More Deliberate Every Day

Slow Food Memphis Event Announcement

Slow Food Memphis Presents A Slow Brewed Meeting

Featuring an Ugly Mug Coffee Tasting & Discussion

FREE

Saturday, March 1, 10am-12noon at Wild Oats Market  5022 Poplar Ave, Memphis 38117

• Learn about the art of coffee roasting, brewing and tasting from the experts at Ugly Mug Coffee
• Enjoy a discussion about coffee growing regions with Tim Burleson, President of Ugly Mug Coffee
• Discover what Slow Food is all about, what local projects we are involved in, how to join and more. . .
  

Door Prizes, Giveaways, Great Coffee and Conversation

Everyone is Invited

This event is made possible by the generosity of Wild Oats Market and Ugly Mug Coffee and is sponsored by Slow Food® Memphis

Is It A Trend, A Movement, Or An Effort?

A quick post this morning to point you to an oddly disquieting article published in cooperation with Cooking Light Magazine at CNN online that names Slow Food as one of five food "trends" that one should "be following."  The article, written by Maria Condo, makes the case that these emergent food ideas are not short-lived, as most are, but have legs for the long run.  And about Slow?  It's all about togetherness, she says.

. . . slow food goes a step beyond good nutrition -- and it's a difficult one to quantify. No scientific studies have conclusively proven that friends and family make better dinner companions than televisions, but the benefits are clear. "Slow food embraces the psychological component in food choices, meal preparation, and the act of eating," [Fern Gale] Estrow says. "A healthful diet isn't just about what you eat but how you eat it."

The other four ideas that are touched on in the article are Flexitarianism, Local, Functional and Organic.  You can read the whole article, which is very surface level on all five fronts, here.

Alice Waters At Common Ground

Alice Waters, founder of the important Chez Panisse Restaurant & Cafe and author of the forthcoming book The Art of Simple Foods: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution was interviewed by Ritzy Ryciak last week at Common Ground Magazine.  The interview kicks off with the question we've been talking about here at More Deliberate since the beginning of the blog:  Can the way we eat change the world?  From Alice:

It’s the best way to do it, from my point of view. Eating is something you do every single day. If you do it with intention, it opens up your senses. Your senses are the pathways into your mind. It’s not just about food — it’s about the world around you. You see in a different way. You touch in a different way. You’re fine-tuned, you’re better able to discern.

Which plays extraordinarily well with our recent discussions around mindfulness.  What Alice is getting at is the notion that by using food as a focus area to sharpen our ability to be mindful we are able to spill that mindfulness out into larger and larger circles of our day-to-day activity.  Soon we realize that it's not just what we eat, to which we're more attuned, but what we do and say and see.  She goes on to point out that when we become more attuned to what we eat and the course it has traveled to get to our plate, we will also become willing to pay more for that food to be something better than the grocery stores or fast food chains can provide.

We are so indoctrinated by fast food, we think food should be cheap — when in fact we should be willing to pay a good price for food. We are ignoring our relationship to nature, [ignoring] that we are dependent on nature for our survival. Sixty percent of the economy is about food, at least sixty percent. Food is political. And yet we don’t talk about it, we don’t pay attention. No president in the United States has mentioned anything about it, can you imagine?

Waters contends that we should find it natural to "invest heavily" in what we eat, since the quality of our food not only sustains us but also sustains the world.  We're looking forward to the new book and continue to follow Alice's activities closely as a model for the More Deliberate life.

Slow Food Memphis Event

I know I'm on hiatus, but wanted to get the word out on this event:

The "Lesser" Cuts

Chef’s Dinner ¥ A Rancher’s Perspective ¥ Conversation

Wednesday, August 29^th, 7:00 pm

The Inn at Hunt Phelan

533 Beale Street, Memphis

¥ Local beef purveyor Michael Lenagar, of Neola Farms, will be present to speak about the adventures of ranchers who provide locally raised, pastured beef. He will explain why he believes Neola Farms’ beef is better, as well as the economic challenges related to raising the whole steer when many consumers only want to purchase a few of the many cuts available. Michael proposes we’re missing out when we ignore the “lesser” cuts. . .

