FOOD, Inc. goes nationwide

Food, Inc. did so well in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, that it’s headed to 45 more theatres around the country, everywhere from Washington DC to Portland OR to Ft Lauderdale, FL.

It performed better at the box office this past weekend than all the other independent films in release (based on its per screen average).  This is an amazing achievement for a documentary, and a good sign that the public is hungry for the real story of where their food comes from. 

Head to the theatres this weekend!  Tell your friends and neighbors (and then, you know, invite them over for a home cooked meal afterwards).  Click here to see the expanded list of where the movie will be playing starting June 19th.

Remembering South Central Farm and Supporting Public Green Spaces

The South Central Farm operated from 1994 until 2006 on East 41st and South Alameda Streets in South Central, Los Angeles.  The South Central Farmers, primarily poor immigrant families from Latin America, transformed a fourteen-acre plot slated for use as a garbage incinerator into 350 plots where they grew crops like corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, cactus and guava. Once considered the largest urban farm and community garden in the country, the garden enabled families to be less dependent on the food bank and provided a safe neighborhood haven.

After years of successful operation, in a devastating turn of events, the South Central Farm site was sold by Los Angeles city officials to private developer Ralph Horowitz to build a distribution center for Forever 21, a women’s clothing manufacturer and retailer.  After weeks of community protest, the farm was forcibly shut down and, bulldozed at 5 am on June 13, 2006.  The story of the South Central Farmers is told by Scott Hamilton Kennedy in his Academy Award nominated documentary film “The Garden.” Told there was nothing to be done, the filmmaker decided to chronicle this heartbreaking tale through its players: the farmers, the wheelers and dealers, the green power advocates and the moneymen.

This Saturday, on the third anniversary of the garden’s demolition, the South Central Farmers and their supporters will reunite. The rally asks Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa to reconsider the use of this land, and subsidize the restoration of the farm with a portion of $137 million collected from developers for parks and green space.  Especially in this current economic climate, preserving public gardening space and expanding accessibility nationwide is even more important than ever.  This Saturday show your support for public green spaces in your local community by writing a letter (to local officials including city council members or parks bureau representatives), visiting parks, or buying food from local gardeners.

High School Students Carve out a Future through the Culinary Arts

The first time I saw “Pressure Cooker” was at Slow Food Nation last Labor Day. It left me—and as far as I could tell every single other viewer in the theatre—in tears.  It follows three seniors at a Philadelphia public high school, charting their journey through a culinary arts curriculum under the wing of the hilariously blunt, tough-loving Mrs. Stephenson. The film has been making the film festival circuit for the past 9 months and will now be enjoying a theatrical release in several cities (scroll all the way down for schedule).  Here we sit down for an interview with Co-Directors Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman:

SFUSA: What do kids get from culinary education that they can’t find elsewhere in their schools/lives?

Jennifer: Culinary education provides hands on training that can engage all of the senses – smell, taste, touch, sight, and sound. It combines creativity with practicality, and is a skill students can use in their lives now and in the future.  Culinary Arts also encompasses many other disciplines: reading, math, science, but presents them in a practical rather than theoretical way that appeals to many students.  In addition, the discipline of the kitchen adds structure to lives that may not have much structure, and teaches teamwork.

Mark: As for the students from Frankford, in Culinary Arts with Mrs. Stephenson, they are gaining access to a classroom unlike any other at their public school. They know that if they can perfect their crepes and tourne potatoes for Mrs. Stephenson, they can get scholarships and get out of Frankford. Mrs. Stephenson, through her irreverent and uncompromising manner, teaches the value of practice and discipline. There are seven sides on a correctly crafted tourne potato: Wilma helps the kids see that there is a serious upside to perfecting that shape. The patience, repetition, and focus necessary to tourne a potato are skills predictive of success inside and outside the kitchen. Wilma makes that abundantly clear.

SFUSA: What do kids gain by developing a relationship with food?

Jennifer: Some students develop a passion for food and cooking, some gain respect and understanding for the products used in the kitchen, and many learn about nutrition as they broaden their palate and modify their eating habits.

Mark: I felt like I witnessed a developing respect for process. The students at Frankford were learning to put time and care into an endeavor. In preparing even something as seemingly straightforward as an omelet there were several variables that could lead to success or disaster. They developed a rigor in their mentality about how to achieve results.

SFUSA: In the movie we see the kids eat home cooked meals and the food they cook in school—do they, like most teenagers, eat fast food?  Or has their culinary training made them less susceptible to the big draw of fast food? Did you learn anything about kids and their relationship to fast food?

Jennifer and Mark: Although Mrs. Stephenson’s students cook gourmet meals at school and often cook at home, they also consume a lot of fast food because of its low price and easy availability.  Also, several students work in fast food chains and often eat there for free.  Money and time are big factors when students are at school, doing sports, taking care of siblings, and working part and full-time jobs.  Mrs. Stephenson does try to broaden her students’ palates. In one of the scenes in the film, Erica (a 17-year-old) even chastises her family for not having a discerning palate: “You haven’t acquired the taste for anything but Fritos and Chitos.” And Erica believes in what she is saying, even though the food economy and culture around her can prove an overwhelming foe.

 

 

 

More after the jump

Slow Food Emory on CNN

Allison Archer, an Emory student, did her thesis project on sustainability initiatives at her school—CNN saw it, liked it and condensed it into a 4.5 minute piece, all about how integrating sustainable food into the equation is an essential component of greening a campus.   This is just one example of how Slow Food on Campus chapters are beginning to take the nation by storm.  There are currently 20 Slow Food on Campus chapters, around the country, all working to address the need for a good, clean and fair food system in the United States and abroad.  Students who participate in Slow Food on Campus are passionately organizing their peers, faculty and greater campus community to organize around a fairer food system. 

