An evening at The BiBo

Local Slow Food chapters are called convivia, a word chosen to reflect the philosophy of community and inclusiveness around food.  It’s a concept that came to life at last night’s event at The BiBo, 1835 West 4th Avenue.

Discussion was animated around the three tables where we started out with samplings of meaty olives, salty anchovies and some wild mushrooms. That was just the start.

Out came large plates of bruschetta topped with artichoke, eggplant and pesto, also wooden pallets laden with roasty focaccia, salami, proscuitto and mortadella. Four or five types of pizza (we lost count) then followed:  thin, chewy crusts cooked in the true Neapolitan fashion with toppings ranging from salami with a spicy kick to grilled vegetables, to simple tomato and basil.

And just when we thought we’d had enough, heaping plates of porcini mushroom pasta and gnocchi with basil arrived at the table. Tiramisu with coffees ended the meal. Luckily we were able to take home leftovers to enjoy for today’s lunch.

The BiBo, named after its two owners Lorenzo Bottazzi and Andrea Bini opened in March with a mission to serve up authentic and carefully prepared Neapolitan cuisine. Find out more at their website. 

Tast of Puglia: great food - great fun

Taste of Puglia

Friday evening at the Italian Cultural Centre was a busy time: soccer banquets, indoor bocce ball, and this week, The Taste of Puglia.

The room was packed with people sampling all manner of foods –sweet dried figs, plump green olives, fresh Terra Breads, freshly cooked up pasta with tomato sauce, wine, espresso coffee, chocolate, honey, and even some BC-made vodka.

Thanks to the Italian Cultural Centre and all the people who made “The Taste” such a fun event.

To find out more about the food of Puglia, click on the link.

Will Allen’s got growing power

Will Allen is a big man and it’s not just for his towering height. Since the 1990s, the former professional basketball player has worked with community groups across the US creating urban gardens and founded his organization Growing Power. Time magazine named him one of 2010’s most influential people in the world.

On January 27, in front of a capacity crowd at the Croatian Cultural Centre, Will Allen described his work which began in the early 1990s. He outlned how his organization has grown – starting out with his first urban farm in Milwaukee and carrying on to establish in inner-city farms in locations such as Chicago, New York and London England.

By establishing urban community gardens, Allen has made fresh, healthy food available to those who previously lacked access to it, as well as supplying local restaurants, food co-ops, and grocery stores. He stressed the importance of educating youth and equiping them with useful skills such as canning and using power tools.

Growing Power composts large quantities of food waste along with the cardboard containers it comes in. Seven varieties of worms are also put to work turning out rich soil. Worms aren’t the only creatures that live on the urban farms, Growing Power also raises tilapia, heritage variety turkeys, chickens, and goats. Along with farming edible produce, Allen and his organization have taken part in community improvement projects such as “flower explosions,” inner-city flower plantings credited with reducing crime.

Allen is optimistic about the future. He is inspired not only by his work but also by youth who are passionate about creating a new and healthy food system.

The evening was moderated by Fellow at the SFU Centre for Dialogue Peter Ladner, who is working on the local project, Planning Cities as if Food Matters. Will Allen was introduced by Micheal Ableman founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture and author of Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it.

Seann J. Dory of SOLEfood Inner City Urban Farm, Mary Gazeta of the Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project Society, Jodi Peters of the Environmental Youth Alliance, and Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston responded to Will Allen’s talk and spoke about their own food-related projects in the Lower Mainland.

Read more about Will Allen and Growing Power:
An Urban Farmer Is Rewarded for His Dream. The New York Times. September, 28, 2008.
Tips from Urban Farmer Will Allen. Bon Appetite. June 2010

Happy New Year

Slow Food Vancouver wishes you a happy New Year filled with happiness, good health, and great food. As a convivium we are pleased with our successful year in 2010 and have exciting plans for 2011.

Looking back at the last year, some of the highlights were the Slow Food cycle tours and our second Terra Madre day on December 10th. We sponsored 10 delegates at the international Terra Madre meeting in Torino. Italy. We also hosted smaller events such as the High Teas at Schokolade, a coffee tasting seminar, an Italian family dinner and book launch, as well as supporting the DOXA 2010 film festival’s opening film, Terra Madre.

                                                                                               
                                                                                                    (Photo: Julian Worker)

So, for our first blog post of 2011, it’s fitting to leave you with the words of Terra Madre delegate Chris Hergesheimer, also known as the Flour Peddler, delivered at Terra Madre Day 2010:

                                                         
                                                                                                        (Photo: Michael Marrapese)

Good evening everyone, thank you for being here tonight. I would like to begin tonight by expressing my gratitude for the opportunity to be here with you and for having had the experience at the Terra Madre gathering in Italy. It was an honour and a privilege to join to group to represent BC and Canada. It was quite the experience and I am so grateful for being selected to attend.

In celebration of all we have experienced and all of us joining together tonight it is also my honour to pay tribute to local grain with you. I have been working with the local grain movement for five years now, working to establish and preserve strong relationships between landscapes, farmers, millers, bakers and eaters. Julia Child is supposed to have said “how can a nation be great when their bread tastes like Kleenex?”

The bread we are going to enjoy tonight is nothing like that; the bread we are going to enjoy tonight is slow bread; good bread; good, clean and fair bread. Healthy, wholesome, and heartening.
Tonight we come together in this celebration and share in our local grain - with a small taste of bread made from locally grown and milled whole grain flour provided by the Urban Grains CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] also here with us tonight.

One of the core tenants of the slow food philosophy has been the creation of a food relationship, shifting the focus from producers and consumers to producers and co-producers. For some this is simply semantics, for others this is a powerful symbolic shift. What better model of food procurement and provisioning could there be to illustrate this shift and this concept than the CSA model?

For this bread in particular, 250 people, a farming family, a fertile stretch of cared for farmland have come together to create and sustain this relationship.

The ability to pay tribute to local grain tonight is a result of all of terra madre’s gifts; water, seeds, soil and sun, all that contributes to our collective sustenance. But there are also human hands involved; hands that care for and preserve seed from year to year, hands that work the land, hands and hearts that connect people and families to a place. And of course to not overlook the realm of ideas and creativity, a desire to rework systems, a longing to close the gap between producers and consumers through mutual commitment, the application of the CSA model to grain and flour and bread.

Henry Miller is reported to have said that “you could travel 50,000 miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread”. So what is good bread? What is it that makes this bread tonight so special? It’s the hands and the hearts of all those involved and their commitment to all that Slow Food stands for.

So please join me now in recognition of Jim Grieshaber-Otto. Jim and his family work together on Cedar Isle Farm in Aggasiz growing the grain that makes the Urban Grains CSA possible.

And join me in thanking the bakers. We have an amazing variety of bread made from local flour here tonight; Terra Breads, A Bread Affair and the Intergenerational Urban Aboriginal Landed Learning Program have all provided bread for us to break together. These bakers, who romance flour and water in such delicate balances to create this sustaining and sustainable works of art, our thanks to you.

And finally to all of you, the children of Terra Madre, the supporters of Terra Madre whose commitment to good, clean, and fair food runs deep. Paying tribute to local grain tonight requires a local grain community; you are that community. Thank you for sharing in this bread with me tonight. Thank you.