Slow Food

I'm not.

Phil

i try not to use the micro....does this count?
danny

I didn't post my response until I had followed the link and others, reading about the purposes, intents, programs and such.

There are aspects I agree with. But no, I am not a Slow Food kind of person.

Phil

I second that. I like a good braise. I like lunch at the farmhouse. I buy organic when I can. But I'm not a slow food gal. The spirit of the movement is good but the logic is a bit flawed. Balance is everything.

Those issues all bear in my opinion and some others as well-- except the too european. That didn't bother me.

There was way too much politics in it though. Plus a HUGE dose of elitism and snobbery.

Phil

I'm also a slow foodie. I do try to shop organic, and am currently getting in contact with farms in the area. However, I'm not as hard-core into the movement as other individuals. I support the keeping of the artisian ways, but I am not thinking about this constantly or discussing it on a regular basis. Like all concepts, it is good as long as it isn't over done. But, that just my opinion

Phil, I have been wrestling with this misconception a great deal, and trying to figure out its roots. Perhaps you can help me.

My dictionary says that elite means: "the choice or most carefully selected part of a group, as in a society of profession." (and also a kind of typewriter). Is there something wrong with a group of people who believe that the Delaware Bay Oyster, or Hand-Parched Wild Rice, or the Suncrest Peach (among hundreds of other foods) are items that are worth preserving? What about the way of life of the Uzbek goat herder or the Tibetan yak's milk cheese maker or a sumatran coffee grower? Is there something wrong with wanting these things to continue to exist? Because that's what Slow Food does.

The dictionary also says that (besides being a shoemaker) a snob is "a person who attaches great importance to wealth, social position, etc., having contempt for and keeping aloof from those whom he considers his inferiors, often one admiring, imitating, and seeking to associate with those whom he considers his superiors" ALSO "A person who regards himself as better than others in some (specified) way and behaves undemocratically."

Aside from its ability to feed and educate my children, I attach no great importance to wealth, and Slow Food as an organization doesn't have enough money to do so. As for the "contempt" and "aloof” parts of the definition, as well as the "admiring and imitating" parts, we certainly don't do that with regard to people. If we do it with regard to food (and we do), it is only because we see those foods as under threat of extinction from the onslaught of the industrialization and standardization of foods and flavor, and wish to protect them.

I see no snobbery whatsoever in protecting farmers and artisans and the food they produce. I see no snobbery at all in teaching elementary school children to taste foods consciously and conscientiously. I see no snobbery in drawing closer connections between a community and its local farmers. This is what Slow Food does.

If we throw some big, fancy-schmansy dinners along the way, what’s wrong with that? It’s what keeps most of the people on this forum (including me) gainfully employed.

Perhaps you meant, through insinuation or otherwise, that we are "intellectuals." If so, then to that I plead guilty on behalf of the movement, and myself, since I have never understood the negative connotations that some in our society have attached to that word. I for one would be proud to have the word applied to me, if it can be, because it means “of or done by the intellect; appealing to the intellect; requiring or using intelligence; having or showing a high degree of intelligence.” Slow Food sounds pretty smart to me.

Per CC's request, let's move this to the Late Night Cafe.

Please continue the coversation at http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/forums/s...078#post109078

I'm a member of the NYC Convivium, but I do use my dough hook constantly :)

Kyle,

That's great! Please come and talk about it at the new thread

http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/forums/...9078#post109078

Oh, and there's nothin' wrong with a dough hook

I really like the begining of the Carlo Petrini`s Book, but after many pages it started to be very difficult to apply it to our reality here in Brasil, very very, specially in my city, Goiânia, in the middle of the country.

I remember I tryied contact with Slow Food point here, but they didn`t answer, I still planning to create a culinary work with the root principles of slow food, but it seems difficult to apply it.

 

For exemple: I love fish, and we don`t have local fish production in a "slow food way" here, so I thought:

 

"Well I can buy fish from the seaside, which is about 3000km from here..."..."but wait... as I read on the book, buying fish from very far places is not sustainable!"

 

So, do you understand the drama here?

Personally, no, I don't. If you want to eat sustainably, eat locally, and yes, that means don't eat fish. If you want to eat fish coming from 3,000 km away, go ahead, just don't call it sustainable food.

 

I have a friend who's a strong sustainable food advocate, and she avoids anything that was not produced locally. That means no bananas, no pineapple, no chocolate, no coffee, etc etc....

 

It's all about the strength of your convictions. Personally, I try to buy local whenever possible, but find it too hard to be 100% dedicated.

What is "local", French Fries?

 

Is it the hundred mile radius Alice Waters claims?

