Slow Food Portland and Rabelais Books present an evening with author, food and farming advocate, conservationist and folklorist Gary Paul Nabhan. Gary’s books include Coming Home to Eat, Renewing America’s Food Traditions
Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods, and the forthcoming Where Our Food Comes From -Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine.

The event will be held at Space Gallery, Friday, September 19th, at 7pm. $5 admission.

Space Gallery is located at 538 Congress Street, Portland, ME. More information to come soon.

The next meeting of the Slow Food Book Group has been re-scheduled due to a cooking conflict. So we will meet on Thursday September 3 from 6 to 7:30pm.

The title we are reading this go around is Little Heathens, Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It’s a fantastic read, so pick up your copy today, there’s still time to read it.

The meetings are held at Rabelais Books - 86 Middle Street, Portland, and are open to all. Slow Food members receive a 10% discount on the Book Group selection.

The next selection by the group is
The Geography of Wine, How Landscapes, Cultures, Terroir and the Weather Make a Good Drop by Brian J. Sommers.
This time we get to talk about terroir and wine and some agricultural perspectives. Come out and join us at Rabelais, 86 Middle street, on Wednesday, July 16th from 6-7:30.
The book group is open to any and all. Turn out for the last discussion was at an all time high. Come on down and join us! The more the merrier!
Geography is $16, there is a 10% discount at Rabelais for Slow Food members. The book is available now.

Sunday June 1st from 4 - 7, SFP will be holding our 4th annual celebration of spring, Fiddlefest! 

Local chefs will be presenting tastes of spring foods including the eponymous fiddlehead fern. We will also be holding a mead tasting that will include Fiddler’s Reach Merrymeeting Mead and Shalom Orchard mead. Poor Valley Salvation Society will be performing LIVE from 5 - 7 for our entertainment. If you haven’t heard them yet, they are a fun rockabilly, gospel, old-timey ensemble. Kid’s activities will be held throughout the event. Peak Organic Ales is a sponsor of the event this year. There will be a cash bar with hand-chosen wines in addition to Peak Organic Ales.The event is being held at the Dining Hall at SMCC in South Portland, overlooking the ocean.

Tickets are 20/15/5 (adults/members/kids) and are available at the door or in advance at Rosemont Market, Standard Baking, Aurora Provisions or Rabelais Books. Hope to see you there!

Hey All,

Just a heads up that the next meeting of the book group will be Wednesday, May 14th from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at Rabelais, 86 Middle Street.  This month we are reading The Warmest Room in the House, How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth Century American Home by Steven Gdula.   There will be a special treat this month as just a couple days after we have our meeting to discuss our ideas about the book, Gdula will be coming to Rabelais to speak and sign copies of the book.  So we will all have a chance to speak directly with the author while the book is fresh in our minds. Slow Food Members get a 10% discount on the book at Rabelais.

Please remember that the book group is open to any and all, the conversations are lively and spirited, the company engaged and the book selections thoroughly democratic.  Our next read will be In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  The meeting for that discussion will be set at this next gathering. 

If you are mulling over joining, dive in, the water’s fine!

The Slow Food Portland April Potluck will be held at Maple’s, not Rosemont Market and Bakery as originally planned.

Updated information is listed below:

DATE: Wednesday, 9 April

TIME: 7-9 pm

LOCATION: Maple’s Gelateria 

                       151 Middle Street                  

                       Portland, ME

Presenter:  Kristie Green of Maple’s

Come savor the tastes of Puglia with us!

Slow Food Portland, Aurora Provisions, Caiola’s Restaurant, Rabelais Books and Vias Ltd. invite you to join Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Maine’s expert on all things Italian, and Paolo Cantele of Cantele Vineyards in Salento, Italy, for an extraordinary culinary experience in two parts.

At 4:30 Aurora Provisions and Rabelais Books will host an informal wine tasting and book signing with Nancy and Paolo.  This will take place at Aurora Provisions and is free and open to the public.  64 Pine street,  871 9060.

At 6:30 we host our Terra Madre dinner at Caiola’s to raise funds to send two Maine delegates to Slow Food’s world wide food conference in October.  Terra Madre is a biennial gathering of food producers from around the globe, sponsored by Slow Food in Turin, Italy.  This is your opportunity to help us raise awareness of Maine’s heritage foodways and expand our representation on the world stage. 

Nancy Harmon Jenkins and Paolo Cantele will share this meal with us and lead us through the delicious culinary experience of Southern Italian food and wine.   Chef Abby Harmon will interpret the flavors of Puglia paired with the wines of Cantele for a memorable meal.

The price is $125 all inclusive, which after food/wine costs goes entirely towards airfare for Slow Food Portland’s two delegates.  Please join us to both indulge in some great food and wine and support a good cause.  Seating is limited to 35 so please call Caiola’s at 207 772 1110 soon to secure a place at this table.

In October Slow Food International will host Terra Madre, the 3rd biennial gathering of world food producers, academics and chefs. Slow Food Portland is pleased this year to offer sponsorship to cover the airfare to Turin, Italy for 2 Maine delegates.

Many thanks to Caiola’s Restaurant, Rabelais Books, Aurora Provisions, and Vias Wines, and to Nancy Harmon Jenkins and Paolo Cantele, for their generosity in hosting a fundraiser to cover these costs. More details will follow, but please save the date: April 22, 6:30 pm at Caiola’s in Portland. 

Slow Food International handles all logistics for feeding and lodging the 5000+ Terra Madre delegates (and pays airfare for those coming from third world countries). In 2006 Slow Food Portland sponsored a delegation from MOFGA (Russell Libby and John Bunker), and two chefs, Sam Hayward and Lee Skawinski. But because we didn’t have a convivium selection process in place and the nominations happened quickly, each paid their own airfare.

If you are interested in applying, or would like to nominate someone, please email us at this address: info@slowfoodportland.org. Participants must either represent a food community or work as a chef or in a related academic field. Maine has to date defined and sent delegates from 3 communities: Aroostook County Grain Growers, Maine Organic Potato Farmers, and MOFGA. This time around we can either nominate someone from one of these groups, or identify others that should have representation. Please let us know very briefly who you are and what you represent, and we’ll follow up to discuss selection criteria. We’ll ask that our 2 representatives share their experiences in some way with the convivium when they return, probably through helping to organize an event or talk.

More information about Terra Madre is available at this website: http://www.terramadre.info/

We can sponsor 1 chef and up to three participants from any one food community, but there are no limits to the numbers of food communities that can apply. So if you aren’t selected as one of our 2 delegates receiving airfare, we can still sponsor your application (you would be responsible for purchasing plane tickets, but if accepted your housing and meals will be covered either way by Slow Food International).

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Celebrate an extra hour of daylight!  Please join us at the next education committee meeting; we have a lot to discuss including current school projects and possible collaborations with other community organizations.

Whether you are currently on the committee and we haven’t seen you for a while, or if you would like to join,   we’d love to have you share a meal with us. 

Slow Food Portland Education Committee Meeting

Date: Monday, 10 March

Time: 6-8 pm

Location: 258 Spring Sreet, Portland 

Potluck

Hope to see you there!

Please join us in March for a general potluck. 

Date & Time:     Thursday, 13 March    7-9 pm

Location:             Aurora Provisions

                             64 Pine Street

                             Portland

David Buchanan will give a brief presentation and slide show on his recent trip to Argentina working on school gardens and some related local garden projects.

April

Date & Time: Wednesday, 9 April  7-9 pm

Location:         Rosemont Market and Bakery

                         559 Brighton Avenue

                         Portland