Local slow food purveyors attend Terra Madre 2006.
By: John Dunphy
The adventures of three local foodies last month included a transcontinental flight, falling asleep in a vineyard at midnight, and a truck nearly wiping their rented Ford Fiesta off the map.
Still, Mikey Azzara, David Zaback and Gabriele Carbone, the three representatives of The Community of Sustainable Farmers and Ice Cream Makers of Central New Jersey, found their inaugural experience of the Terra Madre World Meeting of Food Communities in Turin, Italy, to be a great adventure, if not a little overwhelming.
"I don’t think we took into consideration that we were traveling to another country," said Mr. Azzara, also outreach coordinator for Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey (NOFA). "We just figured it’d be nice and easy. We figured we’d fly in and go to the conference. It was a lot more complicated."
To start, Mr. Azzara, Mr. Zaback, a farmer at Cherry Grove Organic Farm on Carter Road, and Ms. Carbone, co-owner of The Bent Spoon artisan ice cream shop in Princeton, had that fender bender.
"When we were en route (to the conference), an Italian truck got a little bit too close to us and took off our bumper," Mr. Azzara said. "And we’re sitting in the middle of Turin completely sleep deprived. It felt completely surreal."
Another conference attendee, Gary Giberson, director of dining services at The Lawrenceville School, had a little less chaotic time. "I’d heard they had a few car accidents, but I was civilized and took trains and public transit, which was interesting in and of itself," he laughed.
Terra Madre, which means "mother earth," was organized by Slow Food, "a nonprofit, eco-gastronomic association founded (internationally) in 1989 to counteract fast-food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions, and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world," according to the program’s Web site, www.terramadre2006.org. The event, held from Oct. 26 to 30 featured 5,000 sustainable food producers, chefs and university representatives representing 150 countries.
"(Slow Food) is celebrating its 25th year in Italy," Mr. Giberson said. "It started with a protest, what they called a ‘food-in.’ They prepared homemade foods to basically protest the possible building of a McDonald’s in the Spanish Steps, a famous landmark."
From there, the movement has grown from a few upstarts trying to stop the construction of a fast-food joint (which they were successful in thwarting at that location), to a global movement opposed to the homogenization of the food industry through factory farming, genetic manipulation of animals and crops, and the overall lack of thought for the future in a fast-food, supermarket-fueled world.
This year, a "cook’s delegate" category was added to the attendee list, with culinary wizards from around the world meeting and sharing ideas and their culture’s varying ways of approaching "the art of preparing food," said Mr. Giberson, the only chef representative from New Jersey, and only one of 93 from the United States.
Themes for Terra Madre 2006 included building networks specifically, strengthening the network of food communities, cooks and universities and establishing communication channels within the network; agro-ecology agriculture that respects the environment; and market access, finding new outlets for small-scale producers who face heavy competition from industrial producers and distribution, through associations and cooperatives and collaboration with cooks and universities.
Doug Duda, of Lawrenceville Road, went as a member of the press. Also a member of NOFA, plus the host of the A&E cooking show, "The Well-Seasoned Traveler," Mr. Duda attended Terra Madre to initiate contacts for an expected travel show to be produced in February at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York.
"It gave me a chance to go and see who is doing what and meet with colleagues in chef education," he said. "As (the travel show in February) was approaching … (this) gave me a chance to talk to them and have them come and appear in New York."
Those from this area who got the opportunity to experience Terra Madre noted the strong sense of community involvement, as the meeting center’s walls could not keep the event from spilling out onto the streets.
"You often go to conferences and feel like they’re on an island, in a city that goes about its business," Mr. Duda said. "One of the things that was so remarkable about Terra Madre was that it did kind of take over the entire city of Turin. It was hard to get on a bus anywhere or walk into a piazza anywhere and not walk into a booth, demonstration or people you’d met from the conference."
Perhaps that atmosphere of a city completely taken over by the concept of sustainable food culture lent itself to its attendees, including Mr. Giberson, getting more from the meeting than just food culture networking.
"It was a great feeling to see all the people from around the world coming together without any conflicts or borders," he said. "There was a flag representation at the opening ceremony, which included Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine … having that feeling of being one, which isn’t very common these days. I was very inspired by that."
Evening activities were solely up to attendees, and took Mr. Azzara, Mr. Zaback and Ms. Carbone still in their rental car with the bumper still held in place by two bungie cords several hours north to Locanda Gancia, in Santo Stefano Belbo. "They were Gary’s tickets," Mr. Azzara said. "He had to do something else, so he gave the tickets to us three."
While Mr. Azzara said the dinner and wines presented were amazing, the trio still had to deal with the ride back to their hotel.
"We knew we had to drive three hours. At 12:30 a.m.," Mr. Azzara said. "We decided to pull over and sleep for a few hours in a vineyard. But, no one slept that well. So around 3:30, we got back up and drove to the hotel."
"It was an adventure," he added.
Mr. Duda said what Slow Food wants to preserve and give is an experience particularly for people who live in big cities and those "far away from seeing where their food comes from."
"They want to give the experience that a lot of us in Lawrence do have," he said. "So, it was kind of a celebration of what we love about Lawrence and what we want to see preserved for people all around the world."
With Terra Madre 2006 and the Ford Fiesta that made it all the way through the trip now a memory, Mr. Azzara said those who got to experience the event need to take what they learned back to their respective homes, and actually apply it.
"We need to make sure we do it in our own lives," he said. "That means taking time to enjoy food ourselves, and it spreads from there. We need to do it ourselves with family and friends. We need to value that time just to sit down and eat."
For more information about Terra Madre and the Slow Food movement, visit these Websites:
www.terramadre2006.org
www.slowfoodusa.org

