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Cooking on Deadline: Cream of carrot soup

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Happy birthday Stanley Shimko Jr.!

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Ask some King&#8217;s College students how they like the cafeteria food, and you&#8216;ll hear lots of good things.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s fantastic,&#8221; said Kellie Munro, 18, a business management major and fan of savory chicken dishes who hails from Manitoba, Canada.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really good. I really like the tacos,&#8221; said Emma Zeveney, 18, an athletic training major from St. Augustine, Fla. &#8220;I like scrambled eggs for breakfast.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to get more potato hash browns,&#8221; said David Stonebraker, 20, a business/marketing major and hockey player from Pittsburgh who is glad the menu offers vegan options.</p><p>The person responsible for keeping King&#8217;s students happily well fed is Sarah Bodner, executive chef for Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services, who oversees 128 associates in the campus&#8217; five dining areas.</p><p>Her efforts recently have been honored by Chartwells, which named her Mid-Atlantic Region Chef of the year, and then National Chef of the Year, chosen from among all the chefs who work in the 270 dining environments Chartwells serves at colleges and universities across the country.</p><p>&#8220;Chef Sarah is the glue of the team. She&#8217;s the brains behind a lot of the food, and she always makes time for anyone who needs her help,&#8221; said Virginia Spataro, the local Chartwells marketing manager who nominated Bodner for the award.</p><p>Among the criteria for Chef of the Year the judges look for a chef who provides healthy dining choices and looks for eco-friendly options.</p><p>Bodner said she is big on both, using local produce whenever possible and making sure lots of vegetables and whole grains are on the menu.</p><p>&#8220;There are students who look for Brussels sprouts, kale and quinoa, or at least are willing to try them,&#8221; Bodner said. &#8220;We make sure to accommodate them as well as the students who might want the comfort items like chicken tenders and french fries. It&#8217;s a balancing act.&#8221;</p><p>On Tuesday, Bodner said, she had planned a &#8220;monotony breaker&#8221; menu with a fish-market theme.</p><p>Various stations in the main cafeteria would offer such dishes as cornmeal crusted catfish and sweet potato casserole with pecans; a New England shrimp roll and an option of shrimp scampi pizza would be available in addition to the regular cheese pizza. Diners would be able to build their own pasta dishes by choosing different sauces, proteins and vegetables. For those not interested in fish or seafood, there would be Greek-style marinated chicken.</p><p>Hearing about some of these options as she finished breakfast, Munro&#8217;s eyes lit up. &#8220;Everything sounds good,&#8221; she said. Glancing almost apologetically at the bowl of multi-color cereal almost in front of her, she said &#8220;I know I&#8217;m just having Froot Loops now,&#8221; but she hinted she would be more adventurous later in the day.</p><p>Bodner&#8217;s career in food service began when she was 14, waiting tables and learning how to be a barista in a restaurant near her hometown outside of New York City.</p><p>&#8220;Then I moved &#8216;to the dark side,&#8217;&#8221; she said, joking that&#8217;s how front-of-the-house staffers at a restaurant look at the back-of-the-house work.</p><p>A graduate of Johnson &amp; Wales University in Providence, R.I., Bodner lists making her own pasta and baking as favorite kitchen activities. She and her husband, Michael, also own and operate Harvest Catering &amp; Events catering service in Dunmore.</p><p>In her volunteer experiences, which the Chef of the Year judges took into consideration, Bodner tries to spread enthusiasm for sound nutrition. She has presented adolescent and athlete nutrition seminars at Dunmore High School and showed younger children how to make a tropical fruit salad, vegetable soup and salsa at Nativity Miguel Elementary School of Scranton.</p><p>&#8220;We try to keep everything plant based,&#8221; Bodner said. &#8220;We made soup right in front of them.&#8221;</p><p>The chef stressed she&#8217;s not a solo act.</p><p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t be able to be Chef of the Year without a truly outstanding team,&#8221; she said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Bodner checks on a veggie pizza in the hearthstone oven at King&#8217;s College cafeteria. Bodner recently was named National Chef of the Year by Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/web1_sarah1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Bodner checks on a veggie pizza in the hearthstone oven at King&#8217;s College cafeteria. Bodner recently was named National Chef of the Year by Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/web1_sarah2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Sarah Bodner, an executive chef with Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services, makes a fresh tomato and basil sauce for pasta in one of the five dining areas on the King&#8217;s College campus. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/web1_sarah2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Sarah Bodner, an executive chef with Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services, makes a fresh tomato and basil sauce for pasta in one of the five dining areas on the King&#8217;s College campus. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Sarah Bodner named National Chef of the Year</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

King’s College executive chef Sarah Bodner named National Chef of the Year