Thanksgiving on the Ark of Taste

by Cecilia Estreich

During the holidays, tradition tends to shine even in the most fast-food saturated kitchens. Despite Coca-Cola’s insistence that the stretch from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve is all about computer-animated polar bears and sugary, carbonated beverages, the real centerpiece of most holiday meals is a family recipe. Think about it. Whether it’s a cookie recipe brought over from Italy with your Sicilian grandma or the stuffing your mother learned to make in college, the holidays are a time when we celebrate our loved ones and our cultures through food.

This year, Slow Food would like you to add another element to your feasts: foods listed on the US Ark of Taste, an online catalog of more than 200 rare and regional foods in the U.S. If the holidays are a time when we celebrate and give thanks, it seems fitting to prepare foods that support people in our communities and reflect our local traditions.

Looking through the Ark list on the Slow Food website, there are so many endangered products that are perfect for a holiday table: heirloom apples for pies, Louisiana oysters for stuffing, heritage turkey breeds and regional cheeses from the American Raw Milk Cheese Presidium. There are also thirteen new products that were boarded on the list in August. 

More after the jump

Kids Promote a Delicious Heritage (Turkey) with Slow Food Russian River

by Slow Food USA intern, Cecilia Estriech

As Thanksgiving approaches, many of us are steeling ourselves for yet another holiday feast featuring a mealy industrially produced bird. Turkey, in most American households, is the white elephant on the buffet table—everyone knows that the nearly ubiquitous broad-breasted white is dry and flavorless, but most of us are too polite to say anything (it is a holiday after all). The members of Slow Food Russian River  are trying to change our turkey experience one heritage breed at a time.

Situated in California’s Sonoma valley where the broad-breasted white was first bred in the 1950’s, Slow Food Russian River has established the Heritage Turkey Project to encourage the production of endangered breeds. The three-year old program partners with 4-H and Future Farmers of America to get kids in the region involved in raising the turkeys. Every year, six to ten young people raise two-hundred heritage breed turkeys provided by the Russian River chapter. Once they reach maturity, the birds are sold at market price—$7.50 per pound this year. For their labor, the kids receive all the revenue from sales.

In addition to providing kids with hands-on experience working with heritage breeds, it also encourages consumers in the community to expand their palates. Russian River committee leader Rick Theis remarks that “residents are learning about Heritage Turkeys and the Slow Food Movement, and tasting the results.” The turkeys have become so popular, in fact, that they consistently sell out with an ample waitlist. 

More after the jump

Toque Reform: Spawning Biodiversity

by Jennifer M. Hall
There was no shortage of story displayed around the room, but as you would hope, the best story was on the plate…plate after plate of Salmon Nation. Al Kowitz, who explained that he went to culinary school (at an age when most are looking to retire!) “to learn to cook with local foods,” without a doubt taught more than he took away. Yes, he has a better handle on the mechanics now. But what he shared with his peers and instructors about the names, the names behind the names and the flavors of local foods was unparalleled. 
Equipped with history as a farmer, Washington State University Extension specialist and doctorate in Communications, Al offered those he touched at Spokane Community College a new relationship with food – daily. Not only did he serve ozette potatoes in his graduation menu, he grew them. He was the first student to break stride with the “rules” and personally source most of his meal. Al made a place at the table for tradition, indigenous culture and creative spirit (see how he plated his courses to match pieces of art).

More after the jump

This Sunday: Enjoy an Amazing Brunch at NYC’s Back Forty for Uprising Seeds

This Sunday at Back Forty restaurant, Jeff Lydon, Chef Peter Hoffman (Savoy and Back Forty), Hilary Baum (founder, Baum Forum), Francine Stephens (owner, Franny’s Pizza) and Slow Food USA invite you to celebrate the third anniversary of the Betsy Lydon Ark Award and 2008 award recipients, Brian Campbell and Crystine Goldberg of Uprising Seeds/Uprising Organics.

