Alice Waters on 60 Minutes

So, next week my dad is in town, and, as per his suggestion, we're going to Chez Panisse; I couldn't be more excited! I've been once before, about three and half years ago, but after living in California for almost three years (GASP, has it been that long), and know a lot more about Alice's Water's movement as well as having socially met some of the people that work at Chez Panisse, it's going to be a much more special occasion. Over the years, I've also learned a lot about Alice's mission that has made me question some of her dreamy ideals. Is it actually realistic to expect the United States to be fed on natural organic food? While her statement of "Good food is a right, not a privilege" is certainly inspiring, and in some ways true--why doesn't our government subsidize organic permaculture rather than genetically modified corn?--it's a bit unrealistic considering our economic times: People who are loosing their homes, jobs, and life savings aren't really going to care if they are eating cheetos or organic apples, nor, sorry to say, should they. I mean, if my day really sucks, I don't think an organic pink lady apple is going make it all better...maybe some Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby might, but I guess, even that is a bit towards to whole food side of things.

Anyways, this dialogue around Alice Waters is, I'm sure, pretty familiar to us all. 60 minutes, however, recently did a piece on her (I think it aired last week) that did show some changing of opinion about Alice, if not a glossing over of some details--that "San Francisco food stall" was in fact Primevera (local SF provider) at the Slow Food nation "Slow Food Served Fast" event, not a "friend of Alice's" who is always in that location...anyways, the excerpt is interesting, so what, and maybe get a little bit jealous of her fireplace right inside her kitchen--did she just poach/fry that egg in a spoon? WANT.


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Alice Waters didn't vote for 42 years!

Following up on my post Art. Food. Give. there was an article in the Huffington Post this past week reporting that Alice Waters didn't vote for 42 years! In 1966, when Waters' journalist-activist friend Bob Scheer lost his anti-Vietnam primary challenge to the Democratic establishment's congressman, Waters vowed to not vote again, until this past year when Clinton and Obama came forward as two possible presidential candidates. Waters raised big money for Obama as well as some funds for Clinton and is now hosting a fundraising dinner tonight in honor of Obama's inauguration that will raise money for two D.C. soup kitchens. So, after 42 years of politic abstinence, Waters finally cast a ballot this past November for our President-elect Barack Obama and become a responsible citizen once again. While I do obviously agree with her presidential choice and her food ethos and applaud her for organizing this inauguration event, I think abstaining from voting is a pretty weak way to influence politics. So let's hope that this time, since Waters' choice candidate did get elected, she will continue to vote like I believe a responsible citizen should.

Art. Food. Give.

Add to the list of most sought after inauguration events, Alice Waters will be "cooking" a dinner for 80 people on January 19th; the tickets are $500. We all know, however, that Alice doesn't actually cook herself (way to do your research NYT); she just tastes and tells her cooks if it tastes good. In addition, other renowned chefs, who do actually cook themselves, have also agreed to participate in the event and will be cooking dinners for 20-30 people in homes around DC on the same night. In addition, several arts related guests will be in attendance, including Maya Lin.

The event is called Art. Food. Give. and proceeds will benefit D.C. Central Kitchen and Martha's Table, which both operate soup kitchens and help to run FarmFresh Markets, which gave 17,000 pounds of food to emergency food providers during its first year. In addition, in keeping with Water's rhetoric for locally produced foods, the ingredients for the dinners will come from local and sustainable farms. In addition, Alice Waters' organization of this event is significant considering her role in trying to persuade President-elect Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama to plant a victory garden on the White House front lawn. Her role in "cooking" this inaugural dinner indicates her possible role in shaping food and agricultural policy in years to come. Let's hope at least.

On what Slow Food actually means...

Leading up to Slow Food Nation I was often asked what "Slow Food" actually means. Each time, I found myself answering the question a bit differently depending on to whom I was talking; at first, I thought this was probably due to my not having a clear sense of the movement, but I think now that my various answers were pretty close to the movement's reality. Slow Food has a lot of meanings and origins, which is okay and pretty appropriate, as all these meanings lead to the same resolution of "better" food. The various definitions of what "better" means are why the movement has so many meanings.