¥ Chef Stephen Hassinger will prepare and present a five-course dinner featuring the beef of Neola Farms. Hassinger spent six years as a chef at Café Degas in New Orleans, traveled to Vancouver, B.C. to open Café New Orleans, and was on his way home to that wonderful city when Hurricane Katrina struck. After a short period of dislocation, Stephan settled in Memphis as Chef at the Inn At Hunt Phelan, where his creative cuisine has been astonishing Memphians ever since. We hear there may even be meatballs. . .

¥ Slow Food Memphis board member Kjeld Petersen will share why local beef is important to our community, and what we should all be doing to support local purveyors.

¥ Reservations must be made by August 25^th with full payment or a credit card provided. Seating is limited and is available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The cost is $60 for Slow Food Memphis members, $70 for non-members, tax and tip included. Wine pairings are available for an additional $25.

For reservations, call the Inn at Hunt Phelan at 901.525.8225.

Slow Food and Design

When asked what Slow Food is about, I generally answer something along the lines of "good, clean, and fair food."  That tag line has helped me to structure the ensuing conversation and allows me to share why I believe food is the central concern of our lives that reaches far beyond what's on my plate.  But deeper, I'm learning as I evolve into Slow Food that the principles are about food as network.  And once you come to understand food as a network, you realize that Slow is an idea that applies to many more disciplines than food.

At its simplest, Slow Food is about the recognition and elevation of co-production.  We as consumers need to be connected to the form of production.  This step is critical and opens the doors to many other facets of Slow.  Because when you peek inside the full production of your food sources you will quickly realize that you aren't happy with some of them:  take factory farming, for instance, or chemical-laden packaged goods with a shelf-life of, literally, decades.  Other forms of production, you realize, are great:  take that kind gentlemen you've been buying from at the farmer's market, for instance, and the great vegetables he always has for sale.  So you become a co-producer, by looking behind the curtain, out of a desire to become more connected with your food.  Only then do you realize that food has an unbreakable connection with land, and season, and people.

Food as network.  Unbreakable interrelationships among consumers and producers.  The sustainability of the environment that defines our production.  Economics in our backyards.  These are all Slow.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Slow Food is branching out beyond food.  Now the Italian Mothership is partnering with the design world.  I should say that I have been heavily influenced by friends who are graphic designers (you know who you are) in the past, and gained a respectful perspective on the power of design as a result.  So for me, Slow+Design, as the initiative is being called, just makes sense.  From an interview with Giacomo Majoli, in the leadership of Slow Food International:

Up until a few years ago, when you smelled or tasted a food or wine product, you would do that based a sensorial concept of quality: the product had to be excellent and good to eat.
When you were discussing a particular wine, the topic of conversation would be the quality of what was your glass.

Things are totally different now. The sensorial experience is now more than just the sensorial qualities of the wine itself, but also includes what happens beyond the glass.  Therefore the factors that play a role in evaluating a product, whether it be food or wine, are no longer just aesthetic or sensorial, but also environmental, ethical and social. Hence the idea that a product ought to be "good" - as in good to eat - but also "clean", i.e. the result of a sustainable environment-oriented agriculture, and "fair", which means attentive to ethical and social issues.  This experience coming from the food sector can now be easily applied to other areas such as fashion, the arts and product design.

It is no longer enough for a product to be appealing to the eye and aesthetically rich in emotions. It has to provide some added value, that depends on the material and how it was produced and refined. "Sustainable sensoriality" refers to products that are not only high quality from an aesthetical and sensorial point of view, but also contain these other values.

Good, clean and fair, then, are not principles that should be applied to the plate only, but to life.  And that's what happens when you start going Slow:  you begin to look at your entire experience more closely, to develop a deeper understanding of the curtains behind our actions, to peek inside, to become fully aware of the interconnectedness of everything we, all of us, do together.  And you begin to ask the critical questions:  Is it good, truly good?  Is it clean, in that it is sustainable?  And finally, perhaps most importantly:  Is it fair? 

