Take the $5 Challenge on September 17th

THE CHALLENGE: This September 17, you’re invited to take back the ‘value meal’ by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person. Cook a meal with family and friends, have a potluck, or find a local event.

WHY: Because slow food shouldn’t have to cost more than fast food. If you know how to cook, then teach others. If you want to learn, this is your chance. Together, we’re sending a message that too many people live in communities where it’s harder to buy fruit than Froot Loops. Everybody should be able to eat fresh, healthy food every day.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED: Take the pledge to share a meal with family and friends, find a local meal or host your own. If the date doesn’t work, you can still take the pledge to show your support – and Slow Food USA will send you $5 cooking tips and updates on the campaign.

For more background on the day and the campaign, read the frequently asked questions. For $5 cooking tips and other resources, click here.

Get together for a slow food meal that costs less than $5/person & take back the value meal!

On Twitter? Join in the conversation by following/posting using #5challenge.

• Cheap Recipes for Slow Food USA’s $5 Challenge, EatingWell Magazine
• ‘How Low Can You Go’ Family Supper Challenge, NPR
• Your Best Dirt Cheap Dinner Contest, Food52
• Get Cooking! presents dinners for $5 and under, Slow Food San Francisco

Background On The Issue:

• How I Beat KFC’s Family Meal Challenge, Kurt Friese, Grist
• $20 Food Showdown: Fast Food vs. Healthy Food, Stepfanie Romine, DailySpark
• Is Local Food More Expensive?, Rich Pirog and Nick McCann, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
• The Farmer’s Market Myth, Barry Estabrook, The Atlantic

Next Slow Food Seattle Books Meeting: May 12

Kurt Timmermeister

Join us on May 12 for the next Slow Food Seattle Books!

Our May book club selection is Kurt Timmermeister’s, Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land.

“An intimate look at the life and livelihood of a modern-day farmer, as told by a former urbanite. A bona-fide city dweller, Kurt Timmermeister never intended to run his own dairy farm. When he purchased four acres of land on Vashon

Island, he was looking for an affordable home a ferry ride away from the restaurants he ran in Seattle. But as he continued to serve his customers frozen chicken breasts and packaged pork, he became aware of the connection between what he ate and where it came from: a hive of bees provided honey; a young cow could give fresh milk; an apple orchard allowed him to make vinegar.

Told in Timmermeister’s plainspoken voice, Growing a Farmer details with honesty the initial stumbles and subsequent realities he had to face in his quest to establish a profitable farm for himself. Personal yet

practical, Growing a Farmer includes the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs, and it will recast entirely the way we think about our relationship to the food we consume.”

Join us! This will be an active, open conversation and all are welcome – please come even if you haven’t had a chance to finish the book! We’ll be meeting from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 12. Roy Street Coffee and Tea is located at 700 Broadway East. Limited free parking is available in the lot below.

Please post questions as you’re reading for Kurt in the comments here or on our Reading Discussion on Facebook. Kurt has generously agreed to answer them for us!

• You can listen to an interview with Timmermeister on KUOW or the recent NPR interview with On Point/WBUR in Boston
• Watch a video on Growing a Farmer
• Learn more about Kurtwood Farms

RSVP to books@slowfoodseattle.org

Want to pick up a copy of Growing a Farmer? Here’s a list of local booksellers, also available via our Amazon store.

Slow Food Seattle Albacore Canning Day with Jeremy Brown

Tuna canning guru and Washington fisherman, Jeremy Brown.

In the spirit of Terra Madre Day, over fifty Slow Food Seattle members and community supporters came together on November 28^th for a day-long fish canning workshop called – “Time to Tin a Tuna!” – taught by Jeremy Brown, a Bellingham-based commercial fisherman and longtime proponent of Slow Food.

Wild Pacific Albacore has been in the news for all the right reasons – topping the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Super Green List and on National Public Radio in a feature on the growth of micro-canneries in the Pacific Northwest.

Though you can find canned albacore tuna at your local food co-ops or fish markets in many communities, this was an opportunity to learn firsthand with someone well-versed in the process and safety considerations of using pressure cookers. At the end of the day, attendees left with both with the pride of supporting a local fisherman and a good stock of Wild Pacific Albacore to last through the long northwest winter. In past years, Jeremy had done these canning days in the coastal town of Port Townsend, Washington with Amy Grondin, a Slow Food Seattle board member and Port Townsend resident. This was the first time collaborating directly with Slow Food Seattle.

Volunteers washed, trimmed, and cut the tuna into chunks for canning.

We were at maximum capacity a matter of days after announcing the event. We were able to use a commercial kitchen space donated by Gourmondo, a local catering company and Jeremy arrived with everything we needed to preserve our own delicious and nutritious, locally caught albacore tuna to see us through until the 2011 albacore fishing season.

The fish was pre-cut into steaks and with the help of a rotating assembly line of volunteers – we cleaned, trimmed, chopped, packed and processed a thousand pounds of albacore in eight hours!

The recipe was an old Breton family recipe Jeremy picked up while in France many years back – simple and delicious for anyone with a pressure canner and access to some great local fish:

• Pack tuna cut into about 2-inch chunks into jars along with a pinch of salt (we used kosher salt and 12-ounce jars).
• The secret ingredient that adds just the right level of sweetness is a slice of carrot.
• Add extra-virgin olive oil about half-way filling the jars, wipe the rims, cover with the lids and process.

Slow Food Seattle made the round-up on Terra Madre Day on the Slow Food USA blog!

Wild Pacific Albacore Tuna

 

June Lee (bottom left), Philip Lee (top right), Amy Grondin (top center) skinning and cleaning albacore.

Tuna in jars, ready to be processed. The "secret" ingredient is a slice of carrot for sweetness.

SFS board member, Patricia Eddy and her husband, John Eddy - both of cooklocal.com - breaking down tuna steaks.

Jars of tuna, waiting their turn for the pressure cooker.

Pressure cooker, letting off some steam. Tuna jars cooling in the background.

Photos: Jennifer Johnson