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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Quick bites
News and tidbits from Sagehen foodies
across the nation, in no particular order
Business Is Hopping
Curtis Dale ’80 left his job three years ago
to open Dale Bros. Brewery, eagerly entering
his creations in the L.A. County Fair. But his
initial hopes turned out to be so much foam.
“There were all these black marks against
my beers,” Dale remembers. “Too dark, too hoppy, too this, too that, not enough carbonation.”
However, one judge wrote a comment
that stood out from the rest and inspired
Dale: “This is a beer I could drink all day.”
Since then, Dale has won multiple
awards. He brews four beers from his brewery
in Upland: Pomona Queen, California
Black Beer, Pacific Daylight and Winter Haze,
all sold at local eateries, including
Claremont’s The Press. For the upcoming
year, he has big changes in
store, including a move to
downtown Claremont.
The Tangerine Man
Would you pay twice as much for something half its usual size? Jim
Churchill ’68
hopes so: He grows pricey pixie tangerines, intensely sweet golf
ball-sized fruit with a
sand trap’s worth of marketing challenges.
 In 1978, he went to run his
father’s Churchill Orchard after a
series of post-college
careers. He transitioned
the avocado crop to
pixies several years
later. “I didn’t think about
how they were small and
not the prettiest fruit,”
Churchill recalls.
To sell the fruit, he would
stack cartons of pixies in the trunk of
his 1967 Volvo wagon and drive all over
Los Angeles in search of buyers.
The pixies
went high profile after Bill Fujimoto of the
Monterey Market in Berkeley helped get the
tangerines into Chez Panisse, the famous
Bay Area restaurant. Now Churchill has further
plans to grow the market for this tiny
fruit, as he takes pixie tangerines from citrus
misfit to must-taste delicacy.
Living Gluten Free
What do you eat when you have a gluten
allergy? No wheat, rye, barley or oats—that
means no pizza or pasta, not even Thanksgiving
stuffing. Enter Ruth Stadler ’81, personal
chef. Or as she puts it, “I’m more of a
practical chef. I cook to help people.”
Self-taught, Stadler has spent years
reconstructing pizza crusts, lasagna noodles,
even overhauling Thanksgiving dinner. Her
kitchen doubles as an epicurean lab, where
she modifies recipes and experiments with
ingredients like rice flour and soy products.
In the world of the gluten-free, Stadler
practices what she preaches—she’s had a
vested interest in making tasty substitutes
since being diagnosed with a gluten allergy
of her own in 2001. In her personal and
professional cooking, her proudest accomplishment
has simply been eating normally
again, and enabling others to do the same:
“When you’re gluten intolerant, you don’t get
decent bread products, you don’t get anything
crunchy. I can help change that.”
Breakfast and Bed
When on vacation, some people like to
sleep in late. But at The Bronze Antler, a
B&B in Joseph, Heather Tyreman ’80 and
her husband, Bill Finney, cook up breakfasts
that would lure even Rip Van Winkle from
slumber. Try not to drool as Tyreman
describes one of Finney’s creations: “An egg
soufflé with spinach cream sauce, stuffed
with smoked gouda and Italian sausage, and
served with oven-roasted potatoes with tarragon
and sea salt and tomatoes with vinegar
and herbes de Provence.”
Tyreman’s culinary contribution is a bottomless
cookie jar. Her treats, like cookies
spiced with candied ginger, coriander and
black pepper, complement guests’ afternoon
sightseeing and evening relaxation.
Surprisingly, before Tyreman and Finney
retired from the military and opened The
Bronze Antler six years ago, neither one had
any formal food training.
Coffee Linguistics
 The key to ordering like a pro at Starbucks,
says Justin Wright ’99 of Woodinville, who
works as a part-time barista while pursuing
a second degree in
computer science at
the University of
Washington: state the
size and then the type
of drink. A “grande
mocha” is a simple
favorite. For more complicated
concoctions, he suggested
following the subsequent
steps: size, iced/not,
decaffeinated/not, shot count, flavoring, milk type, miscellaneous
and, finally, the drink name.