Slow Food's motto is good, clean, and fair food. More specifically this mean, that the food we eat should taste good; the this food should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare, nor our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work. In a talk that I attended during the Slow Food Nation weekend, aptly called "Slow Food Nation",Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser, and Carlo Petrini discussed what Slow Food meant, each speaker bringing a unique perspective on the matter.

Of the speakers, I thought Vadana Shiva brought the most thoughtful perspective to what slow food meant. She spoke most about the Slow Food movement in the context of the greater world food economy, about places were people do not receive the proper nutrition because of the way food systems are set up. Her most important conclusion was to not encourage developing countries to emulate the US food system but to continue to educate citizens on how to produce their own food so as not to become dependant upon other countries for food and to also continue to produce food locally. In addition, as I stated in an earlier blog post, she made the astute statement that the biggest obstacle to the slow food movement is fashion.

In addition, the statement that the slow food movement is a leaderless movement was made, which I also find very true and very interesting. Slow food is, for obvious reasons, a local movement. Much of what slow food strives for is that food be produced locally, which makes it as clean as possibly, often as good as possible (I mean, has anyone had a Haas avocado from South America taste as good as the ones grown here?), and also easiest to determine if the workers have been treated fairly. It's interesting, however, to consider how a movement without a clear leader has gained such an impressive following via grassroots organization.

Overall, I think that much of how an individual perceives slow food is dependant on where an individual lives. In the Bay Area, for example we mostly focus on good as much of our food is clean and fair (ie local with fairly paid labor). Also, there is a lot of culture developed around food here; from restaurants to farmer's markets to food magazines to underground eating clubs, a lot of time has been spent developing a culture around meals. Since moving to San Francisco, I can't remember having even stepped into a fast food chain restaurant for even a bathroom while I have also developed a digestive reaction to any fried food. In the Bay Area we thus have the luxury to reinstate the culture of eating meals communally as well as redefining what this culture is; in this manner, when I talk to someone from the Bay Area about what Slow Food is, I might focus on the cultural redevelopment of eating that is occurring with the slow food movement, but if I'm talking to a friend from Philadelphia who love cheese steaks I might talk about slow food being the opposite of fast food, and give a general overview of how in a "slow" meal you are more connected with the entire production of your food from seed to plate, thus standing in contrast to a fast food meal where you only really participate in the ordering of a grey meat patty. gross.

The Slow Food Taste Pavilions: a Glutonous Display of Food

One of the other events I participated in during Slow Food Nation was the Taste Pavilions. My ticket for this event was a whopping $58 after getting a discount from the original $65 via the Whole Foods discount. When my friend Lora and I arrived at Fort Mason, where the Taste Pavilions were being held, however, we were taken aback by the abundant display of delicious foods and suddenly realized that our $58 was money well spent.

The organizers of Slow Food Nation convinced local architects to create designs to convert one of the Fort Mason warehouses into a series of food specific rooms or "pavilions" where visitors can taste and learn about artisan versions of their favorite foods. Taste wise, my favorite of all of the pavilions was, by far, the ice cream pavilion. There were two "flights" of ice cream scoops, and I chose the Dark Chocolate, Olive Oil, and Fresh Blueberry flight, which was most definitely the best of the flights. The chocolate was creaming and wonderfully flavorful, the olive oil subtlety sweet and extra creamy with the fat of the oil, and the blueberry actually tasted like blueberries--what a concept!

