Letters from our Friends

from Turin Italy, October, 2004

These are two letters to the editor, one from our first official park cook Daniel DeMatteis, who just finished a year's Italian apprenticeship and will be back in November, the second from Colette Murphy, who sells plants and soil amendments and herb creams/tinctures at the our Thursday park farmers' market. Both of them were at the giant Slow Food gathering in Turin, Italy, in October, and here's what they wrote about it:

From Dan DeMatties:

pic from www.terramadre.it

About Terra Madre, the big meeting of all the food producers: in a discussion with Pamela and Paul (from Toronto, and the park) and a journalist friend of theirs, one interesting thing came up. The big issue for the North American contingent was buy local and seasonal etc. -- what you would expect. But, the people who came from Africa or Latin America and other places farther from centers of gluttony, were more interested in finding markets for their products, ie, the Africa producers wanted to get the Europeans to import their products. Not exactly buying local. But it made me wonder a bit about what exactly Slow Food's attitude toward this would be. Or mine. Because obviously the Slowfood people are interested in protecting and encouraging small producers in remote corners of the world, but this cannot necessarily be reconciled with 'buying local' and I don't know how to 'slowly' ship something across the globe. Also, if you 'save' a rare kind of rice or something from Thailand, and turn it into a speciality product, presumably the market you find for it will be high-end restaurants on the other side of the globe. And then it becomes the sole domain of the wealthy.

A well-known chef I met there from Toronto was thrilled by the whole thing. He said that it was an amazing experience and it reinforced all of his ideas about food or food communities (whatever those are...his ideals, not the food communities.)

The part where I was, was basically a big food fair, like I imagine an industry fair would be. There were lots of producers, 90% or so Italian, all no doubt carefully selected by Slow Food for their Slowness, who had a stand where they displayed their products and often offered samples. I ate lots of Italian meats and cheeses, tasted olive oils, cookies, breads, etc. I had English and French oysters, American raw milk cheeses, Artisanal Cheddar from Sommerset, Polish honey mead, rare french turnips, black french pigs, Brazilian fruit, and on and on. Also, Canadian bread. There was a Canadian contingent representing Red Fife Grain. A heritage grain from the prairies now almost disappeared but in our grandparents day the grain they grew would have been Red Fife. The baker of the bread was from Victoria, and he had brought the flour, his starter, and water from Canada and was baking his bread at a bakery in Turin each day. The bread was fabulous and I think we should see if we can find a farmer to provide the grain for park bread. I have some contact info to pursue this when I get back.

Dan

From Colette Murphy:

pic from www.terramadre.it

We were all spread around the Region of Piemonte (foot of the mountains). Some of us were lucky to be in an AgroTurismo. I was one of those and think we had one of the best chefs in Italy cooking for us. Franca was the shy sweet smiling mother keeping the kitchen warm and inviting; Elisio was the father chauffering us around at night to other AgroTurismos, along with their 2 daughters Christina and Chiara. My room mates were Mariana a journalist from Chicago, writing about food issues and Susan a farmer from Iowa and president of the Practical Farmers of Iowa. We laughed and we ate and we made new wonderful friends. I felt like I was in an agricultural heaven where everyone wanted to do everything they could to support our work. Vandana Shiva, Prince Charles, Alice Waters and Carlo Petrini (Pesident of Slow Food) were some of the wonderful people who spoke to us so passionately about the world we envision. Even Gianni Alemanno, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestries gave an inspiring and passionate and revolutionary speech at the closing ceremony. I have brought back recipes and menus to share, perhaps we can do something for a Fri. night dinner at the park. We were also given a book with a paragraph for each of the 1200 communities and what they do, what they are trying to preserve. I will bring it to the park market for people to look at.

Ciao bellas

Colette