If You Are What You Eat, Then I Am Not Sad

I USED to be a vegetarian. I put "used" in caps because once you see the following pictures you will be amazed by the transition I have made. I never really had an epiphany. It was more like a gradual realization. Not eating animals isn't going to stop animal cruelty. Some of the animals produced for food are not even treated cruelly. Animal cruelty will stop the day we start supporting small, local farms where the animals are treated with love and care, rather than the large, corporate CAFOS where animals are kept in sickening, appalling conditions that rip your heart right in half. If you don't believe me, research it.

Anyways, here they are. The photos from our November Turkey Processing (better late than never 'eh?)

If you can eat it, then you should be able to understand what it takes to get into your mouth. That's what we are all about here at Slow Food.

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Kahlil Gibran:

"When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart: By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

Go slow.

-Cate

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are a fave amongst the Slow Food URI group. Who doesn't love pumpkin? Better yet, who doesn't love chocolate and pumpkin together in one delicious cookie? We served these bad boys during our meeting last night and I walked away with an empty container. We are providing the recipe so you can make them at home. If you wanna keep it as local as possible, you could substitute the 1 cup of canned pumpkin for 1 cup of (peeled and mashed) butternut squash. Butternut squash is available throughout the fall, winter and early spring at the farmer's markets.

Ingredients

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
  
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

Enjoy!
-Maria

Peanut Butter Hummus

Okay, I know what you're thinking: has she lost her mind?
But honestly, I can't get enough of this stuff. It all started when I was listening to NPR one morning on my way to class. The program was about food cultures, and they were exploring the culinary uses of everyday foods. Naturally, peanuts (or more specifically, peanut butter), a staple food, was one of the things they discussed, and let me tell you; they ripped that poor little pb&j we all know and love to shreds!

Who knew that peanuts are used in stews, as creamy sauces, and even ground to make peanut porridge? That got me thinking (thinking about food is not hard for me). Tahini, a sesame seed paste with a similar consistency to peanut butter, usually lends body to pureed chickpeas in hummus. So, with no one around to convince me it was a bad idea... I had to try it & so should you. It's easy, economical (a lot cheaper than buying tahini), healthy, and quite flavorful.

Peanut Butter Hummus

1 15oz can of Organic (preferably) chickpeas/garbanzo beans with liquid reserved
2 heaping tbsp of Organic peanut butter (I like Woodstock Farms, unsalted smooth for this)
1/2 head of roasted garlic, about 4-7 cloves (local if possible)
OG Olive Oil
salt to taste
cumin (optional)

Roasted Garlic:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F
Wrap a head of garlic in aluminum foil and roast for 20 minuets.

Hummus:
Meanwhile, drain juices from chick peas and reserve 2-3 tbsp for later use.
Put chick peas in the food processor until smooth.
Add peanut butter. Mix until a ball-like form is made.
Add roasted garlic. Process again
Add olive oil and 2 tbsp of reserved liquid and mix until the hummus thins (be careful not to add too much, but just enough to separate the ball).
Once separated, add salt and more liquid to taste.

Ta-dah! Enjoy the hummus with roasted root vegetables and onions, scooped onto a salad, spread on warm pita bread with olives and feta, or plopped on some warm quinoa.

Let us know how you like it!

Slow Food Dreamz

Welcome back for a semester of Slow Food URI fun! To get your mind thinking about the Spring Season, we want to tell you about our dream this semester. By the time URI celebrates Earth Day on April 21^st, we want to have a truck farm. What is a truck farm?... It’s a garden, in the back of a truck! Slow Food URI has been asked to join in with a coalition of Farmers, the movement is called Truck Farming. The trucks are used for educating young children, families, and consumers about where their food comes from. We want to have our very own Slow Food URI truck, so if you have any ideas…EMAIL US! We would love to hear from you. Also, visit the truck farming link to get more information.

On another note, we want everyone to know we will be meeting at the coffee shop in the Memorial Union every other Thursday starting February 10, 2011 at 5:00pm. We also bring some free local food for everyone to enjoy and we will try to post the recipes on here.

-Maria

uri@slowfoodusa.org

Roasted Apple and Butternut Squash Soup

We will now be posting recipes to make eating locally even easier! For this time of year, apples and butternut squash are popular food items at the farmers market. We have posted a recipe allowing you to enjoy these two foods together in a soup! What could be better than a yummy and hot soup to keep you from freezing this winter?

Roasted Apple & Butternut Squash Soup
1 ½ lbs. (1 large) butternut squash, peeled & seeded
1 large granny smith apple, peeled & cored
½ large red onion
1 Tbl. mild curry powder
1 cup water
1 cup apple cider
olive oil
salt & pepper

3 Tbsp. heavy cream

Preheat the oven 425 degrees. Dice the squash, apple and onion into 1 inch cubes. Evenly distribute the cubed ingredients onto a sheet pan. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast at 425 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes or until tender.