While enjoying seasonal, locally sourced foods over brunch, Jeff will share the history and background of the award and introduce Brian and Crystine, who just got back from a fantastic week at Terra Madre ‘08.

Founded three years ago in Washington State, Uprising Seeds/Uprising Organics is a regional, organic seed company and fresh vegetable CSA farm that grows Ark of Taste produce and makes it available to all members of their community, regardless of income. To do this, they earmark roughly 75 percent of their CSA shares for families that receive food stamps. They also consult with farms nationwide to help them initiate Food Stamp CSA programs of their own.

Sunday’s brunch event will help to raise awareness and funds for the future of the Betsy Lydon Ark Award, and share the inspiring work of Uprising Seeds.
When: This Sunday, November 2nd
Time: 12:30-2:30pm
Where: Back Forty Restaurant 190 Avenue B at 12th Street, Manhattan

Price: $50/person for two course family style brunch, coffee and one drink (includes tax and tip)
RSVP: Space is limited to 35 people, so please RSVP by 5pm, Friday October 31st, to
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Remaining tickets will be available at the door.
If you cannot attend (or are too busy campaigning), but would like to contribute to the Award fund, please call Slow Food USA at 718-260-8000 or visit Slow Food USA.

Rediscovering Up North Traditional Foods

By Paula McIntyre, co-founder of Up North Foodies

When Gary Nabhan visited northern Michigan earlier this month to lead a group of locals in identifying traditional foods at risk, I was stumped. The cherries and whitefish that first come to mind when thinking of our typical Up North menus are still prevalent. And the foods I remember from childhood are more of the Midwestern casserole variety; not a specific potato, or chicken or mushroom.

Stores and restaurants usually don’t list the varieties of their foods, with apples being a notable exception. And the generic term “heirloom” is the only hint a label might provide that a particular item isn’t your standard fare. I’m not conditioned to think of specific varieties.

So I wasn’t sure how much I could contribute to the conversation, and as it turns out, several other participants shared that same initial reaction. Perhaps the sheer size of Michigan’s list of potential at-risk foods intimidated us. Fifty wild foods and more than 300 historically cultivated foods were included, ranging from Frost Grape, Oswego Tea, and Aunt Mary’s corn, to the Shiawassee Beauty apple, the Beltsville White Turkey and Ayers Butternut.

More after the jump

Apples of Our Eyes, Nose and Mouths

by Gary Paul Nabhan

When the leaves of New England begin to glow with crimsons, purples and golds, many of us remember that it’s time for crimson, purple and gold apples to be picked, packed, sequestered in storage sheds, or processed into cider, butter, sauces or pies. Apples exemplify that taste of the fall for many of us, but just what kind of apples we taste depends upon just where exactly we live, and how well we know our neighboring orchard-keepers.

Some eight hundred kinds of apples once enriched the kitchens, taverns and inns of New England, but most of these have already disappeared from the region’s cuisines. In fact, just nineteen varieties monopolize the bins in our grocery stores, the pies of our cafes and the ciders of our bars. That is but a paltry sample of what it means to be an apple.

When the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) held workshops in Vermont and Massachusetts last year, we learned that at least seventy of the heirloom apples unique to New England that remain are so infrequently featured in nurseries, farmers markets and roadside stands that they can be considered threatened or endangered.

If nothing is soon done about them, their colors, textures, flavors and fragrances might forever be lost from Yankee culinary traditions. But we might also forget the lovely poetry of their folk names: Baker Sweet, Bottle Greening, Coles Quince, Gloria Mundi, Graniwinkle, Hightop Sweet, Pumpkin Russet, and Sheepnose.

More after the jump

Survival of the Tastiest

Hot on the heals of our last post about the Eat It to Save It philosophy comes this article, Survival of the Tastiest in (on?) FLYP Media, a new online, interactive magazine. Check out a video of Erika, our Executive Director, and explore some of the foods that the US Ark of Taste is working to catalog and promote in a cool little featurette.

