The Three Stone Hearth CSK launched initially with a core staff of 5 worker-owners. As the business grows, additional staff may be hired and after a set process, may also become worker owners. The original 5 worker owners are:
Porsche Combash
Porsche Combash has been in the food business for many years. Starting her career in baking with French pastry apprenticeship, she worked in the specialty food, hospitality, and catering industries. In she helped open the Ravens Restaurant in Mendocino, which featured an organic vegetarian menu. In 1997, Porsche completed the professional Chef Training Program at the Natural Gourmet School of Cookery in NYC. There she was introduced to the Weston A. Price Foundation and the principles of indigenous diets. After graduation, Porsche completed a cooking internship at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland and went on to teach at the Ballymaloe School of Cookery in Ireland. She has her BA degree from San Francisco State. She has traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico and Sicily to study their regional cuisines. For the past two years she has worked as the Manager of the Pasta Shop on Fourth Street in Berkeley.
Born at home in Berkeley during the radical sixties, Porsche comes from a truly blended background. Her grandmother was a founding member of the Black Panthers. Her ancestry includes African-American, German, Scottish, Irish, Native-American, and English. She lives in Berkeley with her partner, Michael McGill.
Misa Koketsu
Misa Koketsu’s love of eating began early in life around the kitchen table set for her family of eight and topped with delicious meals her mother prepared daily. Her enthusiasm for cooking, however, developed during her junior year abroad in France, where food is a national obsession, cooking an art form, and la sieste provides the time to relax after savoring a good meal. Following graduation, Misa attended culinary school and has since baked in hotel pastry shops and bakeries in and around the Bay Area, including Auberge du Soleil and Grace Baking Company. In 1999, she began work at the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, where her background in cooking merged with the work of the Center’s Food Systems Project. This experience provided an introduction to, and gave her an appreciation for, the social, ecological, and political issues associated with local, sustainable food systems.
Misa is sansei or third generation Japanese American, born and raised in San Jose, California. She has a B.A. in Humanities from UC Berkeley. Having lived all over the East Bay since 1986, she now resides near Lake Merritt in Oakland.
Jessica Prentice
Jessica Prentice has loved cooking for as long as she can remember. In 1996 she received professional chef’s training at the Natural Gourmet Institute of Food and Health in New York City. She worked as the Chef of the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin from 1997-2001, where she founded the Headlands Hearth Bakery and Café in 2001. Jessica educated herself in sustainable agriculture issues, and in 2002 was hired as the first Director of Education Programs for the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco. She became a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader in 2001, founded Wise Food Ways in 2004, and co-founded Locavores in 2005. Her first book, Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection was released from Chelsea Green Publishing in 2006.
Jessica’s ancestors include Scottish, English, and Swiss German immigrants, and she grew up in an extended community of progressives in the Washington, DC area. She earned a B.A. from Brown University in 1991, moved to the Bay Area in 1992.
Catherine Spanger
Catherine Spanger was born and raised in the East Bay. Her grandparents were farmers in Brentwood, California, where fertile land produced a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Her grandmother, an immigrant from the Dust Bowl, taught her to live modestly and be resourceful. Later travels abroad exposed her to families and cultures that shared these values, where a variety of nutrient-dense and delicious foods were produced from local ingredients. A desire to share these life-lessons led Catherine to become a professional cook at Green’s Restaurant in San Francisco, and she has also cooked for many Bay Area catering companies. For the past five years, Catherine has worked in Water Conservation, helping families develop an appreciation for the precious resource of water and its vital importance in producing our food.
With a lineage from Holland, Germany and Arkansas, Catherine believes in the connection between food, family and tradition. She has a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and currently resides in Oakland, California.
Larry Wisch
Larry Wisch has been interested in ecology and community his entire life. He received a degree in Urban Human Ecology from Antioch College 1975 and a Certificate of Horticulture from The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1977, and began working as a horticulturalist and horticulture instructor. In 1980 he co-founded San Francisco's first limited equity housing cooperative. From 1985 to 2004 he expressed his entrepreneurial spirit by starting and running two different market research companies: Larry Wisch Associates and Blarry House Research. In May of 2007 Larry celebrated the seventh anniversary of his victory over lymphatic cancer. He is also a leader in the Alive and Well HIV alternative movement. Larry's lifelong quest for healing and wellness led him to the Weston A. Price Foundation, and in 2005 he became the San Francisco Chapter Leader.
Larry grew up in the an extended community in the North Bronx The Amalgamated Cooperatives , where socialized medicine, cooperative daycare, nursery schools, and union organizing were part of his original view of the world. Chicken soup and other wonderful Jewish Eastern European smells permeated the hallways and apartments. He now lives in San Francisco with his partner Giancarlo Calabrese.