The answers to these questions, the value we place on them, is what defines us as a people.  So go, have a Slow day, not just any day.

 

How To Start A Week, Or Sunday Morning

Do yourself a favor and spend thirteen minutes of your day watching this.  Created by TBS Atlanta the video covers the history of the Slow Food organization as well as how that organization is impacting the city of Atlanta.  [Thanks to Melissa of Edible Memphis Magazine]

On the same theme this morning, an article in the Greensboro, NC News-Record looks at Slow Food and agriculture in that part of the country, noting the changes occurring in recent years.

Meet the new face of North Carolina farmers, and their customers. It's an intriguing, complex portrait.

Part of it is familiar. The ox-drawn plow Methura Spradling's brother-in-law uses to turn hard soil under. The spring freezes that shrivel the buds and summer droughts that wither the vegetables. Heirloom seeds and gnarly, ugly fruit more flavorful than the supermarket version.

But it's also a face we haven't seen before. Weekly e-mail alerts announce what's ripe and what time to get it. Intricate delivery networks run on retreads and 16-hour days.

At heart, it's a battle of time and distance — an awareness that something is on the brink of perishing. Something bigger than a van full of watermelons.

The best of old and new.  Makes sense to me.

Another interesting Slow item in this week's browsing is a Slow Home site, which discusses the homogeneity of home-building (little brick houses, I think Mellencamp called them) and the need to break free of those forms into something more unique, personalized, and sustainable.

Also, it looks like conversion is possible.   Fast goes slow, and we're all better for it.

If you haven't heard of it, you should check out Memphis' own Jennifer Chandler and her new book Simply Salads.  We were happy to meet her signing copies of the new book yesterday at the Memphis Farmers Market, and look forward to trying out many of the recipes contained therein.

Cheers ya'll.  Take it Slow.

Slow Food vs Institutionalized Food

Slow Food is becoming synonymous with efforts globally to move the momentum of our food systems away from fast, processed, tasteless meals to food that is more local, more deliberate and more convivial.  In America, Alice Waters has been prominent in developing programs, most notably in schools and universities, that take food out of the cafeteria and into the garden.  These programs are designed to connect students with the food they eat, all the way to their production and through preparation to the table.  A couple of weeks ago, buried in the media during the 2007 Farm Bill debate, Alice's Italian counterpart -- the founder of Slow Food internationally -- took this notion up a notch:  Slow Food in Italy's hospitals.  An article published on July 19th in Italy online tells the tale:

Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini met Health Minister Livia Turco Tuesday and signed an agreement aimed at raising eating standards by using the best of the fresh, healthy local produce Italy is renowned for.

Bland soup and overcooked pasta will make way for quality menus and solitary meals will be replaced by patients getting round a table to really enjoy the experience, Turco said.

“Food helps boost a patient both physically and psychologically,” Turco said, “so we should aim for the highest standards”.

“Meals will become a moment of conviviality, in comfortable surroundings,” she added.

The plan is to run this new program at a number of hospitals and then assess the results.  I was personally excited about this idea in the way conviviality relates to health -- I'm a big believer that the joy of the table is intricately tied to the well-being of the person.  Given that this program is focused on people who are healing in one way or the other, it will be interesting to see how the program effects recovery, if at all, and what the impact of good, clean and fair food turns out to be in a healthcare setting.  Cheers to Petrini for his continued efforts and we look forward to hearing more about this trailblazing experiment.

Fine Dining in Memphis

Mrs. Deliberately and I sometimes like to splurge and eat at a restaurant that may or may not subscribe to the same sort of philosophical prescriptions we place on our own kitchen.  These would be instances when we focus mostly on the "good" part of Slow Food's adage that food be "good, clean, and fair."  And this weekend we've been given a kitchen pass (in this case granted by the kids and the sitter) to disappear both Friday and Saturday nights and experience restaurants we haven't yet had the opportunity to see.

