Slow Down

Campbell, CA, c.1987 I wasn't allowed near a stove but that certainly didn't stop me from cooking up a storm.

As most people who read this blog (does anyone read this blog?) know, I am quite enthralled by the world of food. Making it, eating it, reading about it, I love it all. My mom would always tell me that as an infant, I would refuse canned and jarred baby food, only eating homemade meals that my dear mother so painstakingly cooked each day. Why she didn't just threaten I starve or shove a jar of Gerber's puree down my throat I have no idea. I guess somewhere between birth and learning how to eat I also honed a very sophisticated palate, and my mother decided to appease this.

In retrospect it's easy to see how my early love of food was further encouraged as I grew older by the accessibility to develop my tastes and awarenesses. I grew up not on Captain Crunch and Fruity Pebbles, but "healthy" cereals such as Kix, Basic 4, or Bran Flakes. The Chinese culture taught me to love trotters (pigs feet), whole fish, dried squid, chicken feet, seaweed, and pork belly- wayyy before New York over-popularized the poor cut of meat. I never knew avocados didn't really exist in some parts of the nation, have gone apple/cherry/blackberry picking as a weekend sport, and thanks to mom was frequenting Farmers Markets and eating locally and seasonally at a very early age.

When I started working in restaurants in high school I really saw how different people were in their tastes. You can really separate those who eat for just consumption purposes, and those who eat for enjoyment- just by watching them for ten minutes while they dine. In my opinion, the latter is always more fun as a customer. As I moved on to different restaurants, I became more aware of the dynamics between food and culture, how people were able to use food as a source of discussion and debate, how it could become art....pleasure. I even took a class in college that focused on Food in Modern Culture, watching Tampopo for the first time and realizing that Food and Surrealist movement probably weren't so different after all. At the ripe age of 21 (okay, maybe a little beforehand) I became aware that wine wasn't some nasty grape juice, and likewise with beer, port, whiskeys, grappas, ohh the list goes on. I know I am completely romanticizing food and wine right now and frankly probably sound quite ridiculous, but I'm dead serious.

Anyway this mini-rant leads me to my current food infatuation: Slow Food. Or, more generalized, the slow food movement. Starting in the hippie-infested slums of Berkeley, I'd like to describe very succinctly that it's the movement to bring local, sustainable, and Old World ideals back to our every day eating. It's about providing a food system that is clean, fair, and healthy for both producers and consumers alike. If it's anything that will save the world, it's the slow food movement. That, and abolishing my credit card debt. But save that for another time...

I think my early infatuation and experiences with food, with eating, with eating WELL has led me to the place that I'm currently at in my young adulthood. Which is in New York, broke, and trying to eat as well as I can. Eating sustainably doesn't mean you HAVE to grow your own garden and become a vegetarian and convert to buddhism and spend loads of yuppie cash at the Farmer's Market. It just means putting that extra little care to know where your food comes from, making sure that you're eating according to the season and that you're not stuffing your face with HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and a bunch of other chemicals I can't even begin to spell let along pronounce. And yes, I do care about the environment, but I'm mainly doing it because frankly, it tastes and feels so much damn better. Ok, example: gross Entenmann's coffee cake that is loaded with bad fats and processed sugars and has been sitting on a shelf for years and was probably made in a factory in Venezuela, or my fresh homemade seasonal Rhubarb Coffee Cake that I baked this morning, laden with pure butter, brown sugars, and fresh eggs? (slightly exaggerating about the Entenmann's cake for comparison purposes, please don't sue me) Which one do you think will taste better? Huh? That's what I thought.

I am so zealous about this ideal that I would likely call it the closest thing to my religion. Though I wish I had enough energy, time, and money to carry this through in all aspects of my lifestyle and habits, I'm unfortunately sometimes too lazy, sometimes too short-of-time, and sometimes too broke to eat live and breathe Green all day. But I do what I can, which I think is more than some can say, right?

Anyway, I will close out the post by plugging my version of a PSA and tell you to please check out Slow Food USA for tons of useful information and volunteer opportunities and fun events in your hood. I'm a member of Slow Food NYC, and though I can't describe what exactly I do as a member (nothing, really) it helps when you want to do fun foodie things with fun foodie people. I'm going to a wine tasting tonight at the Astor Center featuring the wines of the Finger Lakes (in central NY). Fun Foodie drinking, most excellent!