Warning, if you are a strong vegetarian onwards you should know I am a great omnivore and only have respect for my foodsources. This article is highly doused in the art of pork and I hope you will still love me in the end.
I think I’m finally fully out of my meat-choco-coma. It took a few days and a lot of chocolate bacon flashbacks, but I think I’m well on the mend. Mine and others in our area were struck with this fantastic affliction last Sunday when Lell Trogdon opened her doors for a friends fundraiser like no other.
If you are having trouble viewing what is below check out some of the pictures on flickr.
A Day of the Porcinus
It cannot be understated what great pork raisers Grateful Growers are. It can also not be understated what Lell Trogdon can do with such fine materials. Pork shoulder, butt, ham, bacon, bratwurst and more were soaked, slathered, slow cooked, grilled, to perfection. Thunder Cats.. Hooo… oh wait. I digress.
In addition there was scones, cream sausage gravy, eggs with sausage and eggs with green chilis, with cheese grits for breakfast. Lunch onward was served the bulk of the meats and a few vegetables and a vegetarian lasagna made an appearance, but it was mostly about pork.
A meat induced coma was seen drifting in peoples eyes all day. It was awesome.
Dirty Little Secret
The Secret Chocolatier brought his upcoming arsenal of chocolate might out for a tour. Bill Dietz is my chocolate superman, he shares that title by many adoring fans in our area. We’re working hard to grow that fan base (join today!) and to that extent are opening up his culinary war chest to bring out some great eats.
The vast chocolate landscape included an almond encrusted triangular chocolate pate with accompanying caramel sauce, a chocolate mousse, a chocolate torte, chocolate chunk brownies dipped in dark chocolate coating, a chocolate fudge cake with chocolate icing, a chocolate fudge cake with cream cheese icing, and a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Phew.. if the thought of that at your party doesn’t make you quiver, you don’t love a great dessert.
If the meat didn’t do it, The Secret Chocolatier did. Some looked frantically around for a place to nap. An outdoor sofa awaited many.
Pandora Traffle
Did I mention that The Secret Chocolatier donated a Pandora truffle for raffle? Weighing in at 16 oz it is something to behold, and hopefully to be shared by many. It was contended for, fought over, people schemed, but in the end the wonderful Denise Kuntz was given a phone call that she had won the prize (to the devastation of the still hanging crowd). Luckily Denise is sweet and said she would share!
All For Who? What?
All because Robin and I really want to be a part of a great experience with more great people in an effort to grow, capture, and bring back some of the inspiration of Slow Food’s Terra Madre. We’ve been fundraising for a few weeks and have had a great outpouring from family, friends, and even local farmers who share our passion, or want us to bring them back some of the experience.
Quick Terra Madre Primer, bi-ennial event in Turin, Italy:
What do you get when you build a conference around sharing culture, tradition, survival, and growth of the worlds food system.
5000 farmers, 1000 chefs, 2000 students and volunteers to collectively communicate.
We Help Each Other
I’ve taken to heart over the past few years that friends help each other. It’s been a rocky time for everyone I’ve known, across industries, across regions, but we share out support be it with kind words, time, opportunities, and out of pocket. Our friends are pivotal in our growth and we are so very blessed in having good ones.
Thanks to everyone who made our morning, lunch, and afternoon such a delight. To those who could not make it you were missed and while we tried to make up for your loss, we do poorly compared to the real thing.
Our goal is not met and we’re charging on! If you can help us let us know! (It’s a karmic win too!)
Charlotte Shout culminated it’s month long September activity list with a culinary arts showdown. One of the guest chefs for the event, Mary Ann Esposito of Ciao Italia. Mary Ann and her daughter-in-law / scheduler extraordinaire Jennifer Esposito met with me for a lunch at Ratcliffe on the Green. The conversation coursed around Slow Food, world views, horticulture, and more; making for one of the best discussions I’ve participated in of the year.
If you’re a cook, a chef, or a watcher of our public broadcasting station you have to have heard of Mary Ann Esposito. Ciao Italia has been on the air for almost two decades teaching the Italian way of cooking. She’s produced volumes of books, and is steeped in the Italian culture that was her grandmothers heritage.
Mary Ann has seen the division of cultures from American to Italian. As well being a Slow Food member who has enjoyed dinner and discussion with Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini this wonderful woman is honed when it comes to food choice understanding. She spoke of our cultures lost nature and how we’ve inadvertently let companies build our culture for us.
