| Portland native Megan Ehrlich was raised at the mercy of her parent's healthy eating habits. While she longed for the Twinkies and Oreos spread out on friends' kitchen countertops, she settled instead for her mother's homemade sugar-free fruit roll-ups. Little did she know that one day she too would experiment with natural ingredients to create store bought goodies... except Megan would enhance recipes others took for granted and take culinary chances.
What Megan eventually realized was missing from her bland veggie-filled childhood was the use of local organic produce. She wasn't introduced to the flavors of leafy greens like arugula until she began cooking and building business for Flaming Carrot catering company in 2000.
Now seven years later, Megan is taking her experience at Flaming Carrot as head cook and turning the comfort foods she didn't get as a child into grown-up, healthy, organic favorites. Soups made with local tomatoes and squash, meatloaf baked with Willamette Valley Dill Havarti cheese and even homemade pop tarts filled with fresh blackberries and topped with meyer lemon icing are Megan's specialty. But the girl who once eyed out pre-packaged cookies is now most famous for her own chocolate chip recipe... a thick, chewy, dark chocolate chip cookie that has her friends and clients lining up outside her kitchen door. |
