Forget mowing lawns or lifeguarding at the local pool. Chris Sessions has something more novel in mind for a summer job: deep-frying rose petals at his own food cart in downtown Portland.

The 15-year-old high school freshman, a resident of Southwest Portland, is on a mission to raise about $3,000 by the end of the school year. On the shopping list are a cart, appliances and enough ingredients to get him started.

Chris Sessions fries organic rose petals, sprinkles them with powdered sugar and serves them with one of three sweet dipping sauces.

But deep-fried rose petals?

Sessions discovered how tasty they could be accidentally, he said. He was experimenting in the kitchen at home – he loves to cook, especially fried food – and wanted to see if the oil was hot enough. So he grabbed a rose petal from the front yard.

“I put it in the oil, let it fry for a minute, tried it and it was surprisingly good,” he said. “I just sort of modified it from there.”

Sessions hopes to benefit from the immense popularity of food carts in Portland, which range from Thai to tacos to tea. At the end of September there were more than 700 food carts in Multnomah County, said environmental health supervisor Doug Wangen.

Sessions is using Piggybackr, an online fundraising platform similar to Kickstarter. He hasn't started publicizing his project yet, he said, because he's been busy getting settled in high school. He chose this year to attend a school in Vancouver, where his dad lives. His goal is to have enough funds to get started by summer vacation.

He serves the battered and fried petals with three distinct dipping sauces: cinnamon sugar cardamom, salted caramel fudge and chocolate maple bacon.

They’re like sweet chips and salsa, he said, only these particular chips happen to be especially fitting in Portland, the City of Roses.

He’s always been entrepreneurial, he said. He recalls setting up lemonade stands near his home and performing street magic in Waterfront Park in elementary school.

Sessions didn’t have much access to television or computers as a child, said his mom, Anne Meadows. Until 9/11 she kept the television in the closet. He attended a school that didn’t use technology and provided basic items – like string, clay and wood – as playthings instead of commercial toys.

“I tried really hard to say that you don’t just buy, it requires effort,” she said.

That upbringing likely contributed to his creativity and desire to earn money, she said, and she’s proud of how hard he works. He’s researched how to get the proper licenses, buy edible roses and rent a space downtown.

“I sort of said, ‘Think about how enormous really this project is and think about all the different pieces that have to go into it,’” she said, “and he did.”

Sessions said he knows there will be hurdles. He already has a food handler's card, but will need various permits, licenses and inspections.

There are no age limitations in the food code, said Wangen, but labor laws will shape how he operates his cart. The state's labor bureau stipulates that children ages 14 and 15 years old cannot work more than eight hours a day or a total of 40 hours a week when school is out. Sessions also won't be allowed to work past 9 p.m. in the summer.

The rules are more restrictive during the school year, but only until Sessions turns 16 a year from now. Then he can work up to 44 hours a week without any daily limitations.

Sessions said the plan is to operate the food cart during the summer and on the weekends after school begins. He’s got a couple of friends, he said, who have expressed interest in helping out.

“I'm fascinated with the whole food cart thing,” he said. “It's really cool that you can condense your cooking into that little cart.”

Frying a favorite snack at a food cart, which he intends to name Petal, will be much more fun than a typical summer job like mowing lawns or lifeguarding, he said. But that isn’t his only motivation for opening his own cart.

Mostly, he said, he just wants to prove he can.

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