While the article doesn’t necessarily break new ground for you old salts familiar with Slow Food and the Ark of Taste, it’s a good way to introduce others to our mission and one of our national programs. You can also remind them that that they can search for producers of Ark products at LocalHarvest.

Click here for a free subscription to FLYP.

Poppy Tooker on the Eat It to Save It Philosophy

If you don’t know her, Slow Food New Orleans founder and leader, Poppy Tooker, is a chef, food activist and champion of the Eat It to Save It philosophy. In this MSN Practical Guide to Healthy Living video, follow Poppy around the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden as she visits with Ark of Taste farmers and food producers and discusses the importance of saving and reviving our delicious rare foods and food traditions.

Growing More Than Food: Reflections on the Victory Garden

by Slow Food USA Staffer Julia De Martini Day
photo by Slow Food USA Staffer Cecily Upton

The first thing I wanted to do after arriving in San Francisco from Brooklyn, NY the Tuesday before Slow Food Nation was visit the Victory Garden.  When I got to the front of the garden I saw a sign above the small entrance gate – Victory Garden hours, 9am-4pm.  “Shoot, I missed it,” I thought to myself.  But before I turned away, a woman walked in front of me and opened the gate, “Come in,” she said. “It’s open.”

It was a beautiful, sunny, and quiet afternoon, and the garden was empty.  The woman offered to show me around, pointing out the native species and medicinal sections.  She noted the translation of certain vegetable names into Spanish and told me how she had been coming here every day since it opened, and eating food from the garden, too.  In the middle of the garden, between lettuce, kale, and rainbow chard, she opened a composition book and began humming a song she had written about the garden.  In a way it read as a list of everything growing, but it also had a chorus reminiscent of “this land is your land, this land is my land.” 

“This is our garden, a place for you and me. This is our garden, where we come to be.”

I knew the Victory Garden was producing food for a food bank and growing all kinds of wonderful things, but I hadn’t imagined it would also be generating community ownership from neighborhood residents. I’m sure not everyone living nearby felt this way, but this one woman’s poetry was a beautiful symbol of how the garden was contributing more than just food to the city.

Uprising Seeds

by Slow Food staffer Julia De Martini Day

Brian Campbell from Uprising Seeds flew from Northern Washington State to San Francisco to attend Changemakers’ Day at Slow Food Nation, and to be presented with the financial component of the Betsy Lydon Ark Award.  Uprising Seeds works to preserve and promote the use of rare and native seeds in Washington State, as well as run a farm and low-income CSA in Bellingham. 

During Changemakers’ Day Brian joined the “Eat it to Save it” panel , alongside biodiversity and native food tradition champions Gary Nabhan and Poppy Tooker, in order to discuss how co-producers can contribute to protecting biodiversity through the pleasure of eating. 

Saturday evening, Uprising Seeds was presented with the financial component of the award at a Slow Dinner at Cavallo Point.  Neal Peterson, pawpaw grower and researcher, and the 2006 award recipient, (and at Slow Food Nation to participate in a Taste Workshop with his pawpaw fruit - read more about the pawpaw fruit on the Ark of Taste website here) presented the award to Brian.

Brian spoke briefly about his excitement to continue educating people about not just saving seeds, but finding the right seeds to grow in their environment, as well as for being honored with the award.

“As farmers our work is our passion, and we accept that we will at best make a modest living in the work we do, so it is awards like this that make us feel rich in community and the things that really matter…For us, this recognition shows a growing awareness of seeds and regional seed stewardship as being a real cornerstone in what it means to grow and eat local food,” Brian said. 

Up next for Brian and partner Crystine Goldberg? The Terra Madre conference in Turin in October!

Uprising Seeds plans to use part of the award to develop a website, but in the meantime you can read more about their CSA serving people with food stamps here.