A revolutionary restaurant

In just a few weeks, a holistic concept in restaurant eating could transform East Sprague Avenue at Pittsburg Street into a new destination on the path to good nutrition and a “green” lifestyle.

Keith and Janice Raschko are converting their teahouse at 1804 E. Sprague Ave. into a community kitchen where diners choose their portions from a variety of organic daily offerings and then pay the house what they think the food is worth.

The Raschkos’ venture will be known as One World Spokane Community Kitchen and include an organic garden at the rear of the storefront that will house the café-like restaurant.

It is being patterned after a successful nonprofit restaurant in Salt Lake City known as One World Everybody Eats, the creation of Denise Cerreta, a former acupuncturist who has been following her evolving vision of revolutionizing the experience of dining out.

“There is something about this model that changes people’s relationship to food,” Cerreta said.

The restaurant will offer organic products only and have a free dish available every day that is made from staples – rice and beans, for example. Under Cerreta’s model, people with no money can earn their meal by volunteering at the restaurant.

“We found a way where everybody can eat,” she said.

Customers will order from a counter next to the cooktops, where restaurant chefs will work within sight of diners. Community seating is open so diners can sit with one another and get acquainted.

The plan is to have a changing menu that includes one or two soups, a complementary meatless dish, deli-style salads, a hot entrée with meat or fish, and two or three hot vegetable side dishes. The restaurant will offer coffee and tea, and diners are welcome to bring their own non-alcoholic drinks.

After customers finish, they put what they think is a fair price into a drop box. “It works very well,” Cerreta said. “It’s on the honor system.” The concept of tailor-made portions also reduces waste, a downside in the typical American restaurant.

Mike Prager

Vikings fan’s Super Bowl dream

CHENEY – For many football fans, the approach of fall is always met with a certain amount of anticipation.

For Phyllis Mitzel, a Cheney resident since 1973, football season means setting up her extensive collection of Minnesota Vikings football memorabilia – a collection that fills her dining room.

Football is a way of life for Mitzel, who said she didn’t even know how to spell football until one day her 4-year-old son, Andrew, was sitting on the floor, watching a game against the “dreaded Packers” while she chatted with a friend.

The Vikes were losing and that started to upset Andrew, who she calls Rip.

Mitzel sat on the floor next to her son and watched the rest of the game.

She’s been a fan of the Vikes ever since, which is saying something since that 4-year-old boy is now 48.

“I’d love to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl, and I can’t live forever,” Mitzel joked. She starts counting the days until football season right after the NFL draft in April.

Her collection was started when her sister-in-law sent her a small ceramic coin bank in the shape of a football with the Vikings logo back in the late 1960s or early ’70s. The collection has grown significantly over the years, and Mitzel said she doesn’t have to shop much for it these days. “People just give me things,” she said.

The collection includes baby socks, baseball hats, a football with the autographs of the whole team from 1991, an autographed picture of her and John Randle, her favorite Viking, a book written by former quarterback Fran Tarkenton, golf balls, Viking-shaped pasta, Beanie Babies and a hand-sewn purple quilt that Mitzel made with the golden head of a Viking stitched into it.

Mitzel said she sometimes visits the American Legion in Cheney to watch games. She can talk football with the guys there and have a beer.

“I’m hoping to inspire some more women to watch more football,” she said. “I have friends that will watch a game, but not that are into it. I’m into it.”

Lisa Leinberger

Mint farming on the prairie

Breathe deep and you can almost taste it in the air this time of year driving across the Rathdrum Prairie.

It’s sticky and sweet, like a starlight mint melting on the tongue.

“Lots of people love it, and lots of people don’t like it,” Wade McLean said as his Suburban bumped along a rutted dirt road between fields of peppermint growing as tall as his vehicle’s tires.

McLean doesn’t really care for mint.

The smell doesn’t bother him much when he’s swathing the fields at harvest time, but at the still – where the plant is cooked until oil is released from its leaves – it’s too strong for the 58-year-old farmer.

He’s happy the still is a mile from his house.

McLean and neighbor Terry Nichols are the only two mint farmers in North Idaho, with hundreds of acres of the pungent plant growing between the two of them.

Nichols and his brother, who grow the majority of mint on the Rathdrum Prairie, are harvesting their crops. McLean plans to start harvest next week.

For 30 years McLean has been the manager for Satchwell Farms. His wife’s family has been farming up to 1,000 acres on the prairie for generations.

Wanda and Wade McLean are the sixth generation.

Mint is a difficult crop, McLean says. He started growing it 15 years ago to better his soil, not long after Nichols planted his first crops of peppermint.

McLean used to grow bluegrass. It wasn’t just the field-burning controversy that has him looking to other crops.

With the costs of fertilizer and fuel rising, bluegrass is not the money crop it used to be. He’s experimenting with ragweed. Pollen from the plant will be harvested and sold to be made into allergy tablets, McLean said.

“You have got to diversify and do things to make money so you can still survive,” he said.

He raises wheat, hay and cows, along with the mint.

Mint is fickle and frost is a killer. The plant likes hot weather, lots of water and takes a good deal of fertilizer.

A single acre will yield up to 100 gallons of peppermint oil. McLean’s contract with a Yakima-area broker gets him $13 a gallon.

Taryn Hecker