My other favorite pavilions were the Olive Oil, Chocolate, Fish, and Wine, each for different reasons. The Olive Oil pavilion was in my opinion the best designed of the pavilions: the designers used everyday construction materials such as orange netting, raw wood, and crates to create a beautifully lit space that truly transported you away from the rest of the pavilions. More specifically, the front of the pavilion was occupied by a tasting station while the back of the space was equipped with an educational space where trained olive oil experts told about how to properly taste olive oil, which is a process reasonably similar to wine tasting, just involving smaller tastes (I mean, would you really want to drink a glass of olive oil in one sitting?). This pairing of spaces made it nice to go back to the tasting part of the pavilion so that you could taste each olive oil, knowing which undertones to look for. The chocolate pavilion was great because of the variety of tasting they gave you; it was also interesting how the flavors of each chocolate changed as you ate the other pieces, your taste pallet changing with each bite of chocolate. The wine pavilion, while not a wonderfully designed space, was wonderfully fun to go to with my friend Lora who can look at an absurdly long wine list and pick out the most expensive bottles to try, and boy, were some of them amazing. The fish was also a delicious stop for the creativity of each dish and was especially tasty after the disappointing charcuterie pavilion.

And so yes, the charcuterie was very disappointing. While the prosciutto we had was tasty, but it's pretty hard to have prosciutto not be tasty. We were also given beef jerky (really?) and something that resembled pate, but wasn't. Each were fine, but none had any wow factor. Charcuterie truly was a pavilion with so much potential (just off the top of my head, why no lardo?) that was totally not taken advantage of, while also in the midst of other pavilions that were totally pushing the envelop of their respective food products.

One of the most fun parts of the night, however, was are mistaken crashing of the employee party. After the official ending of the Taste Pavilions at 9, people congregated outside the event in front of the beer pavilion, and Lora and I thought it appropriate to join them. Eventually, it went on past 10 and a lot of people had left, and those remaining started to ask us which pavilion we had worked in. After enough people asked us, we realized we were in fact crashing the staff party, which was more than fine with the good natured foodies. The great part about the party was that all the beer, bread, and opened bottles of wine not used during the event were now being given out for free for all to take, which we might have taken advantage of just a bit.

Relating this back to the Slow Food movement as a whole, Slow Food is often criticized for being an exclusive or bougie movement; due to the expensive price of the ticket for the pavilions, this point is valid. While it was a wonderful experience to taste such delicious food, the polished designs of the pavilions, the high end food products, and the well dressed visitors seemed a little removed from some of the movement's "roots". On the other hand, having such a celebration of food brings delicious food and the necessary steps to obtain this food (good, clean, fair being the moto of the slow food movement) to the attention of a greater public than it would have otherwise. In this manner, it is great that it is more prevelent to be a conscientious food consumer but I would agree with one of the speakers I saw in a panel during the weekend (which will be the subject of my next posting) who said that one of the greatest obstacles to the movement is fashion. As fashions change and flux, we do not want the slow food movement to be a fad that will simply pass with time.

Also, I should mention that Alice Waters was there. She signed my ticket. Swoon.

On the Eve of Slow Food Nation!

Well, sort of the eve, for me at least...

The first day of Slow Food Nation was officially today, but I am attending my first event tomorrow. Much hoopla in the city and my own personal excitement has led up to this event, giving me heightened expectations and some mixed feelings. Visitors have to pay for most events and many are rather pricey with a lot of them having already sold out. While their selling out and the proceedings going to the international Slow Food nonprofit is exciting, it does seem a little exclusive to have so many of the events at seemingly cost prohibitive prices. I know I have written about how it is good that a bourgeois culture is adopting many of the slow food concepts into their lifestyles, but I do think having the celebration of the slow food movement being costly to the individual is a bit contradictory, or has the potential to be at least.

I don't want to say too much, however, before I attend my events. My first stop tomorrow will be volunteering at CUESA (not exactly SFN sanctioned, but in the same vain), and then to the victory garden, followed by the Slow Food talk at 4 pm. On Sunday, I'm going to be going to the Sunday night taste pavilion with a possible jaunt at the Slow Food Rocks concert, but we'll see. Next week, I will have plenty to write about I am sure!