Slow Food
A significant number of people have contacted me to say how they have been inspired by my writings on growing our own fruit and vegetables. One lady now has a polystyrene box on the balcony of her unit with a thriving group of winter vegetables. Another has told me of how she and her husband have sought out their local farmers’ market and are buying all their fruit and vegetables from the stalls at the weekly market.
One man at our church has given away his job as an electrician, purchased a van, and drives boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables to church members who have begun to use his home delivery service.
I mentioned in an editorial on ‘Wonderful Winter’ recently how enjoyable it is to pick winter vegetables, to make soup and hot pie. Winter is a great time to indulge in comfort food! One of my readers asked me what we were picking now and what she should have ready for next winter. We have Apples, Grapefruit, Lemons, Limes (Beverley just made 5 pots of Lime butter! Delicious!), Mandarins, Nashi (pears), Oranges, Pecans (Fight the cockatoos!), Persimmons (on breakfast cereal), Passionfruit (on anything that has ice cream), Pears, Quince, and Rhubarb (not a fruit but goes with fruit in any dessert or pie).
But in the veggie boxes, you can have Beetroot, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celery, Artichokes, Kale, Kohlrabi, Leeks, Onions, Parsnips, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Silverbeet (or spinach), Swede (for pasties!), Sweet potato, Turnips.
So many people today are talking about food that is fresh, organically grown, and good for you. On the other hand the papers are always carrying articles about the obesity epidemic among children and the impact of the fast food chains.
Against this fast food industry is a grass roots movement of people – the slow food industry. Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic, member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
Slow food supporters like to educate people on the issues of factory farming, the issues involved in genetically modifying food and animals, the benefits of organic farming, better use of soil and water in agriculture, better methods of ploughing and sowing seed, the alternatives to chemical pesticide use, the encouragement of community gardens in schools, community plots, prisons and other such places (as Michelle Obama has done in converting part of the White House lawns into a kitchen vegetable garden tended by school children with the produce used in the White House and given to local poor families.
I have spoken and written on all of these issues over the past few years and all are found on http://www.gordonmoyes.com We also should take an interest in “fair trade” so that producers in poor countries receive adequate payment for their tea, coffee, chocolate, and other produce. Many churches are now selling these products to their members to aid overseas development.
The Slow Food website states their philosophy this way, “We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible…Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.”
Slow food shouldn’t be an upmarket thing; we should all have the right to enjoy good, clean and fair food in everyday living. Australia has some unique food products. Some like the Macadamia Nut have been taken over by other countries (Hawaii USA). But others are still available, and we should promote them, including the CWA sponge, lamingtons, pavlova, gravy beef meat pies, real butter and cheeses, and dry-aged, grass-fed beef.
In recent years modern young people think that food is prepared elsewhere, comes in a cardboard box, is delivered to the door and eaten in front of the television with fingers. But eating should be a slow affair, talking about the events of our day, taken when seated at a table learning our family history and developing culture, around which are all available family members.
Fast food is creating problems internationally. Slow food is the answer.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
Reference: http://www.slowfood.com/welcome_eng.lasso
