On Sunday, June 5, join Slow Food Seacoast for a potluck Sunday Dinner in Portsmouth. The theme of the evening is Bread, Yeast, and Beer.

Paula Marcoux, Edible South Shore magazine’s food editor, will share some great breads with us after an afternoon Bread-Baking Class. (Sorry, that class is full.) After dinner, Paula will speak about the return to traditional baking technologies and techniques (like wood-fired ovens and natural leavening) and some modern developments that benefit bakers.

In addition, Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier of Throwback Brewery will join us to talk about their experience opening a nanobrewery (still in process!) in North Hampton. Striving to create a sustainably produced beer that tastes of this place called New England, they source ingredients from local farmers (including our friends at Brookford Farm in Rollinsford, NH) and local maltsters (e.g., Valley Malt in Hadley, MA). The first artisanal brews that Throwback will be producing have names that pique your interest even before you take that first sip, like Campfire Smoked Porter, Dippity-Do, and Hog Happy Hefeweizen. Speaking of which … the gals will bring along some beer for sampling, yay!  Let’s give them a big show of support as they wait out the final stages of the label-approval process so they can start selling some beer.

Of course it would be lovely if you brought a potluck offering in line with the Bread, Yeast, and Beer theme, but please bring any dish made with wholesome, preferably local, ingredients. Home brewers, bakers, and other lovers of fermentation are especially encouraged to bring some of their creations for dinner and some starters (leaven/sourdough, kombucha, kefir, etc.) to share with people who would like to make their own. Sharing these living foods—and the practice of making them—is fun!

Please bring your own “mess kit” (plate, bowl, drinkware, cutlery, and napkin) to minimize the use of paper goods, waste, and cleanup time. Also please bring your own beverage. If you’ve never been to a Slow Food potluck before, please read About Our Potlucks for more information about what to expect.

DATE: Sunday, June 5

TIME: 5:30–7:30 pm

PLACE: Stoodley’s Tavern, 17 Hancock Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801

DIRECTIONS: Stoodley’s Tavern is part of Strawbery Banke Museum. (Directions to Strawbery Banke are available on the museum’s website.) Please park in the Strawbery Banke Main Visitor Parking Lot at 14 Hancock Street (or along Hancock Street itself). From the parking lot, cross the street diagonally and to right to “Stoodley’s Tavern Education Center” at 17 Hancock Street. Jiggle the latch of the old front door until it opens! We will meet in the room to the left after you enter the front door.

More Info

• Paula’s website, The Magnificent Leaven
• Read more about Paula and her love of wood-fired baking on Boston.com.
• Throwback Brewery’s vision of New England “beer-oir”

Paula Marcoux

Celebrate spring at the Slow Food Seacoast Sunday Dinner on May 1!

Bring a potluck dish that includes spring flowers or other wild edibles to Blue Moon Evolution, a restaurant committed to supporting organic and local food producers. Their newly renovated space is a perfect place to come together and share a meal. After dinner, Nancy Randolph will speak about two books from Just Write Publishers, a Maine-based company that focuses on books of local interest, that are relevant to our evening’s theme:

• How to Fix a Leek … and Other Fresh Food from Your Farmers Markets, by Sandra Garson. Originally written in 1991, the 20-year anniversary reissue comes out on May 1, just in time for the 2011 market season.
• Wild Plants of Maine: A Useful Guide, by Tom Seymour (a guide to Maine’s wild edibles and other useful plants)

DATE: Sunday, May 1

TIME: 5:30–7:30 pm

PLACE: Blue Moon Evolution, 8 Clifford St, Exeter, NH

THEME: Wild Edible Greens & Flowers

Please bring your own beverage. To minimize the use of paper goods, waste, and cleanup time, please bring your own “dining kit” (plate, bowl, drinkware, cutlery, and napkin). If you’ve never been to a Slow Food potluck before, please read About Our Potlucks for more information about what to expect! See you on Sunday!

On Sunday, April 3, 2011, Slow Food Seacoast and Tidewater Waldorf School welcomed 140 people to a Localvore Brunch & Heirloom Seed Plant-In in Kittery, ME. All the planning and prepping by lots of volunteers really paid off! When the first attendees entered at 11 am on the dot, the serving line was ready to fill their plates.

The Ouellette family, "hard-core locavores" from Barrington, were among the first to arrive.

The event’s truly local meal featured several dishes prepared by volunteers on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning:

• Buttermilk Pancakes made with whole wheat pastry flour, buttermilk, and whole milk donated by Brookford Farm (Rollinsford, NH); Kate’s Homemade Butter; local eggs (see below) and honey; and Maine Sea Salt (Marshfield, ME)—topped with maple syrup from Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm (Northwood, NH)
  
• Scrambled Eggs from Nick’s Chicks (at Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm) and many local backyard chickens
• Peppercorn-Fennel Pork Sausage from New Roots Farm (Newmarket, NH)
  
• Turkey Sausage made with turkey from Misty Knoll Farms (New Haven, VT), apple cider from Carter Hill Orchard (Concord, NH), maple syrup from Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm, and locally foraged native seasonings (sumac and sassafrass)
• Apple Compote made with apples donated by Wolf Pine Farm (Alfred, ME) sautéed in Kate’s Homemade Butter, sweetened with apple cider from Carter Hill Orchard and maple syrup from Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm
• Yogurt from Brookford Farm
• Apple Cider from Carter Hill Orchard
• Coffee from Equal Exchange (West Bridgewater, MA)
• Cream from Brookford Farm
• Tea from White Heron Tea (Rollinsford, NH)  and Equal Exchange

Alison Magill, co-leader of Slow Food Seacoast, talks a bit about what "locavore" means.

Even though the event was primarily about the meal, a few other activities rounded out the day:

• Volunteers from Tidewater led kids (and adults!) in seed-planting and other craft activities.
• Kate and Pam from Slow Food Seacoast gave away packets and packets of heirloom seeds—some featured in the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) Alliance—and encouraged both novice and seasoned gardeners to plant the seeds, enjoy the produce, save seeds from the harvest, and bring seeds back in the fall (or next spring) to share with other gardeners.
• Deb Locke (a.k.a. Sugarmomma) answered questions about maple syrup and maple sugaring.

In addition, attendees donated a total of almost $250 to a special fund for Brookford Farm (which had generously donated many, many ingredients for this event, despite the tragic loss of several dairy cows last week). The Mahoneys have our support, and we were happy to be able to both thank them for their contributions and express our condolences in person.

A great many volunteers from Slow Food Seacoast and Tidewater Waldorf School made this event possible. THANK YOU to each and every person who donated, shopped for, prepped, cooked, served, cleaned up, or composted food (thanks to EcoMovement in Portsmouth, NH); set up or cleaned up the space at the Lions Club; or helped publicize the event or record it (in photos) for posterity. Without a community like you, a successful event like this one would not be possible.

Should we do it again? Let us know in the comments!

P.S. Want to see more pictures? Check out the event photos on our Flickr page.

Alison Petersen from Tidewater Waldorf School shows Catarina and Emanuel Mahoney of Brookford Farm how to create a living centerpiece that their grass-fed dairy cows wouldn't mind nibbling! Made from bark, potting soil, and soaked wheat berries, this decoration for their spring table will sprout into lovely green grass in about 1 week.

For 379 years, the Seacoast community has supported Tuttle’s Farm in Dover, NH—the oldest continually operating family farm in America—but the Tuttles are ready to pass the reins. They’ve enlisted the help of the New Hampshire Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (NHIAF) to help put the farm into the hands of those who will both respect the history and tradition of the land and shepherd it into the future.

On March 19 from 12 noon to 9 pm, NHIAF and Tuttle’s Red Barn will host TuttleFest: a day dedicated to supporting and celebrating the tradition of small family farms. Food from the Seacoast will be served up to the accompaniment of live local bands; llama rides and other child-friendly activities will engage the next generation in local agriculture, up close and personal!

Many local organizations will be represented at TuttleFest—including the Green Alliance and some of its business partners. Come join the fun while raising money and awareness about the importance of family farms to their communities, in the Seacoast and beyond.

