Event Announcement: Got Soup?

Chicken Soup with Kreplach...
Split Pea with Home Cured Bacon...
French Onion with Short Ribs...
Chilled Pea Veloute with Sheep's Milk Ricotta and Mint...
Aunt Mary's Pasta Fazool...

Join other Slow Food members and friends as we swap stories and soup. Bring a favorite or try something new--just tell us how it connects to Slow Food. Do you buy special ingredients from the farmer's market? Create it from a treasured family recipe? Seek out local and sustainable products?

Please bring four quarts of soup and a copy of the recipe to swap with other members. Soup should be packed in four containers you don't mind giving away such as glass canning jars or plastic. Want more soup? Bring eight quarts and take home eight quarts. Well-behaved children accompanied by an adult are welcome. Coffee, tea, and light snacks will be served.

When: Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 2:00pm

Where: Private home (West Hollywood); address will be provided with receipt of donation
Cost: Adults: $5 for Slow Food members and $10 for nonmembers; children may attend free.

This event is limited to twenty-five people. Please RSVP with number of guests to judibikel [at] aol [dot] com, and purchase your tickets via Brown Paper Tickets.

Event Announcement: Ojai Music Festival and Slow Food Luncheon

Celebrate the sounds and bounty of Ojai! Our friends in the Slow Food Ojai/Ventura convivium have asked us to share news of a June event in Ojai:

Immerse yourself in adventurous music and mouthwatering food at the 62nd Ojai Music Festival on Sunday, June 8, 2008.

First, experience a world-class concert featuring groundbreaking percussion works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Edgar Varese and Steve Reich at 11:00am in the enchanting outdoor Libbey Bowl. A concert filled with musical textures and layers will be performed by members of the acclaimed So Percussion, Nexus, and Steve Reich himself.

After the concert at 1:00pm, walk to the Lavender Inn in downtown Ojai for a Harvest Luncheon hosted by Slow Food Ojai/Ventura. You will be treated to a special lunch featuring locally grown seasonal fruits and vegetables created by Slow Food members and chefs/bakers Jeri Oshima (Treasure Beach Cafe) and Bobbi Corbin (Knead Bakery). Also, local farmers and specialty food creators will be on hand with samples.

Tickets for both the concert and the luncheon are available at www.OjaiFestival.org. (Choose Tickets --> Single Tickets --> and then select June 8 from the calendar. Both concert tickets and tickets for the Harvest Lunch are listed.) The cost of the Slow Food lunch will be $45 per person.

Receive 15% off your concert tickets by entering promo code SLO15.

Tomatomania! Time Draws Near

Tomatomania!^TM, the country's largest tomato seedling sale, will be celebrating its 18th year with several events in southern California starting in late March.

More information about Tomatomania's offerings and schedule are available on the Tomatomania web site. As in the past, locations will include the Tapia Brothers Farm Stand, San Diego, Beverly Hills, and Arcadia:

March 29-30, 2008: San Diego (Encinitas), Quail Botanic Garden
April 4-6, 2008: Encino, Tapia Brothers Farm Stand
April 12-13, 2008: Sonoma, Cornerstone Place
April 20, 2008: Beverly Hills, Paper Party Life
May 2-4, 2008: Arcadia, Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, LA Flower Show; and for our friends further afield,
May 16-18, 2008: Litchfield, Connecticut, White Flower Farm

Tomatomania is again offering online seedlings, so even those who can't attend one of the weekend events can indulge in Tomatomania! and look forward to a bounty of home-grown tomatoes this summer.

Orange County Event Announcement: Sake Tasting at Slow Fish

Our colleagues in the Slow Food Orange County convivium have asked us to share news of an event this coming Sunday:

Slow Food Orange County invites you to a sake tasting at Slow Fish.

Sake has a tradition that is as broad and intricate as wine. Our menu was designed with contemporary Korean cuisine to showcase the subtleties of a wide variety of sake styles. Professional education will be included with this wonderful dinner program. 
 
When: Sunday, March 16, 2008 from 7:00pm until 10:00pm
Where: Slow Fish, 16051 Bolsa Chica Street, Huntington Beach
Cost: $70 for Slow Food members; $80 for nonmembers

Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets or by calling 1.800.838.3006.

*For more information, please email Slow Food Orange County or contact Kim at 714.973.9838.

