Italy Journal
October 24-29, 2012
Terra Madre/Salone di Gusto
Oh, buddy! I can’t even start to tell you about our
experiences in the Terra Madre/Salone di Gusto Festival. Think 5 football fields placed in 5 adjacent
huge warehouse-like buildings with 8 double rows of about 40 vendor booths in
the length of each building. Each section was named Pad 1, Pad 2, Pad 3,
International, and Pad 5. Then, in the connecting HUGE corridors were Food
street markets and Vineyard wine tastings…almost another football field worth.
Of course, Italy’s regions had about half of the space
filled, and Pad 5 was filled with about
8 large temporary classrooms where tastings of all sorts went on. The
International hall was divided by continents and contained food as well as
craft items, like the pointy knitted hat Peter bought to use as decoration in
our house (too small for Peter).Near the UNISG (Peter’s university) booth were
the SAAFON (USA’s Southern African American Food) participants. We learned that
there were almost 400 USA delegates/visitors at the festival.
Three times during the long weekend, Peter, his classmate
Kelly and I led English tours for people who wanted to hear about and taste
presidia foods (endangered and being address aggressively to save them by Slow
Food). They were very well done, and we enjoyed meeting everyone and helping
them enjoy an in-depth discussion of the Black Bee Honey in Sicily (only 2
hives existed when they were discovered a few years ago!), the Irish cheese
made from fresh milk, salumi with surprise squares of lardo (yes, lard, but it
makes it soooooo tasty!) inside from Abruzzo, Black Bread and white beans from
Sicily, and black pepper from Malaysia.
Special events for me during Terra Madre/Salone di Gusto
were:
1)
The Opening Ceremony the night before the
festival started. All sorts of people spoke, played music, sang; and the last
speaker was the initial organizer of Slow Food Carlo Petrini, who lives around
the corner from us in Bra. Also, later in the week, a Facebook video was sent
out in which “Carlini” was dancing with the Youth Network at an evening party.
Peter’s classmate Charlotte thought that was the highlight of the whole
festival for her.
a.
All of the nations who were present had
delegates who carried their flags for all to see, then the delegates sat in a prominent
place on stage. It made me have goose bumps when the American flag was brought
in by one of the University students!
b.
The message of each of the speakers was about
how their country was making sure everyone had good, fair and clean food for
all. Especially exciting was the progress in Africa, where an emphasis of
starting 1,000 school gardens was realized over the last year. Now, all of
those schools serve home grown foods in their lunch programs, and the students
have planted, cared for the plants and harvested the fruit of those plants
themselves. USA’s Alice Waters was an important proponent that made this
possible. She was there, too.
2)
The USA meeting, in which all Americans were
invited to attend. The meeting was opened by NATIVE AMERICANS from 4 different
reservations who played music, sang and spoke about how the native Americans
have always joined their spirituality and reverence/respect for the earth. They
encouraged everyone to turn away from the negative influences of big business and
artificial ways to grow food and to focus on the treasures we have on Mother
Earth. There was one lady who is only one of 5 people on earth who still makes
certain items in the traditional weaving way.
3)
The EAT IN, where 60 people gathered to eat
supper together. A group of university volunteers arranged for donations of
foods for this event and made a fantastic feast for us. It was free for those
who signed up quickly.
4)
The Chocolates Tour in which we participated.
Some of Peter’s classmates were the tour guides for this. It couldn’t have had
a more receptive group! YUM!
5)
Meeting several of the parents and other family
members of some of the other students in Peter’s cohort. We’ve all become
family now, so it was extra special to get to know some other family members.
6)
Meeting lots and lots and lots of people from
all over the world.
The weather was pretty good. It turned quite chilly on the
last day, but we were ready for it, and the only time we had to go outside was
to and from the car when we didn’t get there early enough to get a spot
underground.
There was a very important FIRST that happened during Salone
di Gusto. Peter and our Italian friend Enzo conducted their very first official
research for starting the gastronomic tour company together, “I Travel, I Taste,
I Learn.” It was very exciting for both of them to gather information and
contacts, knowing that they would be able to share this experience with our
tour groups starting next fall, 2013. You will hear more and more about these
irresistible plans as they are finalized.
If you ever get a chance to go to Terra Madre/Salon di
Gusto, please consider it. It is a lot of information and sometimes
overwhelmingly crowded, but the purpose for being there is to encourage the
world to provide decent food for EVERYONE. How cool is that!
Colleen
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