DATE: March 19, 2011

TIME: 12 noon–9 pm

PLACE: Tuttle’s Farm, 151 Dover Point Rd., Dover, NH

FEE: $10/adult, $5/student, $5/Green Alliance member; children free!

MORE INFO: Call NHIAF at 603-534-5292, send an email to NHIAF, or visit the Tuttle’s Red Barn website.

John Forti, Jean Jennings, and Evan Mallett in Italy (Photo: Jean Jennings)

CALLING ALL FARMERS, FISHERS, RANCHERS, CHEFS, AND CONSUMERS WHO VALUE GOOD, CLEAN, AND FAIR FOOD: You’re invited to Terra Madre “Taste of Place”: A Slow Food Seacoast Social at The Press Room in Portsmouth on March 10!

Come celebrate our shared roots with great local food and fun! Learn more about Terra Madre, known as the “farmers’ United Nations”, from local delegates who represented the Seacoast region at the Terra Madre conference in October 2010: John Forti of Slow Food Seacoast, Jean Jennings of Meadow’s Mirth, and Evan Mallett of Black Trumpet Bistro. These Seacoast representatives joined more than 5,000 delegates from 150 countries at the Olympic Stadium in Turin, Italy, to discuss how to create new economies and artisanal products around local agriculture, horticulture, and fisheries.

DATE: Thursday, March 10, 2011

TIME: 5–7:45 pm

PLACE: UPSTAIRS at The Press Room, 77 Daniel Street, Portsmouth, NH

MORE: Click here for more details about Terra Madre “Taste of Place”: A Slow Food Seacoast Social.

Beautiful produce in Eataly! (Photo: Jean Jennings)

Admission to this informal social event is free! Light appetizers will be provided by Black Trumpet Bistro, and local music will entertain us. Please patronize the cash bar to thank The Press Room for hosting this event.

More Info

• Slow Food Seacoast
• U.S. Terra Madre Network
• The Press Room

Slow Food Seacoast invites you to attend the next community “Sunday Dinner” of the new year on Sunday, February 6, at 5:30 pm in Portsmouth. The theme, Not Fast Food!, challenges attendees to rework a common fast food dish the “slow” way, with good, clean, and fair food.

The dinner theme stems from the topic of the guest speaker, Sriram Madhusoodanan, Portsmouth Organizer for Corporate Accountability International,  a nonprofit organization that protects public health by waging and winning campaigns against the corporate abuse of food systems worldwide. Sriram will give us a broad overview of corporate influence on our food system and share examples of efforts to reverse this trend, in the Seacoast and elsewhere.

More specifically, Sriram will speak about Corporate Accountability International’s Value [the] Meal campaign, which is dedicated to reversing the global epidemic of diet-related disease by challenging the fast food industry to curb its marketing of unhealthy food to children. Foremost, the organization is calling on fast-food giant McDonald’s to Retire Ronald [McDonald] once and for all.

DATE: Sunday, February 6, 2011

TIME: 5:30–7:30 pm Potluck Dinner (please remember to BYOB and BYO dining kit as described in About Our Potlucks!)

PLACE: Stoodley’s Tavern, 17 Hancock Street, Portsmouth, NH

DIRECTIONS: Stoodley’s Tavern is part of Strawbery Banke Museum. (Directions to Strawbery Banke are available on the museum’s website.) Please park in the Strawbery Banke Main Visitor Parking Lot at 14 Hancock Street (or along Hancock Street itself). From the parking lot, cross the street diagonally and to right to “Stoodley’s Tavern Education Center” at 17 Hancock Street. Jiggle the latch of the old front door until it opens! We will meet in the room to the left after you enter the front door.

THEME: Not Fast Food! Try to remake a common fast food dish the slow way, or prepare a dish the way that it might have been prepared before fast food made it ubiquitous. Burgers and fries are a starting point … be creative, and please try to include at least one local ingredient in your dish!

MORE: If you have any suggestions or questions, please send us an e-mail.

More Info

• To find out more about Corporate Accountability International, click here.
• To learn how McDonald’s aggressive marketing of junk food makes kids sick, click here.
• To add your name to the petition to Retire Ronald, click here.
• To find out more about Slow Food Seacoast events and potlucks, click here.