“We’ve lost respect for our food; many don’t even understand where food comes from.”, said Mary Ann. Her thoughts of change rest with our children, the seeds of the future. By bringing food back into the education system we bring attention from the beginning. That’s not all though we should be gardening for ourselves. Mary Ann and I reminisced on the Italian way of life where most if not all homes had some form of a garden from edible to herb. There is profound learning that comes from tending and toiling in the soil.
Mary Ann also talked of the breaking of the modern family unit and how bringing it back together started with meal preparation. It is an often asked question “How do two working parents and kids that are zinging around to after school programs have a normal dinner?” Ms. Esposito’s response was that the responsibility doesn’t fall to one individual, it’s the duty of the family as a whole. Let everyone participate. Book yourself for dinner, let it be an activity for your children. Children love to be put to work and explore; stage it so they can. Family meals require a little preparation and life is made easier if you use the three cupboard’s your house has; the pantry, refrigerator & freezer.
A funny moment happened when Ms. Esposito made a sweeping gesture when speaking of the “Stress for Thanksgiving”. She explains that we go through these giant gyrations to cook this once in a year meal when the reality is a Thanksgiving meal is not really that different from any other meal. It’s the homes lack of general cooking that makes it such a stressed day. To which we with quick humor broke down the meal into fowl (or pork), casserole, bread, dessert. In a general sense that shouldn’t freak anyone out, right?
Not us foodies!
One thing on the mind of a local Slow Food member dealt with the difference in agriculture zones and how should a Northerner deal with a shortened growing cycle compared to their southern counterparts. Mary Ann, while wishing she could plant earlier than May said we had to become more mindful of our regional foods. If the area has a longer winter the area must learn to conserve more. Canning and the harvesting of root or hard vegetables that can be stored for long periods of time. I can attest from holding winter squash an entire year (without preservatives heh) before turning it into a gratin that it’s possible to keep a crop. We also skimmed over food miles, gas usage, and the decay of the rail lines. I did mention that this woman has her chops up didn’t I?
On a softer note I asked her if she would ever publish children’s books. To me if we can’t get into the school system right some might see early readers or parent read books as a wonderful segue to it. Mary Ann said that she had a love for stories and that she had included a few in her book Celebrations, Italian Style. Her biggest roadblock seemed the publishers which is no surprise. Luckily publishers are having a harder time keeping afloat while self-publishing is rising fast. It’s my hope that Ms. Esposito will distill more of her love, history, and culture of her own into books for the little ones.
Before I reluctantly let Mary Ann and Jennifer go I asked how she stays motivated. She responded that she eats, thinks, and sleeps food. She loves to cook and pushes that out in every direction she can. It was an honor to break bread with these women and I hope I can spend more time with them in the future. If you would like to watch her in action check here for your local PBS affiliate. If they don’t have her on in your area let the station know your interest!
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
Luckily our Alice had the company of some adoring fans from our own celebrity chefs, the Slow Food community, and the public at large. From September 26th through 27th, Chef Alice Waters visited Charlotte, North Carolina gave talks, went on walks, and ate some of the best seasonal regional culinary fare the Queen City could muster.
North Carolina has lush land and when not suffering serious drought is a land of plenty. We’re overdue getting on the band-wagon of smart food choices for ourselves, our children, and supporting those that feed us. Alice Waters coming to Charlotte and delivering her ideals to our city, our region, is a swift way to draw focus to the importance at hand.
Chef Waters was brought to Charlotte via the Grateful Growers, Slow Food Charlotte, and Charlotte Shout. Her first stop on her tour was the Johnson and Wales campus where she had a lunch with school officials and Compass Group associates. She gave about a 45 minute lecture speaking of the importance of food in our culture, lack of food culture, obesity in America, and how very few are taking the correct initiatives to change it because of the bottom line. It was a fantastic discussion where she laced a few beautiful provocative statements which went towards the Compass Group (the Compass Group is a mega-multinational-conglomerate with a hiring capacity over 500k, King Kong of the commercial restaurant business).
The next day she was greeted by Lell Trogdon of Slow Food Charlotte, and Kathleen Purvis of the Charlotte Observer and taken to Grateful Growers located in Denver, North Carolina. There she met many local sustainable farmers, chefs, and instructors from the area. The farmers of Grateful Growers, Natalie Veres & Cassie Parsons did the full tour explaining their raising of tamworth hogs, breeding program, how they raise chickens (the chics even get a good dose of classical music), and the movement cycles of the coop pens for the betterment of the land and the fowl. They ended their tour at the shitake logs which many Slow Foodies and friends helped last November to plug. They had just bloomed a few days before we got there and they plucked one off a log for Chef Waters. By the looks of it she really enjoyed her time with the farm girls.
