Re: Slow Food

**A*@aol.com**

Allan,

"Elitism" means in this regard, that folks whose backs are not against the 
wall in this financial climate are taking the trouble to try to engineer a 
bit of positive social change from above, i.e., "Slow Food."  Lots of good 
things happen that way - i.e., national forests and preserves, museums, 
performing arts centers and now...Slow Food.  Good on them! I'm not suprised 
at the $300 cost of the conference - as conferences go in big cities, that's 
cheap.  It's not the effort to cook that's hard, it's the making of time in 
an American society that puts its emphasis on economic production instead of 
nuturing families.  Remember when one income could support a family? Those of 
us with grey hair do. 

And I think that the best think we all could do is to relegate the television 
to a closet where it's taken out in the same way that we pull out a steam 
iron.  It would mean that we would have to make a concerted effort to turn on 
the boob tube, even for PBS. 

Years back when my son was small and I worked nights as a bartender and my 
wife worked days, I cooked alot in our good French enameled cast iron pots.  
Never see me with a no stick pan.  I'd cook a chicken for a sit down dinner 
on my night off the bones would go into the stock pot the next morning as my 
kid was convening with Bert and Earnie. The thanksgiving turkey became the 
basis for an evolving pot a feu until April. I even baked bread, kept dough 
in the fridge to make impromptu pastries - I loved black peeled bananas 
because they made the best banana bread!  Then we became vegetarian, my wife 
went back to school, my son got involved in the usual activities of a growing 
kid, I went on a 9-5 type schedule and merely surviving in the city became 
incrementally more difficult.   Little by little, with all the non-home 
activities that started creeping into our lives, we started seeing Chinese 
take out containers, quickie stir fries, cheeses,  and pret a porter dishes 
from Zabar's and Fairway in our fridge.  Store bought bread ( no hardship in 
NYC with our good bakeries) became a way of life.  

"Slow Food", what folks like me call cooking,  has become something I do on  
fall and winter Saturday afternoons after synagogue and whatever chore that 
I've been dragooned into by my wife or community has been satisfied.  I pull 
down a large French enamel red cast iron pot, pull out some frozen stock, or 
throw in  some Italian Plum tomatoes, some tomato paste and fresh garlic and 
dried basil from the garden or puree some squashes or root vegetables from 
the garden or whatever we need to do to make a real meal.  The last of the 
fresh hot pepper from the garden are going into this Saturday's chili ( with 
ground up dried peppers from earlier in the season.)  Finished making our 
pesto last week, of which I've frozen some for January and February when 
we'll really need a taste of summer. 

Maybe we need to have more pot lucks in our gardens, off season pot luck 
dinner/fundraisers in the off season.  It's OK that the rich folks have 
started this "Slow Food" thing.  Maybe some of us will get off our cans and 
not open so many of them. 

Bon appetit,
Adam Honigman

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