Originally, we planned on joining a caravan of Slow Food Memphis folks down to Oxford to visit with John T. Edge and enjoy a meal at the City Grocery.  But alas, events occurred that stood in our way from actually leaving town in time for that excursion.  So instead we took a cue from fellow bloggers The Squirrel Squad and visited local favorite La Tourelle, which recently announced it would be closing its doors in the next month.

We arrived at the height of the rush and service was slow and strained due to a higher rate of customers (with the closing announcement) as well as a shortage of staff.  Never mind, we told our trying-to-be-attentive waiter, we're Slow Food types and are perfectly comfortable biding our time.  So we ordered a bottle of 2003 Louis Latour Cote de Beaune-Villages burgundy and a cheese plate and set in to spread the eating out as far as we could.

The wine was delightful, so much so that I'm already hunting for a case I can purchase to have around the house.  All fruit and lightness to go with the wide variety of food we would soon see on the table.  The cheese plate was presented with three cheeses, several fruits, and a nice white bread to balance the palate.  By the time we were through a glass of wine and the cheese plate, Mrs. Deliberately and I were ready for a main course.  And a main course we indeed discovered.

My better half ordered the Pork Chop Avesnes Style which is served on a bed of potato puree and sauteed spinach.  I decided on the Roast Rack of Lamb served with rapini and potato dauphinois.  In both cases the meat was excellent, perfectly cooked.  And we quickly agreed to disagree about whose potatoes were the finest.  The dauphinois was so delicate -- the texture was of thinly sliced potatoes stacked in a dense tower and only held together by their internal will to make it to the table.  Not rich like traditional au gratin but light by virtue of the cream being heavier than the cheese.  As for her part, Mrs. Deliberately just kept saying "Did I tell you the chop was pan seared?" with a delirious grin on her face.

For desert we enjoyed coffee.  But not just coffee.  Mrs. Deliberately fell prey to the chocolate on the menu and ordered the Mousse while I chose the Creme de Cassis ice cream.  Both were served in small enough portions that we could comfortably polish them off without feeling disgusting on the way back to the homestead.  Both were delightfully perfect in sweetness and richness.

Two and a half hours later we held hands as we strolled back into the azure night.  It's a true shame that we had never experienced La Tourelle until it was not long for Memphis.  But it's a greater joy that we were able to experience it before it is gone.

It's Time to Join Slow Food, Memphians. . .

Slow Food Memphis is in its final stages of being released to the public, and I want to encourage everyone to consider joining Slow Food USA and becoming engaged with your local convivium, here in the mid-south or elsewhere.  What's most interesting about this local group, as evidenced at last Monday night's inaugural meeting, is that even while a dedicated group of people were actively going through the motions to begin this journey, there were at least two others who were pursuing the same end without knowledge of the original crew.  I was one of those additional efforts:  without any insight into the other groups I reached out to the national committee to start the paperwork required to launch a local group.  Which means that three different efforts were underway to get a local convivium of Slow Food created, making me believe that the time is ripe for Slow Food in Memphis.

Now, for those of you who do not know what Slow Food is about, I refer you to the Slow Food USA  website, where you can find a very succinct summary of the organization's central tenets, including the following in discussion of regional cuisines and local food sources:

These foods, and the communities that  produce and depend on them, are constantly at risk of succumbing to the effects of the fast life, which manifests itself through the industrialization and standardization of our food supply and degradation of our farmland. By reviving the pleasures of the table, and using our tastebuds as our guides, Slow Food U.S.A. believes that our food heritage can be saved.

Slow Food U.S.A. believes that pleasure and quality in everyday life can be achieved by slowing down, respecting the convivial traditions of the table and celebrating the diversity of the earth's bounty. Our goal is to put the carriers of this heritage on center stage and educate our membership on the importance of these principles. We hope you will join us.

If I had to translate that to you in simple language, I would simple say that we are about putting the farmer, the cook, and the table together.  When you sit at a meal and fully understand both its provenance and the skill with which it was prepared the experience is more than the sum of these parts. 