Is it the Kentucky Proud program here in the Bluegrass (which includes the entire state plus 50 miles into all neighboring states)?

Something else?

 

And from whence comes the idea that "local" and "sustainable" are the same things?

 

Why is a fish caught 3000 klicks away and shipped to Peixe's town not sustainable? If Peixe does not eat that fish, what effect will it have on the resource? Will the boats stop catching that fish? Will they stop making ice, to put in the trucks, to carry the fish to destinations like Goiania? Should all those people be thrown out of work in the name of "local" sourcing?

 

More to the point, what makes the same fish sustainable if bought by somebody who lives right near the boat landing?

 

"Local," and "sustainable" have become almost as meaningless buzzwords as "organic" and "natural." But the idea that they are synonyms takes us to the sublime. "Local" has to do with where the food comes from. "Sustainable" has to do with the resource itself, and how it can be maintained at viable levels.

 

And the reality is, as much as we'd like to deny it, buying locally grown is elitist. At least in the United State. Why? Because there isn't enough land, close enough to where most of us live, to provide food at the inexpensive levels we're accustomed to. So only those who can afford the premium can buy locally.

 

Certainly there are many problems associated with the 1,500 mile tomato. But cost isn't one of them. Tomatoes grown in California and shipped to Kentucky are cheap. Those grown and sold "locally" here in Kentucky are not. I could also make a good case that the 1,500 mile tomato actually has a smaller carbon footprint than those grown locally and sold at farmer's markets. Does that, therefore, make Monsanto the largest proponent of sustainability on the planet?

 

I have a friend who's a strong sustainable food advocate, and she avoids anything that was not produced locally.

 

Hmmmmmmm? No salt? No pepper or other spices? No grains? Few, if any, condiments? Little, if any, seafood (unless she defines local seafood as where it was landed rather than where it was caught).

 

Perhaps her convictions aren't quite as strong as she makes out?

 

 

If you cannot grasp the concept, try not to think in terms of "local" and "not local", think "more local" and "less local". Does that help?

 

All of those, and whatever you define. It's not like we're trying to write a law. If Alice Waters purchases something that's a hundred and one mile away, does that make her a hypocrite? Does that mean everything she strives for is nonsense?

 

Did you read the discussion at hand? Your answer lies in the post I answered to.

 

 

Again, I refer you to the post I answered to. Maybe you need to read the book discussed here, and you'll find your answers?

 

 

Biggest nonsense I've ever heard spewed on these here forum. You've said that a thousand times before, I've challenged your opinion, and you haven't answered. It's easy to categorically state something like this when you're not ready to argue it.

 

Why would you suggest that? Now you're trying to put words in my mouth. I wasn't advocating local in my previous post, instead explaining how it did not bother me to try to eat local as much as possible while also indulging in non local sourcing when necessary or practical.

 

She's a vegan, so that takes care of that seafood problem right there. What makes you think she lives in a location where grain, spices, pepper etc.. don't grow? Where salt isn't harvested? I don't think I mentioned the country where she lives, did I? Who said she never, ever bought items that were non local? I said she's a strong advocate, and avoids those items, not that she never bought them.

 

Perhaps you just wanted to offer your judgement even though you don't know the first thing about what you're judging?

 

In any case my whole argument was exactly that: that you don't need to be 100% local or 100% not-local. It makes a whole lot of sense to try your best to purchase local products even if sometimes you have to buy non-local ones.

 

The avoidance of the pollution that results from transporting the fish over 3,000 miles. Once you've polluted the air and the water enough, there won't be much fish left in the ocean.

Edited by French Fries - 7/11/11 at 8:27pm

I am

 

But I am also a "producer"

 

 

 

I produce artisan chocolates, small batches, dairy cream and fresh fruit fillings, 3 week shelf life.  I can not, and will not compete with Mal*Wart or chains with mass produced chocolates.

 

The mentality of food,and the mentality of how small producers are treated has changed dramatically since the end of WW2.  Big is beautifull and small and local is something to be ashamed of, and erradicted.

 

If I make it to 70 (another 25 years) food mentality will change again.  This time I hope it will be for the better

I think maybe the problem is the same problem with all sorts of fundamentalist beliefs.   Even a good idea that is taken on with religious fervor can become excessive.  

 

I tried to open the link but it led to some generic topics, no definition of slow food.  So my comments are based on what i read in the posts above:

 

I'm not an expert on this but here are just some thoughts and questions. 

 

If you live far from the sea is it preferable to get goiter or to transport fish or salt?

. 

