Slow food
Dana Ewart and Cameron Smith, owners of Joy Road Catering in Penticton, organized the food at the conference.In April Osoyoos hosted the annual Slow Food Canada National Meeting. This was the first time the national event had ever been hosted in anything but a large city. Conversely, this was the most ambitious Slow Food event ever held in Canada and arguably the most successful.
Cameron Smith and Dana Ewart are the proprietors of Joy Road Catering in Penticton, and were organizing food for the weekend event. Smith, who has been a Slow Food fan and member for a “very, very long time” says, “Even the most successful (Slow Food events) in Canada might attract a thousand people.”
Ingrid Jarrett of Watermark Resort, where the event was held, is also a Slow Food aficionado. All three believe this is more than just a conference for foodies to experience some great meals together.
Smith observes, “In Europe Slow Food is working to protect (food) tradition, but in North America it is working to create tradition. I think that’s really fascinating.” The heart of the movement connects food producers, farmers, to the general populace and local industry that could provide better, healthier food for commercial ventures and people who live here.
The national conference might be over, but Jarrett is already working on the return of Slow Food events, like a Terra Madre Day on September 10, a Slow Food gathering at Valentine’s farm in Summerland on June 24, a ‘Market of Taste’ event next spring and a Slow Fish event using Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) sockeye salmon sometime in 2014.
The convivium (local Slow Food chapter) will organize these events, but Jarrett says Slow Food can only really succeed when the general public supports the ideas behind it. She says, “I really want to emphasize that everybody is welcome. It’s not a closed group.”
At the national conference every event was sold out. The conference attracted 60 meeting delegates, 40 non-meeting delegates and 630 people to the ‘Market of Taste’ where goods from 43 different farmers and food artisans were on display.
Interested foodies attending evening meals numbered 294.
Italy is where the Slow Food movement started in 1989 to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions and combat the divorce between urban citizens and the cultivation of food in the countryside.
Slow Food today is a network of 100,000 members in 150 countries but those numbers greatly underestimate the movement’s impact.
Smith and Ewart were the official representatives of the Thompson-Okanagan Convivium at the Terra Madre conference held in Turin, Italy last year.
A Terra Madre is a conference for people in the food industry, but in Europe, as was done in Osoyoos, many, MANY more people are interested than just food professionals. Smith says it attracts people from every walk of life.
The Turin event had 60,000 to 70,000 people attend every day of the conference giving a total attendance of 300,000 people, three times the official worldwide Slow Food membership.
Smith says kids came to the events on school buses along with home makers and professionals of every kind.
The Osoyoos event made use of its rural setting, taking delegates out to meet farmers and local producers. Ewart notes, “They wanted to hear about events on the farm. They’re a lot more interested in their food.”
Another event, sometimes held separately, but held simultaneously on this occasion is known as a Salone del Gusto. A Salone del Gusto constitutes the public events that everyone can enjoy and resembles a trade show.
The Canadian Terra Madre brought in Slow Food members and food professionals, but Ewart thinks the most significant events were the ones that connected the public and different food professionals with one another.
The ‘Market of Taste’ was an outdoor event open to everyone. While the market was running, Ewart says, “I just walked up and down the street introducing people, between chefs and farmers who didn’t know each other. It really resonated.”
She adds, “It helped us build a network of farmers and chefs and even people at Thompson Rivers University. We’d never met them and there are so many great things that they’re doing.”
As well known as Ewart and Smith are in the Okanagan food industry, she says they still met local producers they didn’t know. “We get our fish through Jon (Crofts) through Codfathers (Seafood Market in Kelowna), but we’d never met Ted’s Trout (a small, family-run trout farming operation near Kamloops run by Ted and Maureen Brown - www.tedstrout.com) or knew about ONA salmon. They have their own seiner. It’s definitely a product we’re going to use again.”
Smith agrees. “A lot of farmers didn’t look on it as (important for) direct sales that day, but as about connections. I think it was important for the farmer to realize that a lot of chefs want to have those connections. We need to concentrate on forming a network for a food delivery system from the north end of the valley to the south.”
Osoyoos Band Chief Clarence Louie was a guest speaker at the event. The Osoyoos Band is part of the ONA and reconnecting First Nations' food traditions into local cuisine may be the perfect symbol for the Slow Food movement.
Successful as the event was, it’s over and done now and the question is whether this will make any difference in helping the farm community.
Smith believes this is something to build on. “There is no reason for there not to be a Slow Food event every year. It was fantastic to have it here. It was really good that we could pull something off like that.”
Jarrett adds, “The consumer today wants to reconnect and celebrate the flavours and sharing of time and meals with friends and family.”