MENU

Amuse-bouche (small bite)
Ascon: fresh asparagus sticks rolled in thick bacon
Hou Hou Shu Sparkling Sake

Salad
Seaweed Salad: three varieties of marinated seaweed
Yuki No Bosha Yuri Masamune

Appetizer
Fat Avo: a whole avocado “apple” filled with seared, seasoned albacore
Kirinzan Honjozo

Course Premier
Sushi and Sashimi sampler featuring locally caught fish and heirloom black rice
Shichi Hon Yari Junmai

Course Principal
Slow Beef Tender Rib: chef An's award-winning marinated, braised tender ribs
Watari Bune "55"

Dessert
Traditional Korean dessert tea

"The Migrant Project" at the Museum of Tolerance

Author and photographer Rick Nahmias has alerted us that the traveling exhibit for his work, "The Migrant Project: California Farm Workers," is now at the Museum of Tolerance and will be displayed until April 25. As Rick describes it:

"The Migrant Project" merges art, humanities and education, and uses the California farm worker experience as a microcosm to explore issues surrounding the human cost of eating as well as we do in the U.S.  Several prints from this body of work are now part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's Photographic Collection at the National Museum of American History, among other collections. It has toured to over 20 national venues.

Rather than being an overly political or hopeless expose of farm workers, it is an artful multi-dimensional portrait of this often unseen community (which supplies the U.S. with over half its produce) focusing on all aspects of their story: personal life, culture, family, health, immigration as well as the sense of pride they bring to their work and lives.  It deals with an array of issues (from Latin American heritage, to fair food, to immigration, to human rights).

An opening reception and book signing will be held on Sunday, March 16, 2008 from 2:00pm until 4:00pm at the Museum, located at 9786 West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Contact the Museum at 310.772.2527 to reserve your place.

More information about the book and the project is available on its website. Published by the University of New Mexico Press and featuring a foreword by Dolores Huerta, 50% of the author's royalties from sales of the book will be donated directly to farm worker charities and to nonprofit organizations serving farm worker communities.

King Corn Screening and Discussion

Members and friends of Slow Food and readers of Michael Pollan's recent works have had their eyes opened to the staggeringly large role of corn in our economy. Recent estimates from 2007 suggest that in the United States alone, 92.9 million acres of farmland are planted with corn, most of which is used in sweeteners, starches, oils, fuel, and animal feed. Only a small percentage is grown for direct human consumption.

King Corn is a revealing documentary about "two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation." As described on the film's website:

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. Eighty years ago, Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers lived just a few miles apart, in the same rural county in northern Iowa. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat--and how we farm.

The California Endowment is hosting a screening of King Corn followed by a discussion with Aaron Woolf, the film's director:

When: Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 6:00pm
Where: The California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda Street, Los Angeles
Cost: The event and parking are free, but reservations are required. To reserve your place, visit the California Endowment website.

For more information on the film and on the issues it examines, visit the King Corn website.

2008 Slow Food Events

Friday, August 29, through Monday, September 1, will be Slow Food Nation weekend in San Francisco. Plans are developing for the event, which will bring together farmers, food artisans, consumers, commentators, and others for a weekend focused on good, clean, and fair food and food production. As described in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Two venues - the Civic Center and Fort Mason - will be in play. At Civic Center, it will be all about the farm, and a farmers' market of 60 to 100 vendors. "Slow on the Go" stands will sell slow fast-food-like tacos made with homemade tortillas, dosas and grass-fed hamburgers. Speakers will illuminate issues that affect the food we eat, and activists and nonprofit groups will gather to develop ways to make the American food system more sustainable.

Fort Mason will be mainly about eating, with hundreds of American producers offering tastes. Each food type will be organized by a local specialist - Acme Bread's Steve Sullivan will gather the bakers, for example, and Tom Worthington of Monterey Fish will curate the seafood.

An enoteca devoted to wine is on the agenda, as are taste workshops, dinners, and educational seminars. We look forward to sharing more information as it becomes available.

Attention will turn to Turin this October, where the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre, Slow Food's biennial international gatherings, will be held from October 23-27. News about Terra Madre, which is open to approved delegates and observers, is now available on the 2008 Terra Madre website. Information about the Salone del Gusto, which is open to the public, will be available soon, and we'll share links and additional information.

Event Announcement: Celebrate the Bounty of the Churchill-Brenneis Orchard

Steve Fields and Sims Brannon, co-leaders of Slow Food Ojai/Ventura, have shared news of an upcoming event with us. Last year's tour of the Churchill-Brenneis orchards and its companion citrus lunch was a tremendous success, so we're pleased to alert Slow Food Los Angeles members and friends to another event that will showcase some of the fine produce from our neighboring convivium:

Sidecar Restaurant will present a special dinner featuring citrus and avocados from Ojai's Churchill-Brenneis Orchard:

When: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 beginning at 6:30pm
Where: The Sidecar Restaurant, 3029 East Main Street, Ventura, California
Cost: $55 per person; $75 per person with wine pairings

Chef Tim Kilcoyne will create a four-course menu based on Jim and Lisa's tangerines, oro blancos, and several varieties of avocados. 

To secure your reservation, call the Sidecar Restaurant at 815.653.7433 or visit their website.

P.S.  If you can't make this dinner, The Sidecar Restaurant will be doing monthly dinners with local farmers.