“We have a regular customer at our store
whose drink is notoriously long,” Forward
says. “In fact, she had us write the drink on
a cup sleeve that she brings in each day to
avoid having to repeat the order each time
she comes in and confuse the newer baristas.”
What is this customer’s drink of
choice? A “venti 8-pump chai, soy, no water,
extra hot, no foam, chai tea latte.”
Now say that three times quickly.
A Sweet Sinecure
Ariana Schuster ’05 landed a sweet job
right out of college. She sculpts, ices, assembles—
everything but bakes—at Cheryl
Kleinman Cakes, one of the Big Apple’s fanciest
bakeries, with creations that appear in
bridal magazines and are sought-after by
celebs. She helped with a topographically correct
cake shaped like the island of Capri,
complete with a piazza and harbor filled with
little boats. Another— for Jerry Seinfeld’s
wife, Jessica—required her to sculpt a sugar-paste
pilates machine.
“I snack, definitely,” Schuster confesses,
“but I work it all off in the kneading.”
Pasha's Pleases Palates
Nicolas Cortes ’91, who names being “trained to be analytic and
skeptical about the data you see” among the most important skills he
gained at Pomona, puts these abilities to use when creating a rich menu
of Mediterranean cuisine that leaves customers satisfied.
Attuned to his customers’ purchasing patterns, Cortes, co-founder of a
Miami restaurant called Pasha’s, monitors the performance of menu items.
“There are more products from the Eastern Mediterranean region than we
can serve in our restaurants, so there is a long chain of potential
products,” says the president and chief financial officer. While the
gyro has been a mainstay since the restaurant’s inception, for instance,
a Mediterranean cheese spread called shanklish that tested well in focus
groups did not have a large-scale appeal and was quickly removed from
the menu, he says.
Cortes and his associates always have particular dishes in mind that
they consider the “best in their category,” which specially trained
staff first try to produce on a small scale with all of the “nuances of
home style” Eastern European cuisine and then try to replicate on a
large scale while maintaining high quality. Only if met with approval at
each of these levels of testing will well-received items get added to
the menu, ensuring customers an experience in which they will be
“treated like pashas”—the noble lords of the Ottoman empire, living a
good life and enjoying good food at four locations throughout Miami.
The Candy Man
John Brooks ’61 left Pomona with a degree in zoology, which
led him to a graduate degree in biology, which led him, naturally, to …
candy?
 Rather than rushing into a doctoral program, Brooks decided to take time
off and “to go drive a truck or something” for Adams and Brooks, the Los
Angeles confectionery firm his father started in 1932. “I found I could
contribute a lot more than I thought,” he says. “That’s how I got stuck
here, and it has been wonderful.”
Now in his 32nd year as president of Adams and Brooks, he continues
doing what he does best: building brands like their famous specialty
lollipops—those bright discs of whorled colors in all shapes and sizes,
carried by Disney theme parks all over the world—Coffee Rio hard
candies, P-Nuttles candy nuts and Cup-O-Gold chocolate bars, among
others.
It’s a never-ending battle for shelf-space competing against the big
brands, but he is getting plenty of help from family: his wife, Tempe
Brooks ’63, and their children work in the business, carrying on a sweet
tradition.
Sunset Draws Sagehens
Menlo Park, Calif.—The monthly food, travel and garden magazine Sunset has been
home to many Sagehens—from dishwasher to owners.
Brothers L.W. “Bill” Lane Jr. ’42 and Mel Lane ’44 joined the workforce
at Sunset, which their father Laurence owned, after graduating from
Stanford University. They had sold the magazine door-to-door as preteens
but assumed operating management of the magazine in 1952. They ran
Sunset until 1990.
Dorothy “Dottie” Decker ’51 only spent one day washing dishes at Sunset,
when her superiors learned she could cook. She has been a recipe tester
at the magazine for more than 25 years.
Alicia Metcalf Miller ’61 worked there as an advertising and promotions
writer.
The latest Pomona alum to join the crew: Food Editor Margo True ’86.
After serving as the executive editor of Saveur magazine, True joined
the team in early 2006.
