Yesterday, Alan O and I went to Slow Food Nation. What is slow food nation you ask? Well I'm glad you asked, I'll tell you. Slow Food Nation is a gathering here in San Francisco and possibly in other places as well that is designed to encourage and support organic and locally sustainable eating. Slow Food is a new movment--although eating locally grown foods is not new--that is being lead by people Alice Waters who was the head chef or owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. Now I'm sure someone who really understands all of this can explain it more. But I'm giving you my take. And essentially the event yesterday was a farmer's market/festival. But instead of festival food like funnel cakes they had organic fancy type fair foods. I had eaten before I went because I didn't know what kind of hippy food I might find at this event--you know like a gritty raw potato or quinoa. But I was delighted to find things that looked and tasted delicious. First of all the farmer's market was great and nearly every table had samples. It felt like Costco on the weekend. Then they had great sandwiches and such to buy--what got me was the ham biscuits that were being made by Scott Peacock who is the chef at Watershed in Atlanta, the restaurant owned by Emily Saliers from the Indigo Girls. Those biscuits were go-ood. They also had a set up an English garden behind city hall but all of the plants were food plants. It was really beautiful.
Now I expected to find all sorts of granola hippy types at event. And by that I mean arm hair sporting women wearing tank tops and flowing skirts. Dreadlocked hair. You know the whole she-bang. And to be sure I did see some, but not that many, mostly just your average San Franciscan farmer's market supporter. And some of those average San Franciscans were hot, hot!!!
The other thing about the event was the booth selling ghee, pronounced ge like he. Now I don't fully know what ghee is--it appeared to be butter. But it seems to come from butter so that means it cant be butter if it comes from butter right? It apparently is used a lot in Indian cooking. But none of that is my favorite thing about ghee. Instead, it was the of the way it is made. It said that the cows are milked in the traditional way only under a full or waxing moon in a peaceful mantra filled environment. A peaceful mantra filled environment?!?!? It was too much.
But all in all a fun day and I left with a belly full of goodness.
Support a local farm.
Peace out!
2 comments:
Sounds like fun.
What I really want to know is what do you have against quinoa?
I don't really think the cows have to be milked under a certain phase of the moon to make ghee -- or maybe that's only the case in California.
I thought ghee was basically clarified butter that is made from heating it and removing undesired parts. Personally, I can't for the life of me think of any part of butter that is undesirable, but apparently Indian cooks see it differently. I know I've seen recipes for how to make ghee before, but it always seems like too much trouble. Perhaps that's why I don't cook Indian food very often even though I love it.
Glad you enjoyed your slow food day!
The entire front page of the "Taste" section in today (Sunday)'s Finger Lakes Times is all about Slow Food Nation, held last weekend in San Francisco. I looked for pictures and/or quotes from Dixie, but alas, there were none. Still, it was fun to read and say, my friend was there!
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