If you live in a very cold climate where nothing grows most of the year, should you eat only animals and forego fruit and vegetables, with all the risks of vitamin deficiencies?.  Or is it better to heat large greenhouses to grow fruit and vegetables?  If you live in a place where it's too dry to grow food is it better to bring large quantities of water a great distance?  What is more sustainable? 

 

In the middle ages, food was as slow as it could be, because it could hardly be transported at all, so the most of the people starved during hard times, and the rich landowners and lords  would take their retinues from one manor to another to eat.  (Is it more sustainable to travel to the place where the food is?)  Yet, even so, spices were brought from the far east and many other distant places even then. 

 

You can be a fundamentalist slow-fooder, or you can be concerned about what it takes to produce and transport what you want to eat and take it all with a grain of (perhaps imported) salt. 

 

My own experience with eating in some slow food places (and i live where there is good food grown locally all year round) is that the food is boring and not that great.  Maybe it was the specific cook and the specific restaurant.  But if you exclude all the seasonings and anything transported, you end up with a very boring menu.  I'm sure some will argue that it's just a question of creativity, but my own feeling is that when people get so rigid about food they often don't really care much what it tastes like. 

 

Not to mention that  we would have to exclude coffee, tea, chocolate, salt, pepper etc .  THAT would not be sustainable for me anyway. 

Slow food, Fast food, local, imported,  as long as the outcome taste and looks good to the customer and you, thats fine for me. As KY says in essence the words local, sustainable etc have been overused and mean nothing. To me if I can't use something from 105 miles away but can if its under 100 is crazy. All pepper is imported as are most spices , so do I not use them?  

This site started out for home cooks, chefs, bakers food people, not for those who have self administered diets or causes or fads. Its like relegion, I respect any ones right to talk about it  at proper time and place , but don't try and convert me and tell me yours is the only true one.

My foodselection is based on info coming my nose, my fingers, my mouth and my wallet.

If a local supplier delivers a better product at an acceptable price, I will go for that one. I hate food-extremists and I'm even shocked with things like "..the 100 mile radius Alice Waters claims..". Who the hell is Alice claiming things like that?

 

Let's go for simplicity when it comes to local sourcing; either you're lucky to find locally grown food in your neighbourhood or you don't. Who on earth is going to put radius or miles on the definition of local food? Use your common sense; I will never drive 100 km for a food item unless it's part of a tourist excursion.

Our local strawberry season is coming to an end, I mean the ones growing in real ground. I bought a lot as usual from a local farmer. The last day I had to go to the field. They had a little delay, so I had to wait for them to pick the quantity I needed while I was watching them! I also made strawberry jam from these, even though I can buy much cheaper stuff -with no taste at all- originating from Spain. Many farmers will also offer Belgian endives -grown in real ground- in the season. I will go for that too even though there's a whole lot of much cheaper junk -mostly grown in waterculture- coming from other countries.

 

I just bought fresh ice-cream produced at another farm at 1km from my door. They produce mainly milk, the best fresh butter you can buy, fresh cheese etc. but also potatoes and leeks in the season. Is it the best ice-cream I can get? Not really. It's a little grainier and much tougher than commercial stuff. But, take their strawberry ice-cream; it's bursting with fruit in taste and smell. I mean natural additions, not synthetic stuff. I gladly give up smoothness for taste! Ingredient list; full fat milk, cream, eggs, sugar, strawberries. That's it!

I'm so lucky to live in a country where we still have dozens of local real bakeries, chocolatiers, butchers, fishmongers, farmers, local weekly markets etc.

There was a time where even the smallest village had one or more breweries!

 

On the other hand, I do buy mango, pine-apple, peaches, oranges and a lot of other things that are not grown in my country. Why wouldn't I?

Think economics. I pay 1,5 euro for a foreign pine-apple weighing approx. 1 kilo. Only 500 grams really good strawberries from my farmer cost 2,5- 3,5 euro...

BTW, I frequently visited the Slowfood website in the past. My opinion; extremely boring;  www.slowfood.com

It's easy to categorically state something like this when you're not ready to argue it.

 

The problem, FF, is that you want to argue from the heart and I want to argue from the head.

 

For instance, you argue in favor of "local." But you refuse to define it. And, in fact, claim it's defined anyway anybody wants to. So, OK. what if I consider the whole earth as local. Would you buy that?

 

And then you waffle. On one hand, you use a friend who "avoids anything.....", which anyone with the brains God gave a turnip infers means everything. But then you backpedal and say you never meant she doesn't use non-local products.

 

And, so long as you insist on confusing concepts we have no basis for discussion. "Local" and "sustainable" are not the same things. Sometimes they can be related, that's true. But generally they aren't----unless you want (as seems to be the case) to think in theoretical problems that occur in deep time.

