Slow Food

The first time I heard about the Slow Food movement, I was hooked. It didn't sound that radical to me... it sounded like the kind of food I was raised on.

When I was a kid, locally produced didn't mean much because that is what you always had. I remember the first time we saw broccoli at the grocery store when it was out of season. I also remember the first strawberries. And when they started selling asparagus year round, I felt like spring had gotten ripped off, somehow. If local grocers dared to sell fruit from other countries when that fruit was in season in the orchards all around us, my mother let them know she thought it was a stupid thing to do.

Slow Food celebrates what the local growers have to offer, it celebrates the process of cooking and preparing that food, and it celebrates eating together in community. On their website, they say that food should be good, clean, and fair.

I like that.

It's true that I sometimes get sucked in by those strawberry-like offerings sold in January, and I've eaten asparagus out of season, but slow food is much more about celebration, and moving in the right direction, rather than following a rigid set of legalistic rules about food.

I like that, too.