In this latest project a total of 65 Mangalitsa, Ossabaw, Berkshire, and Mangalitsa/Berkshire crosses were fattened up at Shasta Valley Farms in Gazelle, California on varying combinations of apples, tritcale, almonds, and acorns. The goal was to see which breed-feed combination would make the best-tasting meat raised on that piece of land. The idea of infusing flavor into live meat takes me back Les Blank’s 1979 film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, where Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse restaurant, is shown feeding heads of garlic to a sow, only so she could pass her garlic milk onto her suckling piglets — a testament to the old adage, “You are what you eat.”

Forty of the pigs were slaughtered and those in the know were given the opportunity to purchase shares, each of which included smoked bacon, loin chops, and a heap of sausages. Shares were picked up at a day-long event held at Blue Bottle Coffee Company’s roastery in Oakland, where additional pig parts were sold to the public – heads, back fat, lard, trotters, not to mention the better-than-butter lardo (salt-cured lard). Frozen lardo can be sliced thin and eaten on slices of baguette —a sublime melt-in-your-mouth experience that leaves you wanting more. Fresh grilled sausage sandwiches and samples of the lardo made this a tasty event in a piggy sort of way.

So who won the breed-feed trial? “Our general conclusions were that the age of the animals and the size of the animals had as much to do with their value as the breed,” says project coordinator, David Gumbiner.“  We also found that the Crosses (Berk/Manga) were the best, because they retained a lot of the positive characteristics of the heritage fat, but grew faster and more reliably, like the Berkshires. Also, they were deemed excellent for charcuterie.”

Pork fans from all over came to get a share of the best pig that money can’t buy. “The response to this event was overwhelming,” says Gumbiner.  “There’s a huge interest in farm-direct pork. People want to know where their meat is coming from.” Avid home cooks and hobbyist sausage makers alike could not pass up this opportunity and walked away with pounds of fat back slung over their shoulders, as visions of salami danced in their heads.

The data is out there and now The United States Department of Agriculture has created an interactive Food Environment Atlas, mapping those data points including local foods, food insecurity, proximity to grocery stores, food prices, as well as providing information on the general socioeconomic makeup of the community. (http://maps.ers.usda.gov/FoodAtlas/)

I poked around on the atlas, looking at the information it had for my home county back in Ohio. Not surprisingly, Licking County has .804 fast food restaurants for every thousand people. Compare that to .16 grocery stores for every thousand people. Here in Alameda County (my current home) things are a bit better; .25 grocery stores for every thousand people and .765 fast food joints for every thousand people. You can even find the number of people eligible for free lunch programs or participating in the breakfast programs associated with the School Lunch programs, yeah, a lot of people rely on them. For example, monthly participants in the free Breakfast programs for San Francisco total 1,175,999 people. It can tell you the ratio of cost comparing fruits to sugary snacks, low-fat milk to soda pop, etc. It includes information on taxes on various food items. It has percentages of farms with sales directly to consumers. It tells you a lot.

But keep in mind, there are some things the interactive map can’t tell you. It can’t tell you why exercise rates are the way they are. It does not detail how many parks are available or how safe they are. It doesn’t tell you about changes over time or the number of activists working tirelessly to improve these numbers. Statistics are always just a snapshot. Data collection is an important starting point to identify problems and design policy reform. But working on these issues, and convincing others that they are worth restructuring the way we think, behave, produce, and consume will require us to create an equally sensitive and thorough map of qualitative issues. We have to be able to describe the relationship between farmer’s markets and diabetes rates, between Farm to School programs and the large numbers of people who rely nationally administered meals through the Child Nutrition Act. We have to pay attention to how communities benefit when they can produce for themselves, not just in the data points, but in community relationships and  a sense of well being. We have to understand how stigma is created around government assistance in certain programs and not in others (social security is treated as an inalienable right while nutritional assistance programs, despite the name upgrade, are still seen as markers of dependency).

So, check out the map. Then get the stories. Change will require we are familiar with both the data and the narrative. In the end, I defend Slow Food’s goals because it seeks to preserve meaning, the meaning we create when we cook, when we produce, when we share, when we know. I feel Slow Food seeks what Wendell Berry describes as pleasure based not on ignorance but knowledge. And therefore, my challenge is crafted not just with numbers and ratios, but with stories and recipes.

And last night he outlined that mission with pointed narration. For those who aren’t familiar, he advocates soil conservation and an agriculture that invests in the roots as part of a long-term nutrient and water management system, reducing the need for fertilizer, reducing water waste, managing nitrogen, reducing dead zones (the infamous hypoxia off of the gulf coast is only one of many), and restoring the logic and efficiencies of natural ecosystems. His research focuses on genetic mixes (breeding not gene splicing, he is sure to point out) to create a hearty perennial wheat and hopes to expand to corn, which currently dominates 90 million acres of U.S. land.

The United Nations, though stopping short of creating a program like that outlined by Jackson, recognizes the damage current agriculture is doing to our land naming agriculture the single biggest threat to biodiversity in their Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. If that doesn’t do it for you, consider the statistic Jackson presents that the 22 year old has been through 54% of the total oil consumption to date. And the answer isn’t a technological substitute for oil because, as Jackson reminds us, there is no technological substitute for soil, for water. The revolution is necessary. Last night Jackson requested that the audience take action, and so I’m asking you to take action as well. Write to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and ask him what’s preventing him from supporting the 50-year farm bill.

