Regardless of our cultural background or religious beliefs, all of us have cherished food traditions that are the center of our holiday celebrations.  To honor those customs and to showcase the old-world quality of Buffalo’s best-loved foods, the Broadway Market will be presenting a public cooking demonstration on Saturday, December 13 featuring the traditional Polish meal (Wigilia) served on Christmas Eve.

The tasting includes samples of a selection of Wigilia foods, including mushroom soup, pierogi and the traditional Christmas wafers (oplatek). The wafers will be available for individual purchase.

Wigilia (pronounced: “vyg-ILY-uh”), comes from the Latin word vigilare, “to watch”, and means literally Eve.  This meatless meal is also known as the vigil, as Catholics await the birth of Christ.  Whether you would like to reconnect with your heritage, or want to learn about a custom that is not part of your family’s tradition, the Broadway Market has been an important part of holiday meals for generations in our community.

Cooking demonstration conducted by Slow Food Member Sandy Starks. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Friends of the Broadway Market for efforts to restore the market. Father Anslum Chalupka from Corpus Christi will be at the demonstration to bless the oplatki.

Also joining the event is Amy Smardz from the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle who will talk about Polish Holiday traditions.
Price: $19 per person
Slow Food member price: $16
SAVE $3!
Tickets may be purchased online by visiting Brown Paper Tickets.

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Slow Food USA: Social Justice on the Menu

By Tom Philpott, Editor of The Grist

“If you haven’t noticed yet, Slow Food is about to get political!” announced Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food USA. She was addressing the Slow Food USA chapter — for one day, Terra Madre had broken into meetings of regional and national contingents.

Few could have missed the political turn. Unlike many Slow Food USA events I’ve been to, there were few or no odes to the transformative power of a perfect peach. Here, speakers focused on how to broaden access to healthy, ecologically raised food.

Josh Viertel, Slow Food USA’s new president, set the tone. He announced that the organization would from now forward pursue two main priorities: youth organizing and social justice. “Our food system disproportionately hurts poor people and people of color, and alternatives aren’t accessible to those groups,” he said.

He said that in the past, the group had focused its rhetoric on values: commitment to “good, clean, and fair food,” for example. From now on, it would emphasize rights. “Access to good, clean, and fair food is not a privilege,” he declared. “It’s a right, and we have to make that clear.” That message, he insisted, was the most important one that delegates could bring back to their communities.

He also vowed that Slow Food USA would work to avoid doing something it has been accused of doing in the past: suck the air out the sustainable-food movement by hoarding resources and media attention at the expense of social-justice activists.

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Special Price for Slow Food Members

The Connection: 2008 Arts & Crafts Conference is pleased to present The Art & Craft of Dining Experience at the Roycroft Inn on Saturday October 25 at 7pm as part of the at the 5^h annual conference celebrating Western New York’s turn of the century Arts & Crafts Trail.

Chef Andrew Nuernberg and Dan Garvey from the historic Roycroft Inn is working with Slow Food Buffalo member Sandy Starks to create yet another spectacular Art & Craft of Dining© event. The dinner emphasizes Slow Food principles and features products produced locally and that are sustainable.

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The New York Times Magazine’s food issue is currently online and available for your reading pleasure.  It may be a little less comfortable to sip Sunday morning coffee at your desk with a computer as opposed to in bed with the paper, but we think it’s worth the sacrifice.

The periodical pleases the home gardner with a story about trials of weeding and tending toward food freedom, while another piece discusses the ban on tipping in an urban San Diego restaurant.  Perhaps more poignant is Michael Pollan’s exploration of food policy as it relates to our presidential choice, or a look at changing the way kids perceive healthy food through advertising.  There is also opinion and insight regarding the locavore movement and much, much more.

So snuggle up with a mug of well-brewed fair trade joe and enjoy!

–Photo courtesy of The New York Times

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This just in from Slow Food USA:

What will you be eating this Halloween? Is your candy Good, Clean, and Fair?

Slow Food USA has partnered with Global Exchange to spread the word about where our chocolate comes from on Halloween night with Reverse Trick-or-Treating.  Last Halloween, thousands of children, students, parents and others gave Fair Trade chocolate BACK to the households who gave them candy while Trick-or-Treating.  This year, we hope to reach a quarter of a million households across the country in an effort to further awareness about where our food comes from and how it is produced.

While Fair Trade does not address all hardships faced by farmers abroad, its goals are to provide a better price and support sustainable agricultural development. A good resource for reading more about Fair Trade is on the Fair Trade Federation website.

How Reverse Trick-or-Treating Works: The chocolate is attached to a card with information about social and environmental justice issues in the cocoa industry and how buying Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution. When someone gives you candy while trick-or-treating, you simply hand them a chocolate and card back.  Reverse Trick-or-Treating chocolate and cards are free. Participants pay only the cost of postage. Visit the Reverse Trick-or-Treating website to request cards and chocolate. The deadline to request cards is October 13.

–by Slow Food USA staffer Julia De Martini Day

Slow Food Buffalo will be doing its part to promote this project by offering 500 of these samples to those attending the Elmwood Bidwell Farmers Market Harvest Celebration on October 25th.  Come out and see us and Chef Bruce Wieszala who will be doing a cooking demonstration at the Slow Food tent using local foods from 10 a.m. - Noon.

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This just in from Slow Food USA:

On Thursday, August 28, Roots of Change unveiled the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture at San Francisco’s City Hall to the public, including Slow Food chapter leaders.  The petition aims to provide a clear statement on a food policy we need which can be endorsed by a broad base of individuals; an invitation to all Americans to challenge their policymakers to support change in the food system; and a set of principles from which policymakers may craft policy for a healthier food system.

Your voice is needed in order to make this call to action heard!  Please read the Declaration at http://fooddeclaration.org and endorse it or make comments.  Make sure to include your affiliation with Slow Food (under “Organization Affiliation”) when you endorse it.

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