Christmas tea.. I'm trying to get the gang together for tea and cookies, at the least, this month, since It's Christmas. But we have yet to get our schedules to align.

So December's slow food night, might have to happen spontaneously. If anyone gets hungry this month, just call and we'll throw something together.

Love
Jen

The vices of eating alone

Why a dinner group? Thing is, I don't like eating alone. I think it's criminal. I love to share food. I was one of those kids who wanted to make cookies for all the kids in my elementary school. I wanted to feed the school. I practically did because I have 5 siblings. As a kid I was excited to come home from school and take over the kitchen with my creative and choatic cooking. I think part of feeding others is this: to cook is to create-- and to share what you've cooked is like making others happy with what you've created. It's pretty simple.

I also like the process of cooperating to create things. You know, put the onions and butter in a pan, add fresh tomatoes, garlic, basil, taste. . . add sugar, salt, think of what else you need. Then in walks a friend with some oregano and fresh olives from the market. She's also got an idea of what it needs, and sure enough, she was right.



Why

Every month since July, we've been putting on the food- for a Slow Food Night. Follow ours on this Blog, or start your own.
If you join us, we require only three things:

1. Bring a dish you make from scratch, or that you know where it comes from (local food, farm food, organic whole food.)
2. Be able to tell a story about your food, where the ingredients come from or how you learned to cook it like that (it can be a way of sharing your family's treasured recipes with each other.)
3. Attach a link of your Slow Food Night Blog to our Slow Food Waltz Blog.

More about SLOW FOOD and the slow food movement- http://www.slowfood.com/. "Created to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food."

Every month we will share our food stories along with photos on this Blog- stories that connect us with our food and with each other.

FOR ALL WHO:

*Can taste the difference between tomatoes from the garden vs. supermarket

*Enjoy gardening- pulling or digging bunches of green leafy things from the soil

One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race. -Wendell Berry

*View a forest of ripe berries as one of the Wonders of the World (you love to take home buckets but wind-up cramming most of it in your mouth while on the spot)

*Feel slighted when you cook from a package
*Don't like to eat alone (unless you are a parent and need a break from your kids)
*Love to cook, or would like to learn to cook from scratch
*Have inherited a dozen or more recipes that your Mom, Dad, grandparents or great-grandparents used to cook and have handed down

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.- Calvin Trillin.

*Love to hear stories and tell stories about the food you are eating
*Like to know where your food comes from
*Care about farmers who care about the land
*Possess a distain for dieting and commercial "diet" food

American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it. -Dave Barry

*Aren’t afraid of indulging in delicious food

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, "No, thank you," to dessert that night. And for what! -Erma Bombeck

School lunch with the 9th grader-

So today I ate lunch at a public school cafeteria: a blob of big fat greasy spaghetti noodles with a little meat and lots of sauce on a rectangular styrofoam plate. It came with a roll and anything I wanted in the "self-serve" salad bar (which I opted out of, knowing the personal hygiene of junior high students going through the line ahead of me.) It tasted like that canned Chef Boyardee stuff. I felt kind of sick after I ate it. I wanted to ask the students, "how can you eat this stuff everyday?" it's a little wierd that during the time that they are growing the fastest, some, or most of these kids are eating the most discusting food imaginable. School lunch is probably good compared with the junk food they down.

Toward the end of our slow food night, we started to get a little silly, maybe it was those beet greens kicking in, but here's what it looked like.



"Toni, cucumber over and visit?"



"I'd love to, but I have a date with my garden- my carrots need some extra attention,"





Here is Toni and Jenie singing that James Taylor song:......"Shower the people you love with veges, show them the way that you feel...."

Slow Food Night #3

Thanks ya'll for coming. Thanks Paul for letting our beets bleed purple all over your cutting board, for allowing the random acts of green grape tossing and for letting us pile all those swedish meatball and greasy potatoe pancake plates into your clean sink. ( we did help you clean up- Toni mostly). Also, for letting us put the ice-cream maker in your bathtub (wouldn't want it to leak on your hardwood floors.)

Millie and Andrew, Toni's friends from Ghana brought a dish made with plantains- Toni needs to tell you about it, Millie told a great story. Another couple from Ghana came as well, Joseph and his wife...

Paul made a type of ghoulash thing- red beans and rice with ham hocks and sausage, thyme, parika, cayenne, celery seed and lots of love. I think Paul also read William Carlos Williams poetry to his ghoulash as it was cooking. "so much depends on a pot of red beans, glazed with paprika beside the red ham hocks." Something like that.

Stacy brought her grandpa's recipe of potato pancakes.

Chris brought his appetite and news of himself breaking a land record (ask him about it.)

I (Jenie) tried to duplicate my meticulous gourmet cooking grandmother's swedish meatballs. In the end, I made them the way my family makes them (except I did sneak in some nutmeg, that's for you Gram.) I added a creme sauce at the end.

Andrea brought rolls and butter.

Toni made homemade icecream. A family recipe. Very tasty.

More stories to come!!

Next food nite, bring soul food or food that's a family favorite or family recipe...