 

And I'd be willing to bet that you haven't actually examined the example you use. Have you measured the pollution involved delivering the 1,500 mile tomato versus the emmisions from 15, or 20, or 30 "local" farmers driving what are often poorly maintained vehicles as much as 100 miles to deliver their produce to a farmer's market? Of course not, cuz that would fly in the face of the emotion-based argument. And, if you should get around to making such a comparison, don't forget to include all pollution factors, including the solid waste problems associated with farmers markets.

 

And, of course, you use invective instead of facts when you disagree with something that is self-evident. Do you really believe that "local" and "sustainable" have not become mere buzzwords, diluted to the point they have little actual meaning? What world are you living in? Oh, yeah. Now I remember. The world in which "local" is defined as meaning whatever you want it to mean. Which, of course, takes it out of the buzzword category and into a meaningful one.

I dunno, Ky.  Yes compared to a farmer's market, a 1,500 mile tomato is grown more economically and has a smaller carbon footprint, no arguement there.

 

Prior to WW2 there used to be a ring of farms around almost every major city in N.America that supplied the cities with dairy, meat, and produce.  This is not the case now.  So yes, you can grow tomaotes, or corn, or potatos, or lettuce very economically on huge planatations.  So economically, that small lcoal farmers can not compete with pricing.  What happens?  The farm goes under, a sub-division goes up. 

 

We have many of our foods in a small number of very large baskets.  Everything is good unless that basket is upset or has a hole in it.  Like e-coli, or whatever happens in those huge abatoirs and packing houses.  Not saying that such things don't happen on small farms, they do, but the impact is far, far  smaller, and when a re-call does come, a mountain of food is not destroyed as with a huge distrubuter's re-call.

 

Meat is another story.  The local cow or pig does have a smaller carbon footprint than the 3,000 mile animal,

Which is probably why KYH switch his example from fish to tomato. 

 

 

Edited by French Fries - 7/12/11 at 12:16pm

No, French Fries, I didn't change horses in midstream.

 

"The 1,500 mile tomato" is shorthand, used by everyone seriously involved in the locovore vs food distribution discussion. It stems from the fact that the average tomato travels 1,500 miles from field to market.

 

I alluded to one problem with fish and the locally produced argument. Many---perhaps most---locovores consider the port of landing as the source of seafood. In fact, the source is the location in the ocean where it was harvested. So, let's say you subscribe to the hundred mile radius philosophy, and live 50 miles from a commercial wharf. You happily buy that fish, unaware, or uncaring, that the boat that caught it may have been operating several hundred miles away.

 

The local cow or pig does have a smaller carbon footprint than the 3,000 mile animal,

 

I'm not sure that's generally true, Foodpump. There are multiple steps moving a live cow or pig from farm to market, as it's very rare that the farmer is also the processor. A typical journey: Farm to livestock auction to processor to market to consumer. Nowadays, with the greater awareness of the benefits of farmer produced meats, we can reduce that by one step. But even so, that's a lot of trucking around with one animal: farm to auction to consumer to processor to consumer. Now multiply that out a hundred, a thousand fold and compare it to moving entire herds at one time from farm to feedlot to processor to market.

 

Do the economies of scale involved with factory raised livestock and feedlots result in a greater or lesser total carbon footprint? My official position is, I dunno And you can quote me on that. I wouldn't be surprised to find it could go either way. I would suspect, however, given the retail prices of pork, beef, and poultry, that the total costs compare pretty much the same as they do with produce

 

And how do you define the source of the location for a tomato? Where did the seed come from? Where was the plant who produced that seed grown? Where did its seed come from? Do you take all that into account when claiming that a 1,500 mile tomato has a lesser carbon footprint than the one grown by a local farmer? Which, by the way, I don't believe - do you have a source for that statement? 

 

BTW there may be stuff lost in translation here as English is not my first language... but when someone "avoids" something, does that actually mean they never, ever use it? I was under the impression that it meant they do their best not to use it, most of the time. If you say "I avoid eating red meat", does that mean you never ever eat red meat? Or does that mean you try your best not to consume too much red meat? 

Well, let me give you an exemple of what I understand as "sustainable": it means doing and eating in way that really resonates with your own moment of life, the moment of your health, the moment of your emotions, the moment of what your money can pay.  

 

But, this is a PERSONAL VIEW, my view based in my experience of life, specially my experience with death and disease. Drinking a coffee produced in a non-sustainble way, or non-local coffee, for most of us is not a sustainble practice, but for that person who need to keep his health ok... maybe it`s the most sustainble way.... (this is just a picture of what I mean)

 

Anyway, it`s only sustainable if your action is based in your experience of life.