Carlo Petrini’s visit to Sonoma was food fan heaven, apparently in contrast to reports of his relative unwelcome at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Market, which he seems to view as elitist and expensive.
In retrospect, Slow Food International founder Petrini himself seemed to make comparisons, along with translator and Slow Food USA Executive Director Erