Jay Doubleyou: slow food: "pleasure, hedonism, enjoyment, tranquility, conviviality, richness"

Monday, 29 December 2014

slow food: "pleasure, hedonism, enjoyment, tranquility, conviviality, richness"

Topsham is quite a foody centre - not only with some excellent places to eat but hosting a weekly community market with good things to eat:

The Topsham Community Market runs from 8.30am till 1pm every Saturday. There is a good mix of food stalls (Olives, Meat, Fresh Bread and Croissants, Cheese, etc), antiques, clothes, jewellery and craft stalls.

Topsham Community Market - Sale in Exeter, Topsham - heartofdevon.com
Topsham Community Market | Devon Hour

And every summer there is the Food Festival.

Topsham Food Festival
Slow Food Devon Topsham Food Market | Good Game | Devon-made Game & Cured Meat Products

The Slow Food Devon Food Market is a celebration of the wide choice of local produce available on our doorsteps. Each producer featured in the market shares the principle of growing ‘proper’ food, slowly and in harmony with nature, food that is “good, clean and fair” – the vision set out by Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini in 1986.

Weekend of ‘slow food’ and fun with Topsham Food Festival and Nello's Longest Table | Exeter Express and Echo

Slow Food Devon

Slow Food is a global, grassroots organisation with supporters in over 150 countries around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to the community and the environment.

Slow Food was initially founded by Carlo Petrini and a group of activists in Italy during the 1980s with the aim of defending regional traditions, good food, gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life. In over two decades of history, the movement has evolved to embrace a comprehensive approach to food that recognizes the strong connections between plate, planet, people, politics and culture.

In the decades since its beginning, Slow Food has grown into a global movement involving millions of people, in over 150 countries.

Slow Food: Good, Clean and Fair Food for Everyone - YouTube

We aim to reinvigorate people’s interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. Recognising the importance of our local food traditions and the years of accrued knowledge and culture that accompanies this, Slow Food promotes true enjoyment of good food, and food production systems that provide good, clean and fair food for everyone.

Slow Food inspires change internationally through a variety of programmes, including:

Saving endangered foods and defending gastronomic traditions through our biodiversity projects;

Teaching the pleasure of food and how to make good, clean and fair choices through food and taste education;

Celebrations of the gastronomic traditions of the world, artisanal cheese and fish, and meetings of our worldwide networks in our international events;

From animal welfare to land grabbing, addressing hot topics that we care about;

Connecting young people passionate about changing the food system through the Slow Food Youth Network;

Countless activities organized daily by Slow Food members in our convivia (local groups);

Linking food producers, chefs, academics and representatives of local communities worldwide in the Terra Madre network;

Creating the next generation of food and gastronomy professionals at the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

Slow Food Uk - Celebrate what’s on your plate!

Slow Food International - Good, Clean and Fair food.
Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity

The Independent runs regular features on the Slow Food movement:

Pleasure, hedonism, enjoyment, tranquility, conviviality, richness; Slow Food has never made any bones about its commitment to the truly sweet things in life. There are no hair shirts in the Slow Food Movement, no trace of the puritanical urge that says if something is worth fighting for it must involve a degree of pain and hardship. Petrini recalls that the founding in 1986 of Slow Food's immediate forerunner, Arcigola, "was celebrated with a memorable two days ... the celebratory dinner finished only at the first light of dawn, after the final toast with a 1939 Barolo."

But conviviality has nothing to do with frivolity, and Petrini's greatness lies in his seriousness and his restlessness. Slow Food may have begun with a toast and an excellent dinner, but he has never allowed the movement he founded to lose sight of the fact that it is engaged in an epic struggle.

Carlo Petrini: The Slow Food gourmet who started a revolution - Features - Food and Drink - The Independent