Michael Pollan—author of best sellers including The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals—has given us a yet another great resource for learning about food: a short list of books that any Slow Foodie would enjoy. The source material for his article in the June 10, 2010, issue of New York Review of Books is a wonderful starting point for what could become quite a long reading list.

I just blogged about the article on Simply Good Food Blog under the same title (A Slow Foodie’s Reading List) … stop by if you’d like to read along.

Feel free to add your own favorite titles, on either blog! I’ll compile a master list to be posted at a later date on Simply Good Food Blog and on the Slow Food Seacoast website.

Resources

• Read “A Slow Foodie’s Reading List” on Simply Good Food Blog
• Read “The Food Movement, Rising” at the New York Review of Books
• Learn about Slow Food International
• Learn about Slow Food USA
• Visit the Slow Food Seacoast website
  

Via the Simply Good Food Blog:

An unlikely hero, Joel Salatin is a rural Virginia farmer who has come to symbolize slow food, local food, practical organic farming methods, and no-nonsense ruckus-making. Read about a new Earth Eats interview and videos on the Simply Good Food Blog.

The new direction in which we must head can be called many things: relocalization, rebalancing, rebuilding, revitalizing, restoration and preservation, redevelopment, job creation, retooling, decentralization. … I would suggest as one of the cornerstones of this rebuilding process the following goal: a million investors investing 1% of their assets in local food systems. —Woody Tasch

The chairman and president (and author) of Slow Money has lots to say. But it all comes down to putting your money where you mouth is—literally—and making investments in food. Real food, local food, and the systems that support it.

History shows us that revolution doesn’t start with government and trickle down; it starts at home, on the streets, and at farmers’ markets. Read what Tasch has to say in Is It Time for a Green Tea Party? in theMarch 25, 2010, Huffington Post.

Who is up for a cuppa at the Rollinsford farmers’ market on Saturday?

The solution for the climate crisis, the food crisis and the water crisis is the same: biodiversity-based, organic farming systems. —Vandana Shiva

In Resurgence magazine, Vandana Shiva talks about the “water famine” in India that has resulted as a consequence of the Green Revolution—that is, of the switch from traditional farming methods and crops toward chemical agriculture and water-intensive crops. She speaks of falling water levels, disappearing groundwater, widespread drought, and declining soil fertility Issue 259, (March/April 2010).

Shiva’s context is India, but the problem—and the solution—is as global as it is local. Want to know more? Read Water Wisdom on the Resurgence website. Then bring it home by supporting the wise farmers in your community.

(Seacoast Winter Farmers’ Markets continue this Saturday, in Rollinsford! The remaining Seacoast winter markets are listed here.)

Nicola Twilley (founder and author of the blog Edible Geography) and Sarah Rich (a former senior editor of Dwell who writes about food, sustainability, and design) are collaborators on The Foodprint Project. They hosted Foodprint NYC— “the first in a series of international conversations about food and the city” —on February 27, 2010. In “Food and the Shape of Cities,” they talk about the perhaps surprising relationship between urban architecture and food systems. (Note: The article appears in Urban Omnibus, an online project of the Architectural League of New York. Thanks to Slow Food Seacoast’s Outreach Coordinator Amy Pollard for bringing the article to our attention!)

More resources:

“The Foodprint Project is a contextual exploration of food. From the cartography of food supply chains to the molecular anatomy of flavor, from the migration of ethnic recipes to the future of urban agronomy, foodprints look beyond the plate to the social, political, artistic and economic forces that shape the way we eat.”

“Foodprint NYC [was] the first in a series of international conversations about food and the city. From a cluster analysis of bodega inventories to the cultural impact of the ice-box, and from food deserts to peak phosphorus, panelists will examine the hidden corsetry that gives shape to urban foodscapes, and collaboratively speculate on how to feed New York in the future. The free afternoon program will include designers, policy-makers, flavor scientists, culinary historians, food retailers, and others, for a wide-ranging discussion of New York’s food systems, past and present, as well as opportunities to transform our edible landscape through technology, architecture, legislation, and education.”

The program schedule for this free public event included four thought-provoking panels:

• Zoning Diet (How do zoning, policy, and economics shape New York City’s food systems?)
• Culinary Cartography (What can we learn when we map New York City using food as the metric?)
• Edible Archaeology (How has today’s food culture in New York been shaped by social changes, economic fluctuations, and technological innovations throughout the city’s history?)
• Feast, Famine, and Other Scenarios (What are the opportunities and challenges of New York City’s possible food futures?)

An interview with Gary Paul Nabhan (text, interspersed with short videos) from Indiana Public Radio’s EarthEats contains many great definitions for terms that mean a lot to people who care about good, clean, fair food: GMOs, monoculture, “local eating”, and heirloom seeds. This particular video is about Slow Food and eating locally; read the entire interview and see other videos at Questions for Gary Paul Nabhan “Father of the Local Food Movement”.

(Nabhan has been called a “bio-terroir”-ist. Love that!)

Photo credit: Culinary Delights Farm

From Local Harvest, just in time for CSA/CSF Day at the Wentworth Greenhouses Winter Farmers’ Market in Rollinsford this Saturday, 2/27 (and 12+ other CSA fairs around the region on Sunday, 2/28), comes an informative article entitled How to Choose a CSA.

More resources:

List of all Seacoast Eat Local Winter Farmers’ Markets: http://www.seacoasteatlocal.org/winterfarmersmarkets/index.html

Slow Food Seacoast blog post on local 2010 CSA fairs, Feb. 27 and 28: http://www.slowfoodseacoast.org/category/blog/2010/02/csa-csf-days-for-2010/

Take a virtual tour of a Seacoast Winter Farmers’ Market in this story from Seacoast Online!

For some of us, the farmers’ market is the social event of the week … or fortnight, or month, as the case may be. So come to EXETER tomorrow (2/13) and ROLLINSFORD in 2 weeks  (2/27—also community-supported agriculture [CSA] day at the market) to get your goodies! See the full market calendar on the Seacoast Eat Local website.

Other markets will be held next Saturday (2/20) in RYE (info on Local Harvest) and NEWMARKET (info on Local Harvest).

See you at the market!

Don’t miss this great piece in NH Mag about the new seafood brand, “NH Seafood Fresh & Local,” an initiative of the Portsmouth Fishing Industry Committee with partners across the seacoast, including Slow Food and Seacoast Eat Local.

This month, NH Magazine offers this lovely piece depicting Meadow’s Mirth Farm and its heirloom varieties and farming philosophies.