Slow food

If you read Sue’s story on eating local, you might be wondering: How do I join the Slow Food movement?

It’s easy!

Go to www.slowfoodusa.org and read the page, then click to join. Where it asks for Convivia (yes, a bit precious), put Harrisburg. The Harrisburg chapter isn’t quite together yet, but Curtis Vreeland of Shipoke is assembling a crack team of organizers and it’s all coming together very s-l-o-w-l-y. Appropriate, huh?

Anyway, I queried Slow Food and even though Hbg isn’t listed, it’s okay.

The first dinner will be …

Today’s menu

After this I’ll stop, I promise, but first have a look at the ultimate Bourdain anti-menu that my wife found in Radar magazine:

“Mesquite-grilled Amish organic free-range chicken, served with Fijian mango chutney and accompanied by foraged mushrooms: It should never take longer to describe your dish than to eat it. Mango chutney was innovative when Bobby Flay did it in 1978. Foraged mushrooms? Amish chicken? Who gives a shit about who picked the mushrooms or if the people who raised the chicken wear bonnets?”

Bourdain

For a Hospitality Intro class, I wrote a piece on the kitchen culture’s bad boy:

An Appreciation of Anthony Bourdain

Early in the 21st century, Anthony Bourdain became the Quentin Tarantino of the kitchen. Tarantino’s breakthrough film, “Pulp Fiction,” had looked way too closely at the mobbed-up lowlifes behind the romantic “Godfather” movies.

And in “Kitchen Confidential” six years later, Bourdain stepped away from the calm, quiet cooking of Julia Child and Craig Claiborne to show the horrors going on in mid-level Manhattan restaurants.

His kitchens were all rock-n’roll, and sex, and drugs. The most potent of drugs was testosterone.

These are his culinary beginnings:
“Waiters were screaming. Chefs were shouting in impenetrable codes, while flames were shooting three feet high out of pans. The grill was crammed with a slowly moving train of orders. Pasta was being transferred to steaming colanders, some falling on the floor.

R U Ready …

for some Wegman’s? People will be partying in the parking lot Saturday night, and camping out until the store opens at 7 a.m. Why?

* About 700 varieties of produce every day, including local, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables from growers like …

Free drinks!

Almost.

Thursday night at the Whitaker Center, the city’s three theatre groups will show off their 2007-8 season plans. For $5, you get two drinks on the house, hors d’oeuvres from the Hilton and the chance to talk to actors, directors and probably some scene designers.

It goes from 5 to 7 p.m.

Need more?

Gamut Theatre Group
717-238-4111 or info@gamutplays.org

Open Stage of Harrisburg
717-232-OPEN or artistic@openstagehbg.com

Theatre Harrisburg
717-232-5501 or email@theatreharrisburg.com

Computers at your service

“They are common in Paris bistros, these wireless, hand-held computers that enable a waiter to take an order at the table.

“Now they have come to the Harrisburg area, albeit in a slightly different form.

Food rights

Across the country,  governments at all levels are looking at food and feeling legislative.

Should we ban trans-fats? What about raw milk?  Foie gras? How did school lunches come to be so bad for kids? What do we really want and need from food labels?

There’s a lot to talk about (and listen to) thanks to Justice Talking. It’s a public policy radio show produced by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a think tank at the University of Pennsylvania.