Applications are now being accepted for the Spring 2012 class, which begins on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 and will meet each week until June 5. Completed applications must be submitted by February 10, 2012, and both the application and additional information are available online.

For more information about the L.A. County Master Food Preserve Program, visit their webpage on the University of California’s Cooperative Extension site, like their Facebook page, and/or follow them on Twitter @LACountyMFP.

Details noted below. For more information, contact Mud at schoolgarden [at] gmail [dot] com or find him on Twitter @cocoxochitl.

When: Sunday, November 6, 2011, 11:00am – 3:00pm
Where: Zenshuji Soto Mission, 123 S. Hewitt Street, Los Angeles
Cost: $45 per person (includes admission, kaiseki lunch, two tea ceremonies and sweets).

ADVANCE RESERVATIONS REQUIRED: DEADLINE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2011. Reservations are limited: No walk-ins are permitted on the day of the event. Payment in full by check should be made in advance to Zenshuji Sado-bu and sent to 123 S. Hewitt Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more information, call 213.624.8658.

You don’t have to go to Kyoto for authentic Japanese Zen Tea Ceremony culture. Zenshuji Soto Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, downtown Los Angeles, invites the Slow Food members and friends to attend its annual Chasen Kuyo, celebration of the chasen, the bamboo tea whisk used to make a bowl of matcha (powdered green tea). The event attracts practitioners of all Japanese tea ceremony schools in the region in seasonal kimono.

This chakai (tea ceremony gathering) combines two distinct temae (tea procedures) in the temple’s tea venues and a superbly prepared chaseki (meal for tea ceremony) incorporating seasonal shojin riori (vegetarian temple cuisine) crafted by the temple’s chefs.                

Chanoyu (tea ceremony is not often enjoyed outside Japan in its original context, that of a Zen Buddhist Temple. Zenshuji, one of the oldest and most prominent Zen temples in North America, is unique to host this event. The day begins with a solemn Buddhist service in the hondo (main sanctuary) offering tea in appreciation of the efforts of the humble hand-tool. A talk about Zen and Chado (the “Way of Tea”) will follow chanting of traditional Buddhist sutras.

English language explanation of the events will be provided by Slow Food Los Angeles member Lauren Sochi Deutsch, a licensed instructor of Urasenke Chado. Chairs will be available.

Organizers
Zenshuji’s Tea Ritual organization is headed by Hiromi Sosei Yamashita, sensei, a senior student of the Chado Urasenke Distinguished Tea Master and USA/NEA National Heritage Fellow Sosei Matsumoto Sensei, of Los Angeles. The Zenshuji Sado-bu (tea ceremony teaching organization) presented chanoyu demonstrations at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and has been active for over 30 years. Lauren Sochi Deutsch also has been a student of Matsumoto Sensei since 1985. She has written about chanoyu in such publications as Parabola and Kyoto Journal, and has done lecture demonstrations at UCLA, the Olympics, Embassy of Japan in Washington DC, among other places.

For additional information about the tea ceremony in Los Angeles: http://www.urasenkela.org.

This celebration of friends, family, community, and local food will benefit the Young Folks’ pilot project at the Los Angeles Leadership Academy‘s urban farm and will be completely sourced from local farmers. The meal will be prepared by Diep Tran, founder and chef of Good Girl Dinette, and Jullia Carr, Daniel Lawler, and Justin Gardner of the Young Folks Urban Farmers.

When: Monday, October 3, 2011 at 7:00pm
Where: Good Girl Dinette, 110 N Ave 56, Highland Park (90042)
Cost: $35 per person. Tickets may be purchased online through EventBrite (via credit card) or at the Good Girl Dinette (cash or check only). Online sales will end at 9pm on October 2 or when tickets have sold out, whichever comes first.

Good Girl Dinette’s owner and Executive Chef Diep Tran has over 15 years of restaurant experience. Born into the business, her family founded one of the very first Vietnamese restaurants in Orange County and LA, Pho 79. Diep has been featured on The Food Network, and Good Food. For two consecutive years, Good Girl Dinette has been included in Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential LA Restaurants, as well as being one of the star restaurants at LA Weekly’s Gold Standard. Good Girl Dinette is the first and only Vietnamese diner in the area, suffused with warmth and retro style where folks can connect and linger with family and friends.
 
Young Folks Urban Farmers is a community action network dedicated to changing the way communities feed themselves. Starting at the root of the issue, Young Folks advocates for the proliferation of urban agriculture in Los Angeles and encourages youth involvement as a key factor in changing our food system. To start, the group has partnered with the Los Angeles Leadership Academy to bring our community a fully functioning, 4-acre farm in the hills of Lincoln Heights. With the help of farmers, students, teachers, faculty, and community members, Young Folks has been developing an innovative approach to sustainability through urban food production. Young Folks is trying to build a prototype for institutions to able to feed themselves and support their constituents. Our goal is to not only be able to provide food, but to build support networks revolving around our community food system.