Slow Food Emory is one of the newest Slow Food on Campus chapters, which makes it all the more impressive that they already gaining national attention for their initiatives.  As they explain, “Slow Food Emory hopes to heal ties severed by industrial fare and the campus meal plan.Ԡ The chapter has held potluck picnics, developed an edible school garden for the Captain Planet Foundation, and hosted a restaurant raffle that has introduced students to local, sustainable restaurants in the community. 

For more information about what other Slow Food on Campus chapters are doing around the country and how to start a chapter at your college or university, check out the Slow Food on Campus page on our website.

 

Alice Waters on “60 Minutes”

If you missed Alice Waters on “60 Minutes” last night, you can still watch the piece here.

Also, check out the New York Times Sunday Styles’ piece on The American Academy in Rome, and how Alice—and a former Chez Panisse chef Mona Talbott—have transformed the dining hall there.  As Mona says in the article: “We came with a mandate to create a new model for institutional dining — to change the culture of institutional food so that it’s seasonal, nutritious and local. But it has become more than I ever expected. We have created a real community.”

Travel to Bologna for Slow Food on Film

Slow Food on Film
International Festival of Food and Film
Bologna: May 6-10, 2009

Slow Food on Film is an international festival that matches passion for film with that for food, while also promoting a new critical awareness of food culture.  The festival plays host to screenings of films, short films, documentaries and TV series that focus on food-related issues (drives, perversions, identity and emotional implications) in an original way, as well as on the agricultural and food industry’s repercussion on society and the environment, and on gastronomic memory as a common heritage to be safeguarded.

After the great success of the first edition in Bologna (2,000 daily spectators, 1,350 Slow snacks sold and 800 accredited journalists from 20 countries),  Slow Food on Film will be back May 6-10, 2009.

Start booking your stay in Bologna and your food and film schedule at Slow Food On Film! Read more about the event, including how to buy tickets at www.slowfoodonfilm.com

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.

America’s Next (Slow) Food Network Star

by Slow Food USA staffer Patrick Keeler

“Pssst…you wanna be a (Slow) Food Network Star?”

Despite all previous declarations that only megalomaniacs, bad karaoke junkies, select residents of Orange County, bored housewives and perennial bachelors were allowed – or wanted – to be reality TV stars, I made the bold and hypocritical move to audition for a reality television series. Not just any reali-tv show, but one with “flavor”: America’s Next Food Network Star, but only after some coaxing from the rest of the SFUSA staff around the lunch table.

More after the jump

Slow Food Nation re-cap

Thanks to all 60,000 of you who came to Slow Food Nation and listened, ate, discussed, networked, bought, and cheered.  To the rest of you: we missed you!  We had beautiful sunshine, terrific crowds, and many opportunities to meet each other and expand our growing circle of people supporting a good, clean and fair food system.

As we’ve mentioned before there’s been great day-by-day, minute-by-minute coverage on the Slow Food Nation blog--so do check that out.

Highlights:

• Pictures:  Check out the Slow Food Nation flickr page for hundreds and hundreds of photos taken by people who were there.  Add your photographic gems to the page!
• The Victory Garden: Great news! The Victory Garden, planted on the front lawn of San Francisco’s City Hall for the event, will be kept up through November.  The garden was the heart of the activities of the Civic Center, and was home to a soap box series, musicians, and leisurely strolls.
• New Vision for a 21st Century Food, Farm, and Agriculture Policy: On Thursday August 28th, Slow Food chapter leaders and staff gathered in front of the main steps at City Hall to show support for this new petition which seeks to lay out, in no uncertain terms, what is needed for our food system to move forward in a healthy, systemically sustainable way.  You can read more about the declaration and sign onto the petition Food Bill Declaration.  And we will definitely be writing more about this in the weeks to come.
• Take Back the Tap: Food and Water Watch partnered with the event to make sure that tap water (instead of bottled water) was available at all of the venues; in addition it was an opportunity for attendees to think about how much waste is created by the bottled water industry.  The “Take Back the Tap” stands at the Civic center were cleverly constructed out of old plastic bottles and were selling re-usable metal ones.

We’d love to hear your stories—of a favorite product bought at the market place, or a favorite conversation had on a hay bale, of an inspirational talk you attended, or a slow journey you took in the Bay area. We’ll be sharing more too, day by day, so keep checking back in.

For SFUSA Board Member Chef Kurt Michael Friese’s re-cap on Grist, click here.

For media coverage of the event. you don’t have to look far.  Check out the NY Times Dining section today, or sfgate.com’s ongoing coverage, or menupages.com’s interview with Michael Pollan, or seriouseats.com’s coverage, or…or…or….

 

Gardens and Ranchers et al

Some Thursday links for your all:

• Slow Food Nation's Victory Garden is complete and it's beautiful. And Alice Waters talks up the street food section of the event.
• But can edible gardens save our broken food system? Check out this very interesting article from one of the people who had his lawn transformed by artist Fritz Haeg's Edible Estate project. He says that "to repair the broken system that supplies the bulk of the nation's diet will require Americans to step out of the garden and into the public arena."
• A Montana environmentalist spends the day with some ranchers and opens her eyes to the threats that ranchers are facing out west.
• Check out the new "Eco-tube" and watch a video about you can reduce energy use in your home.