After a short reprieve there was a reception for Ms. Waters at Blue with Executive Chef Gene Briggs. Alice got to meet some other regional Slow Food chapters and had a bit more face time with chefs of the area. Once again fantastic fare and enjoyable conversation followed her and this was no exception. There wasn’t as much time to relax and socialize as her main lecture at Queens Universities Dana Auditorium was coming up fast.
When she arrived at Dana I heard that she was amazed at the turnout. Thom Duncan said that Chef Waters was used to speaking to small groups of people and to have 500+ people show up to hear her talk was fantastic. We had groups from all over the eastern seaboard from New York to Florida that wanted to learn about the work Alice has been doing with the Edible Schoolyard & School Lunch Initiative.
She went through a great speech calling out the education system for a lack of perspective. How were we teaching kids about their own and our planets emergencies. There was an urgency in her tone while she explained how food was culture and that we had for far too long relegated food to maintenance. The growing, cooking, serving, and eating of food is culture. That the more we separate ourselves the more we lose empathy, responsibility, integrated mathematics, design, biology, etc.
Living the fast food lifestyle of fast, cheap, and easy is driving us towards a sort of animalism. We teach by example and what we’re teaching is a dereliction of self and environment. Yet there was redemption in something as simple as a garden. How beautiful and poetic.
There are many things that stand in the way. The current farm bill promotes the food conglomerates getting cheap food, corn mainly, that allows them to make quarter sodas and feeding the population into obesity faster than we can walk. The farm bill should be a food bill and it should support farmers trying to create wholesome products raised through methods which produce a more nutritious, safer, food choice. It doesn’t, so get on the phone! The hidden cost of low cost fast foods is what balloons the health care bill while not at all making incentives for good business. The power of lobbyists.
Her solutions of getting kids graded on lunch, building gardens, bringing culinary ability back to the lunchroom, is a large endeavor with far reaching fantastic ramifications. It’s not insurmountable but it will require dedication and people, parents, teachers, turning on the lights of those above them. Everyone must see this for what it is, what it is doing, and wanting to not participate in the capitalising of Mother Nature via food conglomerates.
She left Charlotte with a standing ovation and chills running up many of our spines. Myself, and Slow Food Charlotte would like to kindly thank Chef Waters for gracing us and exposing us to better thoughts. As we carry this knowledge forward we would like to work with any group out there that is trying to facilitate change. Many activist, pro-humanist groups are working on the same problems and we need to touch base and support one another. Join us at Slow Food Charlotte Online and participate in the discussion. Help move the needle forward.
In supporting a better set of food choices I participate heavily in Slow Food Charlotte. A group that by definition is working to hook up those in the fields to those who utilize their products; including keeping biodiversity alive in a world of constant consolidation.
Natalie & Cassie of Grateful Growers had a vision to host a farm dinner on their property in a fashion like, but not connected to, the CFSA dinners in the past. They took on a hard challenge of wanting it to be an exemplary dinner as well as an educational tool.
To help with the education one of their earliest thoughts was, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Alice Waters could come?” With that in their minds they took off down a multi-month journey to bring the Queen of Organic to visit Charlotte.
As things would have it a multitude of scheduling conflicts is going to keep her from being at their wonderful dinner. Instead they have transfered that energy into helping her do multiple culinary school educational visits, holding a lecture on her edible schoolyard program, and signing books.
Slow Food Charlotte is proud to be able to make her acquaintance and we hope you will to. If you have the time and want to get more involved with local agriculture, especially if you have children please join us Thursday, September 27th at the Dana Auditorium at Queens College for Alice Waters. You can buy your tickets online at the Slow Food Charlotte Shop.
On Wednesday the local Slow Food Charlotte convivia gathered at the Art Institute of Charlotte to hear about the travels of the delegates that went to Terra Madre. They tasted and witnessed a panorama of culinary delights. They also got charged by the passion of the thousands of agri people who were in attendance and great panels attended.
Thom & Nancy Duncan, Joe Bonaparte, Sammy & Melinda Koeningsberg, & Laura Beach gave recounts. Jump on over to the Slow Food Charlotte site and watch some of the footage I shot at the meeting.
As always if you want to look through the window of your plate and grasp more of the story behind it join Slow Food today!
, and is steeped in the Italian culture that was her grandmothers heritage.
. Her biggest roadblock seemed the publishers which is no surprise. Luckily publishers are having a harder time keeping afloat while self-publishing is rising fast. It’s my hope that Ms. Esposito will distill more of her love, history, and culture of her own into books for the little ones.
