Skagit County warms to ‘slow food’

MOUNT VERNON – In an eat-on-the-go culture bulging with drive-through windows and frozen dinners, a group of Skagit County residents has decided to slow things down and rediscover the pleasure of food, drink and good company.

They’re armed with picnic baskets, place settings and plentiful appetites for savory, non-fast-food cuisine.

Not a single hot dog, hamburger or potato chip showed up on the table during the group’s inaugural potluck last month at the Rexville Grocery. Instead, group members dined on ling cod caught fresh the same day, and oysters marinated the night before in brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger and green onion and smoked that morning.

With that bountiful feast, the “slow food” movement officially arrived in Skagit County.

Meant as the antithesis of fast food, slow food is an international trend started in the mid-1980s in Italy as a reaction to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome.

Today, slow food has evolved into a self-described “eco-gastronomic” nonprofit organization that celebrates local food traditions and sustainability through educational events and outreach activities, all with the aim of fighting the homogenization of food.

The 80,000-member organization is divided into local chapters, called conviviums. This is Skagit County’s first convivium, called Slow Food Skagit River Salish Sea.

“Slow food covers everything from supporting the local economy to encouraging families to sit down together for dinner,” said Donald Harper, who helped found the Skagit County convivium in April. “The goal is to support the producers and artisans, but it’s also about the pleasures of the table.”

The slow food dinner-table aesthetic wasn’t lost on Rexville Grocery owner Stuart Welch, who hosted the group’s first official dinner. Welch sat comfortably at the picnic table telling stories of backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he would catch wild salmon through breaks in the ice on half-frozen lakes and turn them into sushi.

Others, like Don Harper, shared family recipes. For instance, Harper told the group that Spike seasoning was the secret ingredient in preparing his delicious cooked carrots.

In the end, conversation turned to the area’s local food traditions, and the hope that the slow food movement can help preserve them.

“I really believe slow food will be big here,” Welch said. “Hopefully it will become a rallying point to keep things this way.”

Elsewhere, the slow food movement is helping to revitalize 147 distinct foods in the United States that have all but disappeared from the culinary landscape.

“We’ve basically identified endangered foods and we’re working to promote them and bring them back to the marketplace,” said Deena Goldman, the director of membership at Slow Food U.S.A in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In Seattle, slow-food members are working to resurrect the Ozette potato, which came from Peru by way of Spanish explorers and into the hands of the Makah Indians at Neah Bay in the 1700s, said Gerry Warren, who helped establish slow food in the Northwest around 10 years ago.

The potatoes were used for about 200 years before they began fading away, he said.

For Warren, Skagit County’s rich agricultural past makes it fertile ground for the slow food movement.

“This venue, this community, is slow foods times five,” he said. “What you have here is absolutely perfect.”

Members hope slow food will help preserve the county’s agricultural heritage for the future.

“Having food growing in your community is huge, and we are lucky that we do because many communities don’t,” said Carol Havens, the convivium’s coordinator. “We want to show people that you can buy delicious food, while supporting the local economy.”

The Skagit convivium is still in the early planning stages. But the group already has scheduled a series of cooking demonstrations, food tastings and community picnics in the coming months.

“We’re brand new at this,” Havens said. “But we expect to grow pretty fast. There have been so many people who have been waiting for something like this.”