After driving to work at the Baker Outdoor Learning Center in Maple Plain, Minn., Patty Riley ’84 might start preparing pie-iron pizzas over a fire for summer camp or teach a class on the habitat of the ponds surrounding the rustic lodge.

It’s the perfect job for Riley, whose career has shifted back and forth between her passion for the environment and her love of cooking nutritious food.

Riley became the food service coordinator at the 64-bed residential education center in 2019, after serving as a cook and a naturalist at the facility in the Three Rivers Park District, just outside Minneapolis. Working with a small staff at the center has allowed her to plan and cook meals for dozens of people while also teaching ecology and survival skills classes.

“I love my job, and I like that I am able to be creative,” says Riley, who is known for sneaking extra nutrition in the form of whole grains, veggies, and protein into nearly everything she cooks.

Riley started camping and hiking with her family as a young child while growing up in Taunton, a hamlet southwest of Syracuse. In high school, she thought she would study engineering and geology in college, but once she arrived at Colgate, she found she was more interested in courses such as phycology (the study of algae) and limnology (the study of lakes).

With a degree in natural science, Riley worked as a naturalist at schools, nature centers, and camps in New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. After she gave birth to twins at age 45, she became interested
in nutrition.

“I wanted to feed them the best possible food and make it as calorie and nutrition dense as possible,” she says. “I also wanted to figure out how to use the copious amounts of produce we grow in our ever-expanding gardens.”

When she started working at the center as a naturalist in 2010, it did not have a year-round cook, so the entire staff helped prepare meals for the campers, scouts, and schoolchildren who take classes or field trips at the facility. After the park district created the food service coordinator position, Riley accepted the job and began transitioning the center from serving processed and frozen food to cooking healthier meals.

“I have really gotten into secret ingredients for meals,” says Riley, who will add zucchini, beets, and pumpkin to her recipes. “I like to challenge the kids and see if they can guess what it is.”

One way Riley has combined her concern for the environment with food service operations is by buying supplies from local farms. That is why she expanded a partnership with Gale Woods Farm, located within the park district, to provide organic produce to the center.

“We’re trying to get people to be stewards of the environment,” she says, “and part of that is knowing where your food comes from and getting that food locally as much as possible.”

It has not been a difficult task since she is working for a park district that is focused on environmental education and natural resources. “That is what the park district does,” she says, “and I think I’m able to do that in the food sense to complement that mission.”