Well I've given you a 13 month reprieve between posts. Quite long enough to brace yourself for another I think. To get back into it I thought I might take a little look at the Slow Food movement...
On the whole, I wouldn’t describe myself as a fast person. To borrow from my Pop’s endearing vernacular, I’m a ‘start steady and slow down’ kind of girl. More of a dreamer I guess. Or a dawdler. Whatever. Right from the beginning I’ve taken things easy. I was two weeks overdue at birth, and even then I only arrived because my Mum’s obstetrician thought the whole thing was getting out of hand.
And basically I’ve continued on that slowpoke trajectory ever since. About the only thing I do fast, is talk.
But sometimes in life a little bit of slow is ideal, particularly when it comes to food. Hello Slow Food movement! It’s kind of a big deal in Melbourne and well, everywhere really. Yeah we’ve all heard of it, but what’s it all about?
Well the year was 1986 and the place was Rome. The corporate food monster that is McDonald’s opened a new outlet at the Spanish Steps. Now unless they start doing a McPanini or McCarbonara, there is no way I can see that McDonald’s fits with the Italian food ethos. Actually, I don’t even want to imagine a McCarbonara or I might McSpew.
This wasn’t the first set of Golden Arches in Italy, but the Spanish Steps!? Come on! It was an affront to Italian culture and the many beautiful food traditions built over hundreds of years.
So thought Signor Carlo Petrini, and in a bid to counteract the wave of fast food sweeping the globe, he established the Slow Food movement.
According to the Slow Food Australia website, when the big McD opened at the Spanish Steps, Petrini and his fellow Italiano food soldiers protested in Rome armed with bowls of penne. I like it.
The Slow Food organisation was officially launched three years later in Paris with delegates from 15 countries in attendance. The snail, or escargot, was chosen as the mascot. Cute.
Slow Food is not just about casseroles and braises and fancy pants slow-poached eggs (what is the DEAL with those anyway??). It’s about sustainability, supporting local producers, eating seasonally, preserving food traditions and reviving old varieties of fruit, vegetables and animals. About getting back to our roots, so to speak. The tag line for the organisation is ‘good, clean, fair’. Nowadays words like traditional, seasonal, artisanal, are thrown around like no-ones business, but back in 1986 it probably wasn’t so.
Fast-forward 26 years and the Slow Food movement now has 1,300 chapters (or ‘conviviums’) scattered across the globe.
Here in Australia we have 31 Slow Food chapters, and yep there’s one in Melbourne. The organisation works with artisan food producers, helping them to market their wares. They also engage with schools to help establish kitchen gardens, organise food and gardening workshops, and all kinds of other things designed to promote Slow Food values. Our local chapter co-ordinates the Slow Food Market at the Abbotsford Convent where you can get your hands on some fab fruit, veg, cheese, olive oil etc. All the good things really. The market happens on the fourth Saturday of every month. Head along and be prepared to be swallowed up by feel-good vibes and a longing to release your inner green thumb.
The whole Slow Food thing is pretty hip in Melbourne right now. I mean even people south of the river have embraced the idea. Not long ago when I was working in a café that was indeed south of the river, this tall, brown, waif-like creature draped in odd pieces of fabric and wearing sunglasses bigger than her head breezed in and asked “do you have any slow food?” I gazed at her somewhat quizzically and pointed to a couple of things I thought might fit the bill. Clearly unimpressed, she sighed, turned her eyes to the ceiling, declared “life is sooo hard” and breezed right back out the door. That totally actually did happen.
I don’t think she really understood the Slow Food concept, and to be truthful I didn’t either. I do now. There is good reason for it becoming so cool. The values it espouses are pretty darn great and the movement will lead you on a path to some pretty delicious nosh. And with the insane supermarket duopoly showing no sign of going down down and staying down, we could probably all do with a bit of Slow Food in our lives.
Want to know more? Here’s where you can get amongst it:
