Slow Food Columbus Blog

Local ground cherries

As Time Magazine’s excellent lead story about the high costs of cheap, industrial food hits the stands and Local Matters’ Local Food Week in Columbus draws near, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the meaning of local food.

The locavore movement arose at a time when “local” meant not just “from nearby” but also “made by our neighbors,” “sustainable” and “not industrial.” As concepts go, it was the perfect storm of progressive foodie goodness: in one word it connoted fresh taste, a low carbon footprint and good farming practices, and appealing social values.

It wasn’t long, however, before the food industry caught on to the fact that something with this much appeal could be profitable—so now, Frito-Lay is rolling out “Local Lay’s,” potato chips made from local potatoes, and ConAgra has started promoting the local provenance of its Hunt’s tomatoes (at least around its Oakdale, California, facility).

As a result of developments such as these, local food fans will increasingly be forced to ask themselves what they mean when they support local food. Read the rest of this entry »

Slow Food USA is sponsoring a Time for Lunch campaign this fall. One goal of the campaign is to send a message to our community leaders that we care about improving the quality of food in school lunches. Another is to provide opportunities for people around the country who are passionate about getting better food into schools to get in touch with one another and build social networks for change.

As part of that campaign, Cynthia Walters of Shanahan Middle School, just northeast of Powell off of Route 23, is spearheading an “eat-in”—a group of people gathering to share a home-cooked meal—at her school on Sunday, September 20th, from 2-4 p.m. (welcome address at 2:15 p.m.) Slow Food USA and Slow Food Columbus would like to invite you to join us at this event.

The requirements are simple. The first thing that you need to do is RSVP (it doesn’t cost anything, but we do need to know how many people will be attending before the event starts, so it’s important that you sign up). The second thing that you need to do is bring a healthy, nutritious, home-cooked dish to share. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, though ideally it would reflect Slow Food’s emphasis on food that’s good, clean and fair.

Bring your family, bring your friends, bring a blanket or chairs to sit on the lawn if the weather’s nice, and bring your voice. It’s time that it was heard.

Every revolution has its devils. Just as the French Revolution had Bernard de Launay, Marie Antoinette, and Louis XVI, Slow Food’s revolution has Ronald McDonald, big agriculture, and Monsanto. From the very beginning they’ve served as focal points for our passion and our understanding of what we think is wrong with the food system.

Demonizing them and protesting against them, from the first handful of penne pasta thrown at the Spanish steps, is easy. What is harder, and what Slow Food has not done well, is to think about how to react when those protests actually start to succeed, and conventional food interests start to adopt elements of our program. As Slow Food and related progressive-food movements gain traction, this will become an increasingly critical question.
Read the rest of this entry »

I received this email last week:

My manager just watched Food, Inc the other day and now wants to eat grass fed beef and antibiotic free chickens and all that slow foodie stuff. I can’t think of many resources off the top of my head, do you have a list of information for our area (like the slow food webpage) that I could pass along to get him started?

I am sure there are other people who have watched Food Inc. or read one of  Michael Pollan’s books who are interested in making some changes to their diet and/or food sourcing as a result but are not sure where to start. I thought it would be helpful to put together a list of places to shop, eat at and to get more information from. The list will obviously be Central Ohio centric, but if you live elsewhere it might still give you some ideas. I’m sure that the list won’t be comprehensive, so please feel free to add other suggestions in the comments.

One way to start is by reading more about the subject and if you haven’t read any Michael Pollan I highly recommend ‘In Defense of Food‘. I am currently reading Mark Bittman’s Food Matters:a Guide to Conscious Eating. Bittman covers a lot of the same ground as Pollan but his is more of a personal account talking about how he changed his own diet. Where Pollan gives the advice ‘eat food, not too much, mostly plants’, Bittman goes into much greater depth giving a month of meal plans and recipes. Bittman calls his approach to food sane eating and urges readers to cook and to eat like food matters.

Useful websites and blogs:

Local Harvest Search by location for farmers markets, CSAs* and other local suppliers of organic foods. You can also shop online for things you can’t find locally. Lists food events, blogs and other resources.  
Restaurant Widow List of Central Ohio Farmers Markets and CSAs*. Also has information on local restaurants and farmers market reports.
Indie Columbus has an ongoing series on sane eating, discussing how some local restaurants match up.
Columbus Foodie Lots of restaurants reviews, One Local Summer recipes and weekly farmers market reports.
Green Leanings Blogs about ‘One Local Summer’ – eating locally in Central Ohio.
CMH Gourmand – restaurant reviews and local food events and vendors.

*CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Buying directly from a farmer in the form of a subscription. You get a weekly share of their produce during the growing season.

Organizations you might want to join:

OEFFA (Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association). Promotes sustainable, ecological and healthful food systems. Lots of online resources, Good Earth Guide (searchable database of farms and products), farms tours,
Slow Food Columbus Active local chapter of an international organization. Meet other people interested in good, clean and fair food. Lots of food related events including dinners, monthly wine tastings and taste education events.
Local Matters Resources for finding local food and several great projects including, Local Food to Schools, Farm to Fork and Urban Agriculture.  Coming soon is Fresh Connect a Central Ohio local food guide including restaurants, markets, CSAs and grocers.

Great places to buy food

Farmers Markets (Clintonville, Worthington, North Market and other locations). Usually held weekly. 
North Market – home of the Greener Grocer, Blues Creek Meats, North Market Poultry and Game, Jeni’s Ice Creams and other local food vendors.
Clintonville Community Market – member owned natural foods neighborhood grocery store. Stocks a lot of local foods.
Hills Market – One of the best ranges of local foods and also hosts a lot of food events including dinners, tastings, meet the farmer etc
Weilands Gourmet Market. 3600 Indianola Ave.
Wholefoods (2 Locations: Lane Ave & Dublin  Granville Rd.) Not as local centric but a lot of eco-friendly and ethical food choices.

You can also try to persuade your grocery store to stock more locally produced foods. Giant Eagle now stocks Snowville Creamery milk and if enough people ask for a product then they may respond to consumer demand.

People to buy food from.

Blues Creek Farm Meats – one of the best suppliers for local grass fed meat.
2 Silos – pasture raised eggs, also has a meat CSA. Available at the Greener Grocer.
Snowville Creamery - Un-homogenized and minimally pasteurized Milk from Pomeroy Ohio.
The Greener Grocer - in the North Market. Supports local farmers and offers a weekly market bag
Hartlzer’s Dairy – Milk and Ice Cream from Wooster Ohio.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams – Nationally acclaimed but locally made ice cream. Seasonal flavors based on local ingredients such as strawberry buttermilk.
Blue Jacket Dairy – fantastic locally made cheeses, sold at farmers markets and locally grocery stores.
Wayward Seed Farm – CSA and active at several farmers markets.

Restaurants to Eat at:

These are restaurants that make an exceptional effort to source local and seasonal ingredients.

Alana’s – North of Campus
The Northstar Cafe Short North and Bechwold
The Refectory – Bethel Road
Basi Italia – Victorian Village
Rigsby’s Kitchen – Short North
Blackcreek Bistro – Olde Towne East
Worthington Inn – Worthington
Cafe Bella – Clintonville
Dragonfly & On the Fly – South of Campus
L’Antibes – Short North 

Dine Originals is a group of over 40 independent restaurants in the Columbus area. Their next restaurant week is September 7th-13th. It is a great opportunity to sample many of the restaurants listed above.

Other things to think about are starting a garden. Columbus Underground has been featuring some local gardens, including Columbus Foodie’s impressive vegetable garden. If you don’t have space for your own garden you can get involved in a community garden. Here is a local blog about community gardening. Or if you want to start your own here is the Get Green Columbus manual on community gardening.  The American Community Gardening Association is headquartered in Columbus.

Please let me know what other great local food vendors, organizations and markets you have found and would recommend.

This post was originally written for hungrywoolf.com

Three servings of vegetables, one serving of dairy, one serving of meat

We were pleased to note that the Columbus Dispatch ran some stories this weekend on the subject of food in schools… and that the stories themselves were impressively well-researched and informative. Our hats are off to Jennifer Smith Richards, Simone Sebastian, and the Dispatch staff.

The Dispatch website contains articles by these two (“Tasty and Cheap, But…” and “Free Lunch?”), as well as links to a database that lets you explore school-by-school data to see changes over time in the percentage of students receiving subsidized lunches and to a map that lets you see at a glance which areas in central Ohio are most dependent on such programs. All in all, they’ve provided a valuable resource for anyone in central Ohio interested in the school lunch issue. (In fact, Ms. Richards’ article caught the attention of the national offices of Slow Food USA and showed up in their Twitter stream.)

Among the more interesting facts: Schools receive $2.57 per student for children receiving free lunches; once labor and fixed costs are accounted for, that leaves less than $1.50 for food. Participating schools are eligible for inexpensive, and sometimes free, food from a government program that buys low-quality commodity foods (one person interviewed refers to schools as “a dumping ground” for such foods). These two facts alone go a long way toward ensuring that school lunches for kids won’t be healthy… but there are quite a few more. We’ve run across a few more tidbits that would have been worth adding, like the way that some schools find themselves having to game the system—keeping percentage of calories from fat in the required range by adding non-fat calories in the form of Skittles, for example. But all in all, they’re well worth a read.

A new movie about agribusiness called Food, Inc. has been the buzz of the foodie world this past week. It focuses on the extent to which a small number of corporations have dominated the food production industry in America, to the detriment of farmers, consumers, and the environment. It was released on the coasts and was so successful that it has now been released throughout the rest of the country.

Well, most of the rest of the country.

You can read about it here, in the Columbus Dispatch. You can watch the trailer here. But at least according to movietickets.com, you won’t be seeing it in the Columbus area soon.

Perhaps that’ll change. We hope so. After all, the goal of Slow Food is to improve the American food system for everyone, and this movie is about what the American food system is really like.

At least, that’s what we’re told.

If you’d like to see Food, Inc. in a theater near you, drop a line to booking@magpictures.com and let them know.

Update: When I did this, a nice guy named Neal wrote back to me and told me that it would be opening at the Drexel East in Bexley on July 17 — almost one week after PolyCultures at Studio 35! We’ll look forward to seeing it!

Update to the update: Preview the night before, on the evening of the 16th—read about the details here.

This morning marks the launch of Slow Food USA’s Time For Lunch campaign, the organization’s first coordinated nationwide effort to bring about change in the American food system by focusing the attention of consumers on its shortcomings. (There is a blog post here that explains the campaign, and an official Time for Lunch homepage here with more information about how you can get involved by signing a petition, contacting your legislators, and getting involved in an event on the day of action chosen by Slow Food USA — Labor Day, September 7.)

Last week, we sent out a notice in the newsletter asking people who were interested in planning and organizing an event on September 7 to email us and let us know.  Once we’ve received all of your responses we’ll be having a meeting of interested parties to discuss exactly what form the event should take.  Some members of the convivium have been brainstorming ideas already, and we’ve kept track of some interesting ones to propose, so if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to drop us a line and get in on the planning at the early stages!

Establishing a frugal heritage

One of the more controversial aspects of the Slow Food movement is that of cost. When Leslie Stahl interviewed Alice Waters for 60 Minutes, Waters’ comments on the affordability of good, clean and fair food (“We can’t not afford it”) prompted renewed criticism of a chef and a movement that some see as catering only to the top tier of society. The movement’s founder, Carlo Petrini, while admitting that better food will have to cost more, argues that it shouldn’t have to cost much more—that moderation, and increased demand for quality local products, will bring costs down. Still, as Petrini points out in Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food, it’s absurd to think that all food is equally good, or that one should be able to purchase better food without paying more for it: the “demagogy of price” is “little more than an alibi for those who produce low-quality goods in large quantities.”

Unfortunately, these realities can leave one with the impression that a diet of good, clean, and fair food is beyond the reach of middle-class Americans, and certainly beyond the reach of, say, those in dire enough economic straits to be eligible to receive food aid from the government.

But is it?

Consider the following story from Salon about a couple that decided to see whether they could adopt a lean, spare, ethical diet on exactly such a budget:

My husband and I would eat conscientiously for a month, not just on our regular grocery allotment but on the government-defined, food-stamp minimum: $248 for two people in our hometown of New Haven, Conn. We would choose the SOLE-est products available — that is, the sustainable, organic, local or ethical alternative. We would start from a bare pantry, shop only at places that took food stamps and could be reached on foot, and use only basic appliances.

The details are in the article itself, which is well worth a read. The upshot is that the experiment was a success:

[O]ur four-week hypothetical did provide a feasible way for my husband and me to eat sustainably long-term: When the month finished — with a magisterial $1.20 left in the cache — we decided to stick with most of our experimental changes. We now eat slightly larger quantities of meat, fruit and cheese, and pepperoni pizza is back in the menu rotation. But apart from that pepperoni (and I’m still looking for an ethical source), I’ve yet to purchase any recurring items that aren’t SOLE-justified, and our grocery bills have stayed lean. … These sorts of practices no longer seem like a statement or an effort. In fact, they seem natural enough that the one question I’m left with is: Why didn’t I start cooking and eating this way sooner?

As our national discussion on the subject of school lunches swings into high gear, it’s worth asking ourselves what it’s really possible to do in school lunch programs. A recent New York Times editorial co-authored by Alice Waters and Katrina Heron on the subject outlines one possibility, a wholesale scrapping of the existing school lunch system in favor of one that gives the nation’s schools the ability to prepare and serve unprocessed foods that have been grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, where possible from local sources. Unfortunately, the price tag—$27bn, up from the current $9bn, not counting the one-time conversion costs—will probably raise taxpayers’ eyebrows, especially in the present small-government recessionary environment.

Casting the debate in these terms may be unfortunate, and unwise. There could be much to be lost, in this case, by letting the best (and, exponentially, most expensive) be the enemy of the good, especially given that the status quo is very bad indeed. A compelling entry on a blog called interestingemailforwards (via slashfood) demonstrates, through photographs of school lunches from countries around the world, that even those that are far poorer than we often manage to put relatively healthy, balanced meals in front of their children.

A few samples:

China

Sweden

South Korea

France

USA

Garry Trudeau’s series of cartoons skewering the American fast food industry (can sit-down restaurants with cheap, massive calorie-packed meals even be called “fast food” any more?  “Megafood” might be more appropriate) have been a source of great amusement for many of us here at Slow Food Columbus, and on a slow Monday morning we’re pleased to note that Mr. Trudeau is gearing up for another week of them:

Doonesbury’s Daily Dose page will have the most current strip.