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 Seacoast Local and RiverRun Bookstore:

Seacoast Local and RiverRun Bookstore present Ron and Arnie Koss, authors of The Earth’s Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution, in the next lecture of the Making the Connection speaker series on Tuesday, May 18.

The Koss brothers founded Earth’s Best Baby Foods, the first nationally distributed organic foods company, 25 years ago. They describe their book as a how-to of entrepreneurship lessons. At the event, they will talk about ideas, reality, and success in the context of creating a bright and sustainable future.

WHAT: Ron and Arnie Koss talk about The Earth’s Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution at RiverRun Bookstore

WHEN: Tuesday, May 18, at 7 pm

WHERE: RiverRun Bookstore, 20 Congress St., Portsmouth, NH (603-431-2100) and webcast LIVE at www.riverrunbookstore.com!

MORE INFO: Visit the RiverRun website for details about the event. Learn more about the book on the Chelsea Green website.

Seacoast Local’s  Making the Connection series, co-produced by RiverRun Bookstore, serves as a catalyst for continuing education, community connections, and sustainable change for Seacoast residents.

Woody Tasch, author of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered, will be speaking at RiverRun Bookstore on Tuesday, Aug. 11 at 7 p.m., as part of Seacoast Local’s “Making the Connection” speaker series, co-produced with RiverRun Bookstore.

“Think about it: A hundred thousand Americans providing millions of dollars a year for investment in local food systems. Is it typical philanthropy? No. Is it investing as we’ve come to know it? No. Is it achievable? Yes.”

So says Woody Tasch, who works at the intersection of venture capital and slow money. He is chairman emeritus of Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations, and family offices that, since 1992, has facilitated the flow of $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. Now, he is president of the newly formed NGO Slow Money. As part of the larger Slow Movement sweeping the cultures of food, travel, cities, and schools, Slow Money proponents seek investments and returns at the pace of sustainable business development. Click here for more information about his new book, Slow Money, and plan to join us on Tuesday, Aug. 11 at 7  pm.

Seacoast Local and RiverRun Bookstore present the next author in their “Making the Connection” speaker series, a series that serves as a catalyst for continuing education, community connections, and sustainable change. Lisa M. Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, will be at RiverRun Bookstore on Saturday, June 27 . Hamilton will take us beyond local food and into the lives of western farmers who are David to the Goliath of corporate agriculture.

The event is co-sponsored by Slow Food Seacoast, and it starts at 6 pm with the debut of their new game “Who Wants to Be a Locavore?” Local food writer Rachel Forrest will host this trivia challenge, there will be prizes galore and as always, refreshments of the local variety will be served.

Lisa M. Hamilton will present her talk at 7 pm. The journalist and photographer spent two years profiling three families in rural America who represent a change in the way we should think about food and agriculture.

As with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Deeply Rooted suggests one of the best ways to address the problems with our nation’s food system is to go straight to the source—the farmers themselves.

Over the past forty years, many American farmers and ranchers have been told to “get big or get out.”  Countless people within agriculture have been replaced with machines, and their farms with corporate agribusinesses. The large-scale industrialization that followed has altered the face of American agriculture with dire environmental and economic consequences, and endangered the health and wellbeing of consumers.

Now, across the country, a courageous group of farmers and ranchers have issued a call to arms to end these unhealthy and unsustainable practices. To them, agriculture is not an industry but a way of life, and humans should be at the heart of it all.  Among these farmers are

•    Harry Lewis: an African-American dairyman in Texas who dreams of addressing Congress one day

•    Virgil Trujillo: a tenth-generation New Mexico rancher who believes agriculture could be the salvation of his impoverished hometown

•    David, Dan and Theresa Podoll: North Dakotan organic farmers whose vision for a more sustainable way of farming is derided by their neighbors

Scorned, ridiculed, and dismissed for their unconventional beliefs and faith in people, Harry Lewis, Virgil Trujillo, and the Podoll family prove to be the real mavericks of our time.  By telling their stories, Hamilton has given a human face to agriculture, and serves up an important lesson about bringing farmers back to the table at a time when we need them more than ever.

Lisa M. Hamilton’s work has been published in National Geographic Traveler, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, Orion, and Gastronomica. She lives in northern California.

RiverRun Bookstore is located at 20 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. The event is free and open to the public.

For more details on the event, call 603-431-2100 or visit www.riverrunbookstore.com. For more information on Seacoast Local, including its “Buy Local” program, call 603-766-1775 or visit www.seacoastlocal.org. The Slow Food Seacoast website is at www.slowfoodseacoast.org.

For those of you who are familiar with Michael Pollan’s work, you will agree that he has truly insightful perspective on how humans have come to affect the food system we are a part of, for better or for worse. In the United States, one of the most powerful influences is the National Farm Bill, which is up for renewal this year. Slow Food USA has joined with other progressive groups to educate the public and ask citizens to put pressure on Congress to change the way farm subsidies are distributed. They have complied some excellent information on their website, including a sample letter to your senators and representatives, and encourage everyone to get involved…. Now back to Michael Pollen who has written a wonderful article summarizing how the Farm Bill has gotten so out of balance. This can be viewed on his website at michaelpollan.com. Check it out and if you haven’t read any of his books, you may decide to take a trip to you local bookstore for a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his most recent work.

This Thursday, the Music Hall’s Wild Card film series presents the movie Fast Food Nation, a docudrama adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s hard-hitting nonfiction book on the ubiquitous American fast food industry. In settings ranging from ranches to restaurants to meatpacking plants, the movie gives an expansive overview of how all those burgers and fries ended up on all those plastic trays. If you don’t like what you see, a panel discussion following the movie will concentrate on delicious alternatives. Susan Tuveson of Cacao Chocolates in Kittery and Evan Mallett of Lindbergh’s Crossing will offer up some ‘cooking as theatre,’ creating a dish right onstage featuring local eggs, potatoes, onions, and herbs. There’ll be tasting for all. Rounding out the discussion will be Garen Heller of Back River Farm, John Forti and Michelle Moon of Slow Food Seacoast, and the UNH Office of Sustainability. Film at 7:30, tasting and dicussion afterward. Please come down!

For our last meeting, attendees were asked to bring a favorite food-related book. The choices were interesting and widely varied, including memoirs, investigative journalism, fiction, and cookbooks. Favorite food books created a window into the tastes, imaginations, and personalities of our group, so we know you’ll be interested in what these choices were. Here they are!

Kate: Chez Panisse Vegetables, by Alice Waters.
jeff: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne
Katie: Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table, by Ruth Riechl
Andy: Organic, Inc: Natural Foods and How they Grew, by Samuel Fromartz
Erin: On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town, by Susan Loomis
Sara Zoe: My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prudhomme
Joanne: Didn’t know about the bring-a-book plan, but a recent fiction read inspired her to make biscuits on a cold winter day!
Steve: The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (For the tasty alphabet market…)
Peter: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals, by Michael Pollan
Michelle: Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food At Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century, by Sandy Oliver
John: Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses, by Isabel Allende
Jenny: The Political Palate, by the Bloodroot Collective
Joanne: The Art of Syrian Cooking (available secondhand!), by Helen Corey

It was so great to be introduced to these books. If you care to order any, think about taking title and author information to your local bookseller to give those folks your business!