Slow Food Thanksgiving, by Alice Waters and Prince Charles

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Last night, ABC World News Tonight ran a story which featured Atlantic food columnist Corby Kummer talking about how Americans savor Thanksgiving food. "It's a time people slow down, stop and think about what they're making and eating." After all, "Food just loses flavor every mile it goes," Kummer said. "Have you ever picked a tomato off the vine and you have the juices running down your arm and you think, 'Wow, there is nothing sweeter, or better or fresher than this?' Nothing substitutes for something local." "The culinary experience is enhanced because you have a connection with your food," said chef Dan Barber. "You're seeing it prepared. You're smelling it cooking. You're watching what goes into it." Dan opened Blue Hill at Stone Barns (see previous article "Blue Hill: Everybody Must Get Stoned"), a restaurant near Sleepy Hollow, NY, north and not far from the Tappansee Bridge and White Plains, NY. The Slow Food movement is nearly two decades old, almost as old as super chefs. The spiritual leader of Slow Food in America is Alice Waters, founder of a local empire based on Chez Panisse, a restaurant over three decades old and fount for such American greats as Jeremiah Tower, Mark Miller, and Mark Peel (among others -- see list). For Slow Food, Alice is an international vice president and member of the president's council, according to the group's organigram. Over the past few years, as Alex Beam just reported in The Boston Globe, a blue-blood royal stands to be counted in the fray: the Prince of Wales, Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor. Prince Charles opposes genetically modified (GM) foods. In an editorial in The Daily Telegraph entitled "The Seeds of Disaster" which ran on June 8, 1998, the prince wrote "genetic modification takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone." Last month, Prince Charles made the closing remarks at "Terra Madre" in Turin, Italy. Alice praised the prince as a ''radical and courageous man." (Even former Soviet Union head Mikhail Gorbachev, now head of the World Political Forum (WPF) promised support from its scientific committee for Terra Madre.) This month, Charles delivered a keynote speech at Ritz in London entitled "The Mutton Renaissance" in which he mentioned "a galaxy of culinary stars to support me in this campaign... so that good old British mutton takes its rightful place once again amongst this country’s great dishes." Clearly, many prominent people around the world, not just chefs, support the slow-down of food preparation and consumption that is best represented in America by Thanksgiving. As Alice said on The News Hour a few years back: "I think it's revolutionary because we've gotten so far away from a certain understanding about food in one's life. And I... I think it kind of got lost in the 1950's, with the deep freeze, and the transportation, and the television that came in. And we forgot that food is about nourishment, and food is about agriculture, and food is about coming to the table. It's about culture. I heard that 85% of the kids in this country don't have one meal with their family, and so we're seeing a real breakdown of our culture, because it's at the table that we become civilized. It's where we communicate, and we need to bring people back to the table in a delicious way. Want to "Give Peace A Chance"? Start by feeding people: let them eat (and not just cake). Run quickly through the top headlines and take your pick of conficts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan's Darfur (see my most recent poem "Why Do We Wait So Long?"), Israel-Palestine, even this week's surprise in Ukraine: one of the main ingredients is that people are unable to get sufficient food to eat. As Peter Khalil, former Australian CPA member and currently visiting scholar the Brookings Institutution, told The Washington Post's Nora Boustany, ""After security, the most important concerns of Iraqis are stomachs and pockets." Ruminate on that. Slowly. With family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving. Previous articles: Blue Hill: Everybody Must Get Stoned Politics, Billboards & Champagne