I just got home from my first day at Slow Food Nation! Today, I went to the "Re-localizing Food" panel with Gary Nabhan, Dan Barber, Winona LaDuke, and Michael Pollan- the discussion was moderated by editor-in-chief of Saveur Magazine, James Oseland. The overall tone of the panel was quite optimistic in that round about "our food system is going to get better and go local because soon we physically won't have a choice" sort of way. It's an interesting twist on the doomsday end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it rhetoric that infects so many liberal discussions about the future (or maybe that doomsday stuff is just leftover from Y2K? Do we still know what Y2K is?) There was a lot of discussion about policy and government and ways of enforcing/encouraging local eating. Gary Nabhan said something I hadn't ever heard before: that the city of Austin is re-routing its city buses so that they don't just go to Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs but also have stops at farmer's markets-- hopefully more cities will follow suit?

I filmed the discussion and will be posting highlights soon(ish)... Also stay tuned for Michael Pollan's favorite preserved food... one of many small video treats as part of our local eating month (2 days away!)

After the panel I sampled my way through the marketplace, it was crowded but
still delicious. I tried "Dad's cardamom ice cream" from Three Twins
Organic Ice Cream. Apparantly their secret to deliciousness is that
they use part creme fraiche... after my discovery of 2 weeks ago, you can imagine that this was right up my alley. It was towards the end of the day so there were only 2 flavors left-- but rest assured-- I will come back with the full report tomorrow!