Slow Food

Eating with the Seasons & the Slow Food Movement

(See all of my posts on slow food here).

Fresh spring lettuce, succulent fruits in summer, autumn’s squash and wild rice and root vegetables in winter. Eating fresh seasonal produce not only is delicious, it is a good way to connect with the rhythms of the natural world.

• Eating with the calendar will give you the freshest, best tasting and most healthy foods. It will tend to make you eat more local produce, which is good for our economy and encourages local agriculture. If everyone in our city were to eat 20% more local foods instead of imported, 20 or so semi-trucks per day would no longer need to operate.
• When produce is trucked across country (and internationally) for out of season distribution (tomatoes in winter, for example), its nutrition declines. Many vegetables that are shipped long distances are picked early or sprayed to delay ripening.
• Eating locally grown food can help limit exposure to chemicals and lend support to small regional farms and growers.
• Eating seasonally means focusing on the outstanding selection of foods that are available throughout each season. It is exciting to wait for asparagus, rhubarb, beans and peas in the spring; cucumbers, berries, and corn in the summer; winter squash and apples in the fall; and root vegetables in the winter.
• All fruits, vegetables and herbs have a season, enjoying them at the peak of flavor is the best way to eat.
• Together, the choices we make in our life can create a world that is connected and healthy.

Learn more about Slow Food:

Slow Food- Founded in 1986, is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction. You can also visit Slow Food USA, and join Slow Food Colorado Springs or Slow Food Denver.

The mission of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity is to organize and fund projects that defend our world’s heritage of agricultural biodiversity and gastronomic traditions. They envision a new agricultural system that respects local cultural identities, the earth’s resources, sustainable animal husbandry, and the health of individual consumers.

Chefs Collaborative is a national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of local, seasonal, and artisanal cooking.

The Edible Schoolyard provides urban public school students with a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom. Using food systems as a unifying concept, students learn how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious seasonal produce. Experiences in the kitchen and garden foster a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us, and promote the environmental and social well being of our school-community.

Environmental Defense Seafood Selector

Farmed and Dangerous Information on salmon aquaculture.

Seafood Choices Alliance

See all of my posts on slow food here.