The farm currently occupies a half acre of the four-acre site and is growing tomatoes, beans, squash, cucumber, strawberries, melons, and peppers. As Julia Carr notes, “We have accomplished this with little formal funding but lots of support from the school, neighborhood, friends, and student interns. We are determined to cultivate the rest of the land and prove that food sustainability can be reality through hard work and a strong network of community support and involvement.”

This fall Young Folks will be teaching an Urban Farming elective to the high school students of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy as well as implementing an after school program, and the October 3 dinner will help further these programs. Slow Food Los Angeles is proud to support their efforts and we hope to see many members and friends at this event!

The fourth event in this summer’s Good Food film series, part of the opening day of the Good Food Festival & Conference, will feature The Harvest/La Cosecha, a documentary directed by U. Roberto Romano that provides an unvarnished view of child and migrant labor in the United States’ food system.

As Tomatoland author Barry Estabrook recently noted,

Under [U.S.] law, there is no minimum age for children to work on small farms, provided they have parental permission. At age 12, children are allowed to work on any farm if their parents consent. By age 14 a child no longer needs parental permission. In non-agricultural jobs, children between the ages of 14 and 15 are allowed to work a maximum of three hours on a school day and eight hours on a non-school day. There are no daily limits for farmworkers. And like adult farmworkers, children in agriculture are entitled to no overtime, even if they work more than eight hours a day or more than 40 hours a week. By age 16, it is perfectly legal for a child to mix, handle, and apply even the most toxic pesticides.

Following the film will be a discussion about the labor issues that are invisible to most consumers’ eyes but are critically important to any conversation about making our food system fairer and safer. Our panelists will include Tom Philpott, a nationally recognized commentator on food and agricultural policy. Lisa Lucas Talbot, chapter leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA’s regional governor for southern California, will moderate the discussion.

When: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 beginning at 7:30pm
Where: The Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
Cost: Tickets range from $7.00 to $11.00 and are available online or at the Aero Theatre box office.

Tom Philpott writes the Food for Thought column for Mother Jones magazine and before that was a contributor to Grist. Tom is the cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. His work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica, and the Guardian. Maverick Farms has been featured in Gourmet and The New York Times, and in September 2008, Food & Wine named Philpott one of “ten innovators” who “will continue to shape the culinary consciousness of our country for the next 30 years.” In 2011, he was a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award in the “Food-Related Columns and Commentary” category.

Films in the series have been selected by the Good Food Festival Film Committee (Lisa Lucas Talbot, Laura Avery, Marguerite Kenner, Susan Haymer, and Corinne Bourdeau) and are being screened with the generous assistance of the staff of the American Cinematheque.

The inaugural Good Food Festival & Conference, launched as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, will be held September 14 through 18 and will feature an exceptional array of speakers, demonstrations, and events that will celebrate the bounty of our foodshed and consider the state of our food system. More information is being posted daily on the Good Food Festival website.

Following Queen of the Sun will be a panel discussion and audience Q&A with Denise Ritchie, Ruth Askren, and Scott Kleinrock. Lisa Lucas Talbot, chapter leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA’s regional governor for southern California, will moderate the discussion.

When: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 beginning at 7:30pm
Where: The Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
Cost: Tickets range from $7.00 to $11.00 and are available online or at the Aero Theatre box office.

Denise Ritchie is a founder of Malibu Compost and a passionate advocate for and educator about biodynamic practices. Denise has also led efforts to provide sanctuary for organically raised dairy cows that would otherwise be sold for slaughter or to a conventional farm.

Ruth Askren is a volunteer with Backwards Beekeepers, a Los Angeles organization that promotes organic, treatment-free beekeeping and helps rescue and place wild swarms of bees that would otherwise be exterminated.

Scott Kleinrock is the manager of The Ranch at the Huntington Botanical Gardens, an extraordinary experimental urban agriculture field station that both explores productive gardening methods and serves as an educational resource. In his capacity as Ranch Manager, Scott serves as planner, gardener, and educator, sharing the lessons of the Ranch with the greater Los Angeles community.

The next event in this series will be a screening of the new documentary The Harvest/La Cosecha, a new documentary that provides an unvarnished view of child and migrant labor in the United States’ food system. The film will be followed by a panel discussion about the labor issues that are invisible to most consumers’ eyes but are critically important to any conversation about making our food system fairer and safer. The September event will be held at the Aero Theatre on Wednesday, September 14, 2011, the opening night of the Good Food Festival & Conference.

