet potatoes.

I returned to the studio from Heartland Market with a bulb of fennel, which is fun for its contrasts. The very sturdy and layered bulb gives way to amazingly delicate fronds. I tried to do justice to both identities here.

Many thanks to my friend and photo colleague Mette Nielsen for the prop loaners. So nice to have friends with good taste.

As of this month I’ve taken up part time occupancy of Rat Race Studios in Lowertown St. Paul, a very exciting development for all the possibilities it opens up for new directions and capabilities in my work. And to inaugurate my stay here I’ll be working on a personal project throughout the winter on produce. Because one block from the studio is the heavenly Heartland Restaurant and Farm Direct Market.

Last year I photographed Chef Russo for the Culinary Mistress, and lamented that I didn’t find myself in Lowertown more often to take advantage of the market and deli’s offerings. Now, here I am, practically in their dining room. The Farm Direct Market has beautiful produce, like this red beet.

Stay tuned for my weekly series, and if you follow me on Twitter I’m sure you’ll hear and see a sampling of the Heartland Deli’s sandwiches too.

But when duty calls and leaves you a message, you call back. And as it turned out, it led to a couple of firsts for me.

The client was Giggles Campfire Grill, one of my favorite food vendors at the Minnesota State Fair, and they have a new dish for this year’s Great Get Together: Northwoods Salad on a Stick. Here it is, in all its glory:

Giggles wanted to make a splash, following up on the splash they already made this spring, when they were featured on The View; they wanted Salad on a Stick on billboards and bus shelters surrounding the fairgrounds. An unheard of marketing coup for a State Fair food vendor.

Now, like many many Minnesotans, I’m nuts for our State Fair: until recently, with the influx of food trucks in Mpls and St. Paul, the fair was about the only place to stroll and stuff yourself on simple portable foods (one of my favorite food categories). So any opportunity to work in connection with the fair. . . I’m there. Plus, I’d never shot anything for outdoor use. Two birds, one dish on a stick!

Which is how I came to meet Rachel at Gabe’s in the Park (another fine property owned by the Giggles folks) at 9AM on a Sunday. We set up in their game room, Sunday morning gospel on the sound system, beautiful salad on our minds. Here are a couple behind the scenes snaps of the glamour:

If you’re on the University of Minnesota campus, or driving south on Snelling in the vicinity of the fair, keep your eyes peeled for the billboard and bus shelters. And it goes without saying that you should get yourself a nice, healthy salad on a stick this year at the fair!

1. You like to cook.
2. Chemistry holds some appeal.
3. You’re pretty sure drinking beer is fun.

Find a friend with overlapping interests, and you’re in business.

Conor Lawrence and the gang at 514 Studios/Callahan & Co. have been brewing for longer than I have, and for years they’ve been brewing up a house recipe – Dirty Larry Brown – giving bottles away to clients and friends. When Conor told me the story of Dirty Larry Brown over coffee recently, I thought it would make for a fun photo shoot, documenting the making of a signature calling card of their business, while at the same time giving a sense of 514 Studios as a place. And a project was born.

Home Brewing at 514 Studios – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

(hover over images for occasional captions)

If you’re unfamiliar with the beer brewing process, it’s a pretty simple deal. The alcohol is created by taking the sugars from roasted and dried barley and other grains, boiling them in water for an hour or so with hops for bitterness and floral taste and smell characteristics, then cooling it down to room temperature and storing it for a while with some special yeast. The yeast eats the sugar and releases alcohol. Voila!

Of course there are countless variations of grains, hop varieties, and yeast strains to choose from – not to mention enough gear to keep any guy with his face in a Northern Brewer catalog for hours at a time. And for the OCD crowd, there’s the lingering danger that one small bacteria could get by your fastidious cleaning routine and skunk the whole 5 gallon batch. Ask any home brewer about any one of these nuances and you’re liable to be roped in to an hour and a half conversation. With any luck you’ll get a beer or two out of the deal, but just be warned.