Slow Food Memphis will be initiating many activities beginning this summer that you will want to be involved with if you enjoy similar goals.  Events being considered include wine tastings, farm to chef dinners, coffee cuppings, cooking classes, educational events, and of course efforts to share our message in the community like the event at the Magevny Garden this weekend:

                    June 2
                    Slow Food Memphis, Open Garden   Fundraiser
                    9:00am-12:00p, Magevney   Garden, Memphis TN                                      

                    Magevney Garden Fundraiser & Slow Food Memphis Event.                   

                    Event Price = Free
                    RSVP = Volunteers needed
                    slowfoodmemphis@yahoo.com

What are you waiting for?  Join Now!

Slow Food USA Controversy

It must be spring, because with the new life of our kitchen garden also comes the passions of differing views in conflict.  This one happens to be related to Carlo Petrini's new book Slow Food Nation which he is currently on tour in the U.S. promoting.  For those of you unaware of Petrini's significance, he is the founder of Slow Food International and a prominent spokesperson for local, sustainable foods.  Now, it appears that some of the exposition in his latest book is finding fault with a group of west coast farmers, and they've had about enough of it.  From an excellent summary of the controversy by DairyQueen over at Ethicurean:

I am trying to give Petrini the benefit of the doubt, not being able to read it in the original Italian and also not knowing Petrini’s point of view quite well enough to ascertain if what sounds like insults are really neutral statements, coming from him. However, I do think Slow Food’s U.S. team should have tread more carefully when publishing this section, as it deals with some of the same divisive issues of class and access to good food perhaps even more clumsily than I did in a recent post about my food-buying habits.

Apparently the controversy surrounds several local Bay Area farmers who are scolded in Petrini's book for the monoculture of olive trees and the amount of leisure time they enjoy while charging high prices for their harvests.

For those of you outside California, the Ferry Plaza farmers market is basically the St. Peter’s Cathedral of the local, organic food movement, and the farmers who sell their wares at it are our clergy. So for the Pope to visit it, even as Bishop Alice Waters’s guest, and look around and describe it as a “boutique” that serves a clientele “whose social status was pretty clear: either wealthy or very wealthy” and then go on to censure an olive farmer for his monocultural ways and a young hippie farmer for exacting such extortionate prices for his squash that he can spend most of his time surfing is just…. blasphemous. No culture likes outsiders to come in and size it up critically in a glance, and Petrini getting most of his facts wrong just adds insult to injury.

Apparently there's no time given to a discussion about the prices being paid for comparable squash at the local grocery store and how they don't factor in the full costs of such basic requirements as transportation and environmental land reclamation due to pesticides.  And apparently there are people planning to leave the membership rolls of Slow Food USA over the spectacle.  From the blog at Rancho Gordo:

The subtext is that it’s not enough that we grow food as Petrini has suggested in the past. Now we need to sell to a particular customer, charge a particular price, wear certain clothes and spend our leisure time according to his vision. I think he’s irresponsible and Slow Food should be ashamed for giving him an unrestricted platform, despite all the good things he may have done in the past.

This debacle appears to have legs, and we'll keep our eyes on it.  In the meantime, some thoughts. 

First of all, Slow Food USA is not Carlo Petrini, despite his being President-for-Life of Slow Food International.  At the end of the day he has been instrumental in forming the group and defining the guiding principles, but is not the conscience or the day-to-day activities of the organization.  Like any voluntary, subscribing group, we have the luxury of directing where we go.  As I've said so many times about business and sustainability, demand drives action.  Slow Food USA is and will be what the membership makes it.  There can be no eliteness if membership refuses to be elite.  There can be no Hollywood unless we are Hollywood.

While the Bay Area Convivium(s) are robust and at a very mature stage of their development, so many other cities across the country, including Memphis, are just getting started.  So while it's healthy for the west coast members to encounter conflict which helps to reinforce their attitude and approach, it would be sad to see this sort of discussion distract the development elsewhere of a robust local organization that supports the ideals of Slow Food in the future.