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Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Ride the Slow Food train for less and help make change
Don’t confuse the Slow Food movement with food you make in slow cookers.
Slow Food, which started in Italy in 1989, was created “to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”
The organization has spread quickly into smaller chapters with more than 100,000 members.
But now, instead of charging a $60 membership fee, Slow Food USA is offering donate-what-you-can memberships through the end of September.
Lucky for Austinites that the Slow Food chapter here has revitalized itself in recent months by hosting more events, classes and community events, including a free cheese-making class on Thursday and a potluck on Monday (Labor Day) to brainstorm about how to improve school lunches.
The cheese-making event from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday is the group’s monthly Slow Session, an informative and fun event usually at Habitat Suites, 500 E. Highland Mall Blvd. Cheese-maker Scott Evans of Austin Homebrew Supply will explain the basics of home cheese-making, including history and where to get the ingredients. The event is free, and you can RSVP here.
The Labor Day potluck at 11 a.m. at Rain Lily Farm, 914 Shady Lane, is one of nearly 300 “eat-ins” across the country that are part of the Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch Campaign, where food advocates are coming up with ways to get fresh, unprocessed foods back into schools.
The Austin chapter’s fall fundraiser will be a raw milk cheese tasting and talk with Cathy Strange, global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market, at the Barr Mansion on Oct. 21. Kevin Brand of (512) Brewing Company will be pairing beers with the cheeses. Tickets are $50 ($40 for Slow Food members), and you can buy them here.
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Getting Lucky in Port Aransas
On our second trip to Port Aransas this year, we got lucky.
After the South Texas Food Salon near Dinero, we headed east for a quick trip to the beach. We rarely make hotel reservations when we travel, preferring to roll the dice and rely on the goodness of the universe to lead us to the perfect places to stay, eat and play.
This weekend, we hit the jackpot.
First stop: Port Aransas Brewing Company. I’d forgotten that since our last visit, when we devoured a fantastic mango and bacon pizza, the restaurant’s Stopher burger landed on Texas Monthly’s Top 50 burgers in the state list.
We split the burger, which was smothered in cheddar cheese and sandwiched between two slices of sweet, yeasty and chewy housemade bread.
Here’s where the luck began: our server gave us sweet potato fries instead of waffle fries, so we ended up with both, which was a good thing because I ended up liking the perfectly crisp sweet potato fries better than the ones we ordered.
After a bite to eat, we went hotel hunting and randomly pulled into what looked like your average cheap hotel on the main strip in Port A, a pink, nondescript America’s Best Lodge. We decided to stay there based on the fact that it was less than what we’d expected to pay during what is still considered the high season ($77 with tax).
But when we opened the door to our little room, we saw the real pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: A kitchenette with a full-sized fridge, stove, oven and microwave.
Within minutes of unpacking, a cleaning lady who had seen Julian running in and out of the room gave us an unopened box of Lucky Charms cereal that a previous guest had presumably left behind.
Good thing the hotel was right next to an IGA, where we could buy milk and a few other ingredients to go with the pork roast we’d happened to pack in our cooler (just in case we found a place to cook, you see).
We ended up enjoying a very fine meal in our room, just a few steps from the hot tub and pool, which we had all to ourselves because the hotel was nearly empty on a Sunday night.
Our luck extended to our playdate with the beach, where a rainstorm took its sweet time to finally boot us back to the hotel, and to the Port Aransas History Museum, which is run by a friend of a friend, who let us have a look around on Monday, even though the place is usually closed that day.
If only we could get so lucky on every road trip…
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A mixing bowl for foodies, farmers, ranchers, chefs
For several years now, lamb rancher Loncito Cartwright has hosted get-togethers for food folks around the state to get to know one another and brainstorm on strengthening the network of farmers, ranchers, business owners, chefs, writers, bloggers and food advocates.
The so-called South Texas Food Salon was this weekend at his ranch near Dinero, an hour or so outside San Antonio.
We didn’t arrive until Day 2 of the three-day gathering, the star of which was — predictably — the meals made with vegetables straight from the farms of several of the guests and meat from Loncito and others.
Everyone had a role, from mixing cocktails using watermelon agua fresca to peeling potatoes for breakfast home fries to smoking lamb ribs.
With a kitchen big enough to hold a dozen cooks at a time and a dining room to accommodate everyone else, guests from all over the state got to share ideas, farming techniques and tales of how they’ve made it through this horrifically hot and dry summer.
Many of the attendees had crossed paths before, but it was nice to get to know each other in a laid-back place, where farmers aren’t just coming in from the field harvesting or chefs aren’t sweating from cooking on the line at a restaurant.
Cartwright knows so many passionate food people in Texas; he’s smart to get them in the same place to harness their energy and see what ideas/projects come out of a weekend together.
(For more photos, check out this post by photographer Penny De Los Santos.)
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