Slow Food

A friend of mine returned last week from a two-week visit to Italy where he and his wife made some important discoveries. He told me of two of these which are curious and wholly incompatible. One is that the Italians -- of the north, at least -- are no longer taking siestas. This is discouraging. The other was an encounter with a lady who professed to be a member of the Slow Food movement. This was encouraging. The members of Slow Food, I assume, are not the ones who have stopped taking siestas.

Got blood? Time to help your community. On Wednesday, May 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Thursday ,May 16, from 3 to 7 p.m., the Hampden Family Center, 1104 W. 36th St., is partnering with MedStar Health, which owns Union Memorial Hospital, for a blood drive. If you have questions or wish to make an appointment, call the Hampden Family Center at 410-467-8710. At Minás Gallery & Boutique, 815 W. 36th St., there is an ongoing silent auction to benefit the House of Ruth, and the final bids and closing reception takes place on May 17 from 7 to 10 p.m. This auction brings together works from a number of excellent Baltimore artists, with all of the proceeds going to support one of the nation's leading domestic violence centers that helps thousands of battered women and their children every year.

I love Sundays. From the Sunday paper to Sunday supper, it's my day to recharge, relax and, most of all, to cook. When my daughter was little, I would spend the day cooking for the week. It made it easier to serve wholesome meals on school nights, if I didn't have to start from scratch. Things have changed a lot since then. There has been an explosion of convenience foods on the market ... everything you can imagine from precooked bacon to microwave mac and cheese. Fast-food restaurants are everywhere, and they make it so easy for you. With drive-through windows, you don't even have to get out of the car. Quick, cheap, convenient.

Wine is subjective. It's a matter of personal taste and everybody's tastes are different. This is not just a question of personal preference. It has a lot to do with how we are hard-wired. For example, the average recognition threshold for sugar is 1percent. At 1 percent sugar, half the population will recognize a wine as "sweet" while the other half will either have recognized sweetness below that concentration or need additional sugar to acknowledge its presence. This is why two people drinking the same wine can have markedly different perceptions.

POLLENZO, Italy -- The red brick quadrangle was in ruins just a few years ago, but now it's a beautifully renovated showplace and the pride of this tiny village about 37 miles south of Turin in the rolling hills of the Piedmont region. Not far away are the famous winemaking regions of the Langhe and the Roero. The cities of Barolo, famous for its wine, and Alba, renowned for white truffles, are both less than 10 miles away. King Carlo Alberto of Savoy built the building, with a large grassy courtyard, as a model farm in 1833.

Somewhere between nibbles of dainty crab galettes and forkfuls of hearty chateaubriand with shiitake mushrooms, a revolution quietly fomented at Gertrude's Restaurant in Baltimore on a recent Sunday. In the dimly lighted, cozy restaurant, the table of 18 diners in cocktail dresses and sharp suits merely seemed to be enjoying a five-course dinner together. But they really had gathered for a higher purpose. The diners call themselves Snails and are part of an international nonprofit group named Slow Food, which aims to be the counter movement to the fast-food culture that has dominated the world in recent decades.

Perhaps no nation has as passionate a grass-roots movement to preserve endangered species of cheese and protect vegetable rights as does Italy.Slow Food is a food and wine organization created 13 years ago by an Italian journalist, Carlo Petrini, as an antidote to fast food. More than 100,000 people were expected to attend Slow Food's Salone del Gusto, a five-day food fair that ends tonight.Now with 40,000 members in 35 countries, Slow Food's manifesto warns against "obsessive worrying about hygienic matters" and pledges to preserve such endangered foods as Firiki apples from Greece and Sicilian lattume di tonno, sperm of male tuna.

Got blood? Time to help your community. On Wednesday, May 15, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Thursday ,May 16, from 3 to 7 p.m., the Hampden Family Center, 1104 W. 36th St., is partnering with MedStar Health, which owns Union Memorial Hospital, for a blood drive. If you have questions or wish to make an appointment, call the Hampden Family Center at 410-467-8710. At Minás Gallery & Boutique, 815 W. 36th St., there is an ongoing silent auction to benefit the House of Ruth, and the final bids and closing reception takes place on May 17 from 7 to 10 p.m. This auction brings together works from a number of excellent Baltimore artists, with all of the proceeds going to support one of the nation's leading domestic violence centers that helps thousands of battered women and their children every year.

EAST MEREDITH, N.Y. - When the turkeys were just days old this spring, the electricity - and the brooding lamps keeping them warm - went out, so Craig Haney and his wife, Amy Kenyon Haney, packed the tiny birds into their car and blasted the heat on max. * When wild animals attacked some of the turkeys this summer, the couple pitched a tent to sleep outside with them and ward off further carnage. And when it came time to kill the turkeys for Thanksgiving, they did it themselves, staying up until midnight plucking off the remaining pinfeathers with tweezers.

