Slow Food

Yesterday, we went to a barbecue in Atlanta that was organized by Slow Food Atlanta. The Slow Food movement, with chapters in many states and all over the world, is about maintaining a relationship to traditional and sustainable foods, eating locally and eating with friends and family. It is everything that is not fast food. There is a better explanation here. We became members of Slow Food this past winter. The event yesterday was called "The New Q" . There were loads of great Atlanta chefs, each with their own table of slowly grilled or roasted barbecue. All of the meat and vegetables came from local farms. Every portion of food, or glass of wine or beer, cost a dollar and all proceeds went to a local food bank. There were a few local bands playing. We were next to a bunch of artists lofts where we searched out a blown glass shop and an urban gardener (who had lots of plant advice for Gillen). It was all sloooo good.

These are the gourmet garnishes prepared by Shaun (of "Shaun's"), a very hot new restaurant that Nicolas and I have been to and loved. These were so good that Jesse and I ate a plate full of them, without the barbecue. Of course, this was after having sampled barbecue creations from six other chefs.
Gillen savoring the gelato while watching the band.

Jesse savoring a bicuit from The Flying Biscuit. "Savor" was one of both boys' first words - born slow foodies.

We volunteered to help clean up at the end and were given hot pink bandanas, tickets to a preview of the movie "Waitress" and some leftover bottles of wine. Below are the Donck men modeling their pink.



On the way home we went to a mall to buy presents at a bookstore. My neighbor turned 90 today, my crochet teacher is about to adopt and needs some non-traditional parenting books (Holt and Kohn), the boys needed _Poppy_, by Avi for their next book club group and I had just found out at the "Q" that Barbara Kingsolver had written a new book(!) all about eating locally - so I gifted myself and Barbara (one of my favorite writers ever) by buying her book instead of waiting for it to come to the library. It's called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A Year of Food Life.

More than an hour later, we were still browsing in the book store (is it possible to be in a bookstore for less time than that, I ask you?!) and the kids were hungry. Incredible, but true. We bought our books, faced our tired and hungy children, realized how late it was and how far we were from home. You know where this is going don't you? We did what we never do, what we rail against righteously as we wear our slow food snail pins on our breasts and our hot pink bandanas on our heads and necks. We went the the mall food court and bought the kids' Chinese FAST FOOD!

But I can't leave you on that note. Here we are, back in our slow reality tonight, Gillen bringing the salad that was grown on our farm to our table.