What is a Slow Dinner?

The true goals of a Slow Down Dinner are to celebrate the simplicity and beauty of a locally harvested, good meal.  Such meals generate inspired conversation between community members that lead to change.  A simple dinner can highlight our shared responsibility to protect fruits, vegetables, grains, animal breeds, wild foods and cooking traditions that are at risk of disappearing.   Making a commitment to celebrate the foods that come from our local farms and gardens naturally leads us to advocate for our rights to nutritious, organic and ethically grown foods and livestock. 

View Gallery

Why we need to Slow Down

The idea that we should be more concerned with our food supply and how it gets to our grocery stores and tables is a new one for America.  The story of the food on our table has serious environmental and therefore, moral implications that we don’t readily admit to ourselves.  But the truth is getting harder and harder to deny.  The world is changing fast and we need to change with it.  Food is the issue of the day.  Climate change is moving shorelines, big agribusinesses are contributing to increased soil depletion and greenhouse gases, our need for energy is reassigning food crops to biofuel uses that lead to higher food prices, and then there is peak oil, geopolitical issues, and natural disasters.  The confluence of all of these modern day realities point to our need to rewrite the story of the food on our tables.  The slow down movement reminds us that we have to understand how the production, processing and distribution of our food is the major determinant in a sustainable future.

The use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fossil fuels in the large scale production, processing and distribution of our food are an unnecessary environmental impact.   The Greenhouse gases that big agribusiness create can be cut in ½ by small and simple behavioral changes.  Creating awareness of our food, creates an awareness about the environment…this leads to more home gardens, community gardens etc…this leads to more hands in the soil and will generate a renewed connection and commitment to take care of nature.  It’s hard to deny how well nature takes care of us once we have participated in the cyclical miracle of seed to seedling to food. 

How you can participate…

Join the Slow Food Movement…shop at your local farmers market, use locally harvested foods, plant a garden of your own or get involved with starting a community garden.   Together we can change things..it’s as simple as having more dinners together.