The 50-Year Farm Bill will help outline a new government-sponsored program devoted to the soil and the roots, increasing the percentage of land and subsidies dedicated to perennial grains, (annual) vegetables, fruits and nuts, and increasing the percentage of livestock which graze on pasture. Download the Bill yourself, a short 19 pages, to see how it will stop “the deficit spending of ecological capital.” http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/07/28/4a6f2187e3d1c

And once you’ve reviewed it, write the Secretary of Agriculture and ask why he has not responded to the Bill’s developers Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry. Write to: U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250

Or try emailing: Farmbilldev.Farmbilldev@usda.gov or the email for the Office of the Executive Secratariat responsible for policy advising at OES.121A@usda.gov. Good luck.

Funding comes from larger, local charitable organizations committed to health and community empowerment. Though the model is highly localized it is also exportable and similar efforts exist throughout the Bay Area. The Mission’s Amyitis Gardens, for example, will farm residents’ yards, selling the produce to local restaurants. In exchange, the participating residents receive a discount at those restaurants, becoming both producers and consumers. Or there is West Oakland’s People’s Grocery, which helps educate and organize for urban farming and access to healthy foods. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to UC Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union Building this Saturday at 10:30 for their annual fundraising brunch, no charge.

And if you’re not in the Mission or West Oakland but still want to see ideas like these put to work, come to Slow Food San Francisco’s Volunteer Happy Hour this Wednesday night at 6pm at Project One (251 Rhode Island St.) to get the ball rolling.

"Our Chocolate Story" Oakland Chocolate Company, 2009.

On Saturday October 10, Nancy Nadel opened up the doors of her Oakland chocolate factory to give some Slow Food SF members a tour and a taste. Nancy works with the bean from nib to bar/truffle/bon bon. And it isn’t only the process that receives her full attention but also the harvesting and production. She works specifically with Jamaican farmers, which can provide some interesting political situations. Part of her choice to work there centered on her desire to help support a diversification of crops within Jamaica. But the taste doesn’t hurt.

While there, we sampled nibs (delicious on top of ice cream), truffles, bars, and a variety of filled chocolates. Nancy is constantly experimenting with fillings and even those, when she can, come from Jamaica. On her website (www.theoaklandchocolateco.com), you can find the full listing of all her experimentation. A particularly delicious one was the pumpkin filling inside a dark chocolate shell. Others were tempted by the chipotle, blue corn truffle. Need a treat to take to a community potluck this fall? Here’s your answer.

But what makes this chocolate factory special, aside from it not being owned by one of the few chocolate megacompanies, is the depth of involvement of Nancy Nadel. She will answer all your questions about the organic methods and the financial burdens her farmers face trying to pay for certification. She will talk to you about the subtle flavors of a nutty chocolate and the best beverage pairings for your chocolates. And she’ll probably entertain those crazy flavor combinations you’ve always wanted to try.

We hope to see a lot more of Nancy’s chocolates as she continues to experiment and perfect an always satisfying treat.

To Take a Walk in the Countryside, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town by Douglas Gayeton, 2009.

On October 8th, San Francisco’s 18 Reasons hosted Douglas Gayeton in honor of his book (an inadequate word for what he really produced) Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town. The reception was a bit more than the little 18 Reasons could handle but they welcomed everyone in nonetheless to taste  the foods we saw being made in the framed sepia photographs all around us. Gayeton spoke briefly, noting the influence of artists like Caravaggio mentioning his construction of a composition with the local characters of the bars he frequented.  Not only does this investigation of how a scene unfolds give the works their unique impact, but the content does as well. Caravaggio painted ‘genre’ scenes or scenes of a life so everyday people forgot to notice it until it was put into oils on canvas. Gayeton captured scenes of the everyday but scenes that are less and less a part of the everyday.

It wasn’t just about food as the story never really is. It was about discovering amazing plaster cast collections of works by Bellini and Pisano, learning the rules of a local game, or understanding the dynamics of a fraught political system. But there is also plenty of food. The book is filled with these spliced-up-million-moments-in-one photographs. On top of each image Gayeton writes all of the knowledge of ten years. The contrast between the singular directionality and the static nature of the text with the continuously oscillating, never fully resolved collage of moments and spaces provides an image that is both stable and evolving, documentation and narration. I could think of nothing more appropriate for a book about Slow Food, a movement that is held in the hands of families working in three hundred year old barns and in the hands of a little girl embracing her favorite chicken in a Northern California farm dedicated to making the world’s first goat’s milk ice cream. Just as 18 Reasons found a way to fit us all in, we are each part of this movement-every seemingly tiny part of our traditions, our idioms, our homemade bread, our attic full of plaster casts, are part of this movement.

So let’s all grab a camera and pencil and start recording our own traditions. Photograph that lovely garden, ask your mother and father what shopping for groceries used to mean, and let’s be able to say “conosco i miei polli”(I know my chickens). Make your own guide to Life in Your Life and pass it down through the generations, just like that old barn of memories.