In the brew pot the day I swung by was a recipe by the name of Ferocious, modeled after a certain aggressive local IPA favorite. The beer called for what some might consider a ridiculous number of hops, which Conor models in a few photos in the gallery. But the fun – and my favorite photos from the shoot, from a brewer’s perspective – came when it was time to transfer the wort (the raw liquid that will be beer after it ferments for a while) from the boil kettle to the carboy. Since there are always hops and other things in the wort, the boil kettle has a screen over the spigot to keep the non-liquids out of the carboy. But our boy Ferocious had so many hops that it clogged the screen and wouldn’t let any liquid through. Problems. So then Conor and his friend Dave tried bypassing the spigot and pouring through a strainer and in to a funnel. Then that clogged! Finally, other options defeated, the rest of the whole hoppy stew was poured straight in to the carboy.

And you know what? It’ll be delicious.

Thanks to Conor and Dave for sharing space, time, and brews. Looking forward to bottling.

Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation 2011 Annual Report – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

Story one was a new mixed use building housing 40 or so young people transitioning out of either foster care or homeless situations. I really had no idea what to expect, but what I found were people at ease and empowered, taking control of their lives after coming out of difficult circumstances. On-site job coaches talked of dedicated kids, and the residents who let me in to their rooms obviously took great care of their spaces.

Story two was a building that PCNF took over last year and completely renovated, serving low income adults. I spent the morning with one resident who had just moved in to a unit a couple months earlier, after a number of years with no permanent address. He still had plenty to work out when we talked, but imagine the stress lifting from your shoulders, knowing that you have a safe place to stay.

At the adult residence I also got to spend some time with the building manager, a woman with a history in law enforcement, who is the resident fixer-of-all-problems in her current role. So fun to talk to people who love their jobs: as we toured the building and she pointed out all the improvements that had been made, person after person stopped us to get her help on transportation issues, government agency red tape questions, building things. . . all kinds of stuff. It seemed like an exhausting position. But she told us, ‘I love my job. I can’t walk down the hall without meeting someone I can help. How many people can say that?’

Ice Fishing Gourmet – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

This shoot definitely had more variables to contend with than installment one of the Worldly Gourmet series last summer with Asher Miller. Variable number one goes by the name Lake Minnetonka. I went out to scout the shoot location a week prior to our chosen date, and temps had been in the upper 30s for several days. The foot of snow sitting on top of the ice had been turned to slushy puddles. Not really what I wanted to see. Then a good news/bad news kind of thing happened: first, a big cold snap froze the puddles, which was great. Not so great was the 14 inches of snow that came a couple days before the shoot, making travel across the lake much more tricky.

A very busy week leading up to the shoot meant that dialing in the location would have to happen the morning of the shoot, which certainly provided a couple anxious moments (that’s code for nearly driving in to the lake, then getting stuck for 15 minutes), but in the end we found a great spot and hit our schedule perfectly. Hooray for local knowledge, trusty assistants capable of taking turns at pushing a stuck vehicle, Google Maps, fallback options, and fallback fallback options!

Once we got to our spot, a magical thing happened that I find often happens when it’s time to take photos: the thick gray clouds parted, the wind died down, and the weather turned about as nice as you could expect on a late-February day in Minnesota. Hakan’s son Isaac had a great time ice fishing (although the highlight of his day seemed to be when the fish heads were removed – he kept asking if it was time, and when it finally was, he ran around screaming, TIME TO CUT THE FISH HEADS! TIME TO CUT THE FISH HEADS! Clearly the son of a chef – plus, check out the photo of him cutting carrots), and we did exactly what we had set out to do: have a great time, and take some fun quirky photos.

Much-deserved thanks to my collaborators, Food Stylist Rachel Sherwood, Prop and Wardrobe Stylist Jenny Jenkins, and Photo Assistant Nate Ryan. And of course, thanks to Hakan Lundberg, a true culinary artist, for being so giving with his time and talents. Check out his Cosmos Kitchen blog for the latest in his professional world, or, even better, stop by Cosmos to sample some of the most creative, beautiful plates in Minneapolis.

Lastly, if you’d like to see a couple behind-the-scenes shots from the day, c’mon over to my Facebook Page for the rest of the story.