Scoop the roasted mixture and any juices into a large stock pot with the curry powder, water and cider. Pulse the mixture with an immersion blender until desired texture is achieved. Try to avoid over blending. If it’s like baby food, then you’ve over blended. You might need to add more water if the mixture is too thick. Cook the soup over medium heat for 10 minutes to allow the flavors blend and is the desired temperature to serve. Season with salt and pepper and a small amount of heavy cream to taste. Makes roughly 4 cups of soup. Authors Note: If you don’t own an immersion blender, ladle the vegetables and water into a food processor in two batches. Pulse each batch until smooth and pour it into the stock pot. Continue with the rest of the directions.

*This recipe is from culinarycory.com

Enjoy!

-Maria

Hey Everyone,

Happy holidays and new year! Hope everyone is enjoying themselves and eating lots of food that is good, clean and fair. I mostly wanted to post this entry because of the cool pictures from our Thanksgiving dinner (see above.) Ain't we cute?

Oh! And this is soon, but on January 30, Pat from Pat's Pastured (where we got our bird) is speaking at Food for Thought (Where Alyssa works!!!) in Wakefield. He is going to do a small presentation about his awesome Farm. It takes place at 3pm and is open to everyone. If you have never been to Food for Thought before it is in the heart of Wakefield right next to the Breakfast Nook and across the street from Belmont Market. Make sure you check out their selection too- a ton of local organic goodness!

Aaaaand I just found this on the farm fresh website. A local food forum....and its FREEEEE! http://www.farmfreshri.org/about/localfoodforum.php

It takes place on Tuesday Feb. 8 in Prov and is from 8:30 to 2:30. I know most of us have school but...c'mon....its freee! I might go so contact me via email if you wanna come. You also have to register first.

And one last thing. The Northeast Real Food Challenge Leadership Training in Boston! I went last year and I'm DEF going again. Check it out! http://realfoodchallenge.org/nefoodjustice2011

It's the weekend of feb. 25th and its SO MUCH FUN and its only $25 for housing and food for the entire weekend! If you wanna go TELL ME! I'm driving my big blue van up and 6 other people are welcome to hop in with me! It is a great tool for those wanting to rev up the local food movement.

Anywho I hope you all a gnarly holiday break sledding and skiing and whatnot and see you this semester!

And as always, email us about ANYTHING!

uri@slowfoodusa.org

PEACE

-cate

Hello everyone and happy thanksgiving! We here at SFURI had an eventful and amazing weekend!

On friday we did some window decorating in the union. If you have not gone by to see the window you should go check it out- it is across from the eye place in the union on the ground floor. We had so much fun drawing with paints and thinking up ideas. We drew some piggies, veggies, and of course some snails pulling a sled! Caute!! Here is a pic I took with my phone:

Nice huh?

On saturday, guess what we did? We killed turkeys!!!!! It was VERY interesting to say the least. We got to Pat's Pastured farm on Fort Getty Jamestown around 9am after stopping at the ever delicious and local Village Hearth Bakery. We were joined by our amigos from the outing club who met us there, and then we got to work! Our tasks included, catching the turkeys, hanging them up, killing them, de-feathering them, gutting them, bagging them, and weighing them to be put in the freezer. Everyone there was so knowledgeable and nice. Here is a gross pic:

I will upload more pictures soon- I am old school and use a disposable camera and it takes about a week to develop. Everyone there was so knowledgeable and nice. After a couple of hours of hard work we were done, and in return got a fresh turkey! Alyssa, John and I then stopped by Windmist Farm which is owned by one of my best friend's family to pick up our donation of eggs and cider for our Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Thanks Windmist! Then we hit up the NK farmer's market in our turkey clothes as smelly as ever to pick up some Watson Farm ground beef and some tasty veggies. I also got some Narragansett Creamery Cheese!!! MmmMMM!

Sunday was a day of mucho cocinar! After going to a turkey frolic on Hodgekiss Farm for a little bit in Jamestown, I headed to Alyssa's house to do some good ol' fashioned cooking. Alyssa had been cooking the turkey since 10 am and boy did it look good! Nothing is fresher than a turkey you killed with your own two hands the day before! I had already made some carrot soup from the night before, and Alyssa and I cooked swiss chard and beef stuffing, buttercup squash muffins with dates and walnuts, roasted squash and pumpkin seeds, fresh cranberry sauce, ground beef with leeks and onions, and then we were joined by our friends Slow Mo and Quick Mik to make some butternut squash pie and some squash slices with maple walnuts. Mik also brought a crap load of mashed potatoes donated from Sosnowski Farm. Then it was time to head to Eddy Hall to meet up with everyone else for the dinner.

The dinner was a huge success. Like I said before I'll upload pics when they get developed. Some cool dishes we had were fresh oysters from the Matunuck Oyster Bar (Thanks Mason!), pumpkin fondue, some delish mac and cheese, bruschetta, apple cole slaw and TONS more. I of course brought my boyfriend and roomates, because food is meant to be shared with the people you care most about right? That is what Slow Food is all about! I wish you all a safe and warm and tasty Thanksgiving. I hope you take some time and slow down to appreciate at the beautiful things in life! :)

-Cate