Per the Bride’s Request
Even the old-fashioned Fall Creek Bakery, cozily situated in the
6,000-population
town of Branson, MO, has been touched by the unlimited possibilities
of the Internet as wide-eyed brides arrive requesting replicas of
elaborate wedding cakes found online.
A bride-to-be, inspired by her discoveries on the Internet, approached
co-owners Linda Lewis ’70 and longtime friend Marvin Patterson bearing a
photograph of a three-tiered chocolate truffle wedding cake surrounded
by five smaller cakes, each topped with a circular plate of chocolate
overlapping its cake by one inch and adorned with 518 truffles.
After providing the future-bride with a price estimate, Lewis assumed
she had decided against the cake when she didn’t hear back from the
bride. Three months later, the bride returned to the bakery, proposing:
“We’ll do the truffles. You do the cake.”
Lewis set to work preparing the chocolate-laden collection of cakes,
dutifully fulfilling the bride’s request. Although Lewis does not fully
understand the logic of ordering a cake that must be dissembled in order
to be served—the chocolate plates could not be sliced—she notes that
this wedding cake, like all wedding cakes, was special because once the
“intense desire for perfection” pressures are off, knowing that she has
played a role in making someone’s wedding day brings her joy.
Service with a Smile
 Steve Kagan ’89 has been in hospitality for
15 years, selling seafood for Boston-based
Stavis Seafoods Inc., but it was in his part-time
job as a food server at Fenway Park
during the 2004 World Series that he most
clearly demonstrated the importance of flexibility
in the service business:
“My assignment for game one was the
seats behind home plate, including the Red
Sox general manager. Theo Epstein is a man
of routine. I served him 10 times that season,
and he ordered only hot chocolate. Hot
summer day, blustery fall day or frosty
October night. Hot chocolate for him and
assistants. As I made my rounds that night, I
decided I
could make one
guest’s life nicer by
bringing him his favorite hot
chocolate before he could ask. As I
reached the general manager’s row, I could
see the delight in his face. I brought nine hot
chocolates and started to hand them out. As
I finished, a woman touched me on the arm,
and asked me if I could bring her some hot
chocolate as well. I was about to spout the
company policy that we cannot serve outside
of designated areas when I noticed her name
badge. As I let Ms. (Wendy) Selig-Prieb, the
owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, finish her
question, I quickly changed my tune, and told
her that I would be honored.”
The Amazing Cranberry
Amy Howell ’82 is always looking for
recipes incorporating cranberries. Since
discovering how they help prevent urinary
tract infections in 1998, she and
her colleagues at the Rutgers Blueberry
and Cranberry Research Center are
plagued with an endless free supply of
juice and fruit.
Howell began researching cranberries
in 1993, when she joined Director Nicholi Vorsa’s project looking for the
berry’s unique attribute that prevents
UTIs. After five years, Howell determined
that the condensed tannins in
cranberries held the answer. Specifically,
the unique molecular structure of
the tannins wards off the unwanted
infections by preventing E. coli bacteria
from attaching to the wall of the urinary
tract.
Howell attributes her success partly
to her studies at Pomona. As a philosophy
major, she learned that problems
could not always be solved in conventional
ways. “Everyone else [who tackled
the cranberry conundrum] had a
narrow perspective on this issue,”
Howell says. “To solve something like
that, you have to have an open mind.”
From Amy Howell ’82
Amy’s Cranberry Pie
(inspired by fellow Sagehen Caitlin
Horowitz ’86)
1 pie shell and top crust
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter
Pie filling:
1 pound roughly chopped cranberries
(fresh or frozen)
¾ cup sugar
½ cup golden raisins
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange rind
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup chopped walnuts or pecans
2 tablespoons corn starch
Combine ingredients for pie filling. Pour
in pie shell and dot with 2 Tbs butter
(chopped up and distributed evenly over
pie filling). Lay top pie crust on, crimp
edges and brush top with egg/sugar
mixture (beat 1 egg with 2 Tbs sugar).
Bake at 450° for 15 minutes. Turn
down oven to 350° and continue baking
45 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice
cream. Enjoy!
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