This fall, enjoy films on food themes on three Friday evenings in Exeter! FRESH the Movie on October 22, The Botany of Desire (from Michael Pollan’s book of the same name) on October 29, and The Natural History of the Chicken on November 5.

For times and locations, see the poster below (click to open PDF):

Are you going to be around the Seacoast this holiday weekend? If so, you will have lots of ways to make it “slow” while being outside and enjoying the sunny fall days!

Saturday, 10/09

• 3rd Annual NH Fall Festival & 21st Annual WHEB Chili Cook-Off at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH
• Portsmouth Farmers’ Market
• Newmarket Farmers’ Market (closing day)

Sunday, 10/10

• Brookford Farm Quark Festival & barn movie in Rollinsford,  NH
• Other 10/10/10 (Global Environmental Action Day) events, searchable by ZIP code
• Newburyport Farmers’ Market

Monday

• 3rd Annual Fall Eco-Fest at Clay Hill Farm in Ogunquit, ME

All weekend

Search the online database of Seacoast Harvest: A Local Food Guide for a farm near you for

• pick-your-own apples
• pick-your-own pumpkins

Have a wonderful weekend!

Last year saw the first of what has become an annual event: The NH Fish & Lobster Festival (fondly referred to as “Fishtival”). The number of attendees at the inaugural event blew away all projections, so this year’s organizers are gearing up for an even bigger and better day of celebrating our local fisheries and fisherpeople.

The day’s events will feature the popular seafood tastings (freshly-landed local seafood prepared by Seacoast chefs)  along with games, music and more. Tour a local fishing boat, learn how to identify and prepare local fish, watch an on-location cook-off competition, investigate the Gulf of Maine ecosystem, sing a song, and hear a tale or two.

The fishercrew at the 2009 Fishtival.

WHAT: NH Fish & Lobster Festival

WHEN: Saturday, September 25, 12 noon to 4 pm

WHERE: Prescott Park, Portsmouth

COST: Admission and educational activities are free; pay for tastings

MORE INFO: NH Fish & Lobster Festival on the Prescott Park website.

VOLUNTEERS: If you’d like to volunteer for the 2010 event, see what’s needed and register online using this nifty form created with Google docs! Or, email the NH Fish & Lobster Festival organizers to receive further instructions.

Photo: Chefs Collaborative

This September, Slow Food Seacoast is planning an exciting and elegant educational component to the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner to demonstrate what RAFT really means and why it’s an important initiative. Our hope is that diners will take away from this fabulous fine-dining experience a full tummy, a contented smile, and an appreciation of not only what RAFT is but also what it means.

The goal is to bring each diner’s attention back from the plate to the chefs in the kitchen, to the farmers in the field, and to those who have come before as a way of connecting the dining experience to the significance of the “at-risk” produce varieties featured in the RAFT Alliance and, hence, on the Barn Dinner menu.

Diners approaching the barn at Meadow’s Mirth/Berry Hill Farm for the 4 pm cocktail hour will be greeted by tables displaying the very RAFT varieties that will grace their dinner plates an hour later. They can learn where those produce were grown and by whom, why those produce are historically interesting or significant, and who will be preparing that food for the dinner. RAFT seeds also will be available as give-aways to attendees, who can learn how to save the seeds from one year’s harvest for the next year’s planting—which is not only a frugal practice but also an essential step in preserving the best heirloom varieties.

In the barn, displays will illustrate the many connections underlying the dinner. They will feature photos of the 2010 RAFT Grow-Out farmers, chefs, and produce varieties, accompanied by relevant quotes (from farmers and chefs) as well as descriptions and the significance (historical, agricultural, and gastronomical) of the varieties to us New Englanders. In other words, why have people in New England bothered to save these seeds, grow these crops, eat these foods … then start the process all over again for generations? And in this so-called modern age, why should we continue to do so?

Slow Food Seacoast and co-organizers of the Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner are excited to collaborate on this project and look forward to making the event successful in so many ways! Visit the Heirloom Harvest Barn Dinner page for event details and purchase your tickets.