Films in the series have been selected by the Good Food Festival Film Committee (Lisa Lucas Talbot, Laura Avery, Marguerite Kenner, Susan Haymer, and Corinne Bourdeau) with the generous assistance of the staff of the American Cinematheque.

The inaugural Good Food Festival & Conference, launched as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, will be held September 14 through 18 and will feature an exceptional array of speakers, demonstrations, and events that will celebrate the bounty of our foodshed and consider the state of our food system. More information is being posted daily on the Good Food Festival website.

We look forward to seeing Slow Food members and friends at the event on August 10 and in the meantime invite you to enjoy the trailer for Queen of the Sun:

For more information, see our original post or go directly to the event page on Eventbrite.

Free tickets are available (with prior reservation) to children under 18 who are accompanied by adults.

We hope to see you there!

August 2, 2011 September 8, 2001: Conversation and cocktails with Robert Kenner and Barbara Spencer from 7:00pm until 10:00pm at FOOD on Pico in West L.A. [Note date change from August 2 to September 8.]

10 volunteers needed: Please contact Kelsey if interested.

Assistance needed with: Event set-up from 4:00pm-5:00pm; preparation of flower arrangements; limited bartending/beverage service; reception (including gathering information and collecting admission payments); food and beverage service assistance; clean-up of restaurant (after 10:00pm)

Attendance will also be required at a volunteer meeting on Sunday, July 31.

August 27, 2011: Breakfast event at Santa Monica Place
Volunteer needs are currently being assessed; please contact Kelsey if you wish to volunteer and details will be shared as they become available.

September 14-18, 2011: Lexicon of Sustainability exhibit at the Good Food Festival and Conference, Santa Monica

We anticipate a need for at least two volunteers to help set up this large-scale photography exhibit and four volunteers who could man the exhibit in shifts throughout the Festival and Conference. Volunteers manning the exhibit will be provided detailed information about the exhibit and its development and will be expected to answer questions and direct visitor to additional resources.

In addition to the Good Food Film Series, the organizing committee of the Good Food Festival & Conference has developed several pre-Festival events to showcase the farmers and ranchers who make the market one of southern California’s treasures and to raise funds to support this September’s Festival & Conference.

At the first of these savory summer events, Craft chef de cuisine John Keenan & pastry chef Shannon Swindle will be roasting whole pigs and serving family-style sides & desserts. Guests will enjoy local beers & wines, listen to live bluegrass, and shop for produce from select farmers from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. The event will also include a live auction led by Peter Fetterman 
of the acclaimed Peter Fetterman Gallery at Bergamot Station.

Proceeds from the event will benefit this September’s Good Food Festival & Conference celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market.

When: Sunday, July 31, 2011 from 3:00pm until 8:00pm
Where: Craft Restaurant, 10100 Constellation Boulevard, Los Angeles 90067
Cost: $150 per person but Slow Food members qualify for a 50% discount: Enter discount code GFFCSF when selecting your tickets on Eventbrite. Admission is free to children under 18 accompanied by adults; children’s tickets are required and also available on Eventbrite.

Tickets are available online through Eventbrite.

August events will be announced shortly, including a cocktail reception with Robert Kenner, director of Food, Inc., and Family Breakfast 101 on the terrace at Santa Monica Place.

Following DIVE! will be a panel discussion with Timothy Vatterott, the film’s producer, Rick Nahmias, and Felicia Friesema.

Rick Nahmias is the founder and executive director of Food Forward, a locally-based gleaning organization that coordinates volunteer teams who harvest locally grown food and distribute it to food pantries and organizations who serve those in need. Since beginning their work in 2009, Food Forward volunteers have picked and distributed over 441,000 pounds of fruit.

Felicia Friesema not only covers the southern California food landscape for the L.A. Weekly, but has also expanded her role as an exceptional community resource as a newly-minted Master Food Preserver.

Lisa Lucas Talbot, chapter leader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA’s regional governor for southern California, will moderate the discussion about what individuals and organizations in our community are doing–and can do better–to reduce food waste in our community.

The evening will conclude with a special presentation of The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda’s 2001 documentary about the centuries-old tradition of gleaning in France. (82 minutes; in French with English subtitles.) The film is not only an exploration of how gleaning practices have evolved, but what a society’s attitude toward gleaning–and the gleaners–may reveal.

When: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 beginning at 7:30pm
Where: The Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
Cost: Tickets range from $7.00 to $11.00 and are available online or at the Aero Theatre box office.

Future events in this series will be held on Wednesday, August 10, and Wednesday, September 14, at the Aero Theatre. Films in the series are being selected by the Good Food Festival Film Committee (Lisa Lucas Talbot, Laura Avery, Marguerite Kenner, Susan Haymer, and Corinne Bourdeau) with the generous assistance of the staff of the American Cinematheque.

The inaugural Good Food Festival & Conference, launched as part of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, will be held September 15 through 18 and will feature an extraordinary array of speakers, demonstrations, and events that will celebrate the bounty of our foodshed and consider the state of our food system.

We look forward to seeing Slow Food members and friends at the event on July 13! In the meantime, enjoy the trailer for DIVE!:

Dive! Trailer from Compeller Pictures on Vimeo.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the screening of Big River and The Greenhorns. Special thanks to Craig Ruggless of Winnetka Farms, Tara Kolla of Silver Lake Farms, and Romeo Coleman of Coleman Family Farm for sharing their experiences with us in the panel discussion.

The next event in the series will be Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at the Aero Theatre, when we’ll screen DIVE! and The Gleaners and I. Our panelists will be announced shortly, along with more information about the evening, but please save the date!

The selected films will address issues in our country’s food system in engrossing and timely ways, and enlightening panel discussions will follow the screenings to give a local perspective on the larger issues presented by the films.

If local food is an important part of your life, or if you simply want to learn more about the movement toward more sustainable agriculture, be sure not to miss any of these exciting screenings.

We’re delighted that the first event will feature two films, Big River and The Greenhorns:

When: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 beginning at 7:30pm
Where: The Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
Cost: Tickets range from $7.00 to $11.00 and are available online or at the Aero Theatre box office.

About the films:
In Big River, documentarians and former farmers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney return to their native Iowa to learn about the environmental impact their previous agricultural practices had on other communities downstream. A sobering and informative documentary, Big River offers a clear-eyed look at how traditional farming may be contributing to unseen but significant effects on communities. (27 minutes; 2010)

In The Greenhorns, director Severine von Tscharner Fleming travels the United States meeting with young farmers who have followed a variety of paths. Some have grown up on farms and stayed, others have looked for outside opportunities and ultimately returned to their families’ farms and still others have chosen the profession without previous connection. Through a series of enlightening and engrossing interviews, the documentary’s subjects talk about the challenges they’ve faced, from daily financing and basic farm business matters to the devastating reality of rebuilding after a natural disaster. Never sugarcoated, The Greenhorns nonetheless offers an optimistic and exciting view of our country’s next generation of farmers. (50 minutes; 2011)

The discussion following the screenings will be moderated by Lisa Lucas Talbot, coleader of Slow Food Los Angeles and Slow Food USA regional governor for Southern California. Romeo Coleman (Coleman Family Farm), Tara Kolla (Silver Lake Farms), and Craig Ruggless (Winnetka Farms) will share their experiences on a range of topics that reflect the issues raised in the films.

Films in the series are being selected by the Good Food Festival Film Committee (Lisa Lucas Talbot, Laura Avery, Marguerite Kenner, Susan Haymer, and Corinne Bourdeau) with the generous assistance of the staff of the American Cinematheque.

Information about the July, August, and September events will be available soon; in the meantime, we hope to see many Slow Food Los Angeles members and friends at the Aero Theatre on June 8th, and have included trailers for both films below:

Big River:

The Greenhorns:

Thanks are also due to

• Magical Blooms (soon to open in Santa Monica Place) for helping to make our booth more welcoming with their flowers;
• Craig and Gary of Winnetka Farms for plants and advice on growing several spectacular Italian vegetable varities;
• Christian Page and his colleagues at Daily Dose, opening later this month in downtown L.A., for their out-of-this-world veggie sandwiches (Elina Shatkin talked with them about their philosophy and plans];
• Mud Baron for introducing us to a few of the inspiring students from Santee High’s Bistro Mundo culinary arts program (more on that soon);
• and to Shawna Dawson and her Artisanal LA/Sauce LA team who coordinated the event and who made it possible for us and other community organizations to participate.

The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is an internationally distinguished award in the fields of environmental science, environmental health, and energy. Established in 1973, the Tyler Prize has been awarded annually to outstanding contributors in their fields: E.O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, Jared Diamond, George Schaller, and Stuart Pimm are among its recipients.

Professor Berenbaum’s receipt of the 2011 prize is cause for special celebration due to her timely and important research into colony collapse disorder and the crucial need to identify the threat to honeybees and other pollinators.

Professor Berenbaum spoke on this topic to Slow Food Los Angeles members during a 2008 visit to Los Angeles, and we are pleased that in connection with the Tyler Prize she will deliver a public lecture:

When: Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 2:00pm
Where: The Davidson Conference Center of the University of Southern California
Cost: Free and open to the public. Admission subject to venue capacity.

We extend our warmest congratulations to Professor Berenbaum, and also our thanks to former Slow Food chapter leader Arthur Greenwald for alerting us to the details of the lecture.