Dr. Rushforth joined the Greens in the 1999 season after a long stint as food editor for the Chicago Sun Times. In her capacity as director of concessions and catering, Alice has applied her diligent epicurean skills to a field often limited to hot dogs, peanuts, and beer. Alice will have none of that. "First off, we use fresh ingredients, fresh ingredients in everything." Although unsuccessful in her attempts to banish hot dogs completely from Moline Park ("God only knows what goes into those things"), Rushforth has steered the team's image more toward Bon Appetit than "Take Me Out To the Ball Game." New to the menu are a pesto pasta with lemon peel garnish ("It's easy; I'll give you the recipe"), home-baked chocolate chip cookies ("with real butter, of course"), and a new crowd favorite, the Bully Burrito--a quarter pound of shredded beef with black beans, guacamole, cilantro, sour cream, and a piece of string cheese in the middle. The Bully Burrito is "pretty big," she admits. "Most people can't even finish it."
In team catering, Dr. Rushforth favors more upscale fare, relying on elaborate creations from her own extensive collection of cookbooks, housed in a separate wing of her home, though she appreciates the spacious and well equipped kitchen attached to the clubhouse. At the annual Founders Days' dinner last July, Rushforth whipped up a green and yellow poppyseed cake in the shape of a John Deere CTS Series combine, constructed on a 1:20 scale. "That cake was so pretty I hated to see it get eaten," remembers Rushforth. "And it was pretty big."
In her spare time, Alice cares for an extensive indoor garden of heirloom plants and flowers and edits a time-management newsletter for parents called Quit Talking About It and Do It.