Baltimore will hold its annual Dining Out for Life fundraiser on Sept. 20. Once againg, participating restaurants will donate at least 20 percent of their daily take to Movable Feast. Ted Allen remembers his first Dining Out for Life. "I remember the first Dining Out for Life I participated in," Allen said. "It was 21 years ago, in  Chicago, at an Italian restaurant named Bella Vista, which is now closed. I got the pasta and cream sauce. It was a first date. " The "Chopped" host is a national spokesman for Dining Out for Life, the annual dining fundraising event that raises money for AIDS service organizations.

Baltimore will hold its annual Dining Out for Life fundraiser on Sept. 20. Once againg, participating restaurants will donate at least 20 percent of their daily take to Movable Feast. Ted Allen remembers his first Dining Out for Life. "I remember the first Dining Out for Life I participated in," Allen said. "It was 21 years ago, in  Chicago, at an Italian restaurant named Bella Vista, which is now closed. I got the pasta and cream sauce. It was a first date. " The "Chopped" host is a national spokesman for Dining Out for Life, the annual dining fundraising event that raises money for AIDS service organizations.

POLLENZO, Italy -- The red brick quadrangle was in ruins just a few years ago, but now it's a beautifully renovated showplace and the pride of this tiny village about 37 miles south of Turin in the rolling hills of the Piedmont region. Not far away are the famous winemaking regions of the Langhe and the Roero. The cities of Barolo, famous for its wine, and Alba, renowned for white truffles, are both less than 10 miles away. King Carlo Alberto of Savoy built the building, with a large grassy courtyard, as a model farm in 1833.

I love Sundays. From the Sunday paper to Sunday supper, it's my day to recharge, relax and, most of all, to cook. When my daughter was little, I would spend the day cooking for the week. It made it easier to serve wholesome meals on school nights, if I didn't have to start from scratch. Things have changed a lot since then. There has been an explosion of convenience foods on the market ... everything you can imagine from precooked bacon to microwave mac and cheese. Fast-food restaurants are everywhere, and they make it so easy for you. With drive-through windows, you don't even have to get out of the car. Quick, cheap, convenient.

More than nine months after Food Lion announced it would take up operations in the Oakland Mills Village Center, replacing a Metro Food Market that has been a dark hole in the center for two years, the grocer has yet to begin renovations. Plans for the 42,000-square- foot store were stalled because of problems with the lease, a Food Lion spokeswoman said, and although the company expects the store to open next year, the spokeswoman said she did not know when renovations to the building could begin.

I press my back flat against a 900-year-old stone wall in Orvieto, Italy, and suck in my stomach, but it's not enough. The side mirror of a car brushes me as it creeps down a street built for medieval pedestrians and donkeys, not Fiats and Mercedes Benzes. It's been like this all morning. No matter where I walk or stand in these narrow, cobbled lanes, I seem to be impeding the progress of a motor vehicle. Every so often the streets open onto a sunlit piazza, and my heart soars at the prospect of umbrella-shaded cafes.

A friend of mine returned last week from a two-week visit to Italy where he and his wife made some important discoveries. He told me of two of these which are curious and wholly incompatible. One is that the Italians -- of the north, at least -- are no longer taking siestas. This is discouraging. The other was an encounter with a lady who professed to be a member of the Slow Food movement. This was encouraging. The members of Slow Food, I assume, are not the ones who have stopped taking siestas.

Wine is subjective. It's a matter of personal taste and everybody's tastes are different. This is not just a question of personal preference. It has a lot to do with how we are hard-wired. For example, the average recognition threshold for sugar is 1percent. At 1 percent sugar, half the population will recognize a wine as "sweet" while the other half will either have recognized sweetness below that concentration or need additional sugar to acknowledge its presence. This is why two people drinking the same wine can have markedly different perceptions.

I press my back flat against a 900-year-old stone wall in Orvieto, Italy, and suck in my stomach, but it's not enough. The side mirror of a car brushes me as it creeps down a street built for medieval pedestrians and donkeys, not Fiats and Mercedes Benzes. It's been like this all morning. No matter where I walk or stand in these narrow, cobbled lanes, I seem to be impeding the progress of a motor vehicle. Every so often the streets open onto a sunlit piazza, and my heart soars at the prospect of umbrella-shaded cafes.

EAST MEREDITH, N.Y. - When the turkeys were just days old this spring, the electricity - and the brooding lamps keeping them warm - went out, so Craig Haney and his wife, Amy Kenyon Haney, packed the tiny birds into their car and blasted the heat on max. * When wild animals attacked some of the turkeys this summer, the couple pitched a tent to sleep outside with them and ward off further carnage. And when it came time to kill the turkeys for Thanksgiving, they did it themselves, staying up until midnight plucking off the remaining pinfeathers with tweezers.

Somewhere between nibbles of dainty crab galettes and forkfuls of hearty chateaubriand with shiitake mushrooms, a revolution quietly fomented at Gertrude's Restaurant in Baltimore on a recent Sunday. In the dimly lighted, cozy restaurant, the table of 18 diners in cocktail dresses and sharp suits merely seemed to be enjoying a five-course dinner together. But they really had gathered for a higher purpose. The diners call themselves Snails and are part of an international nonprofit group named Slow Food, which aims to be the counter movement to the fast-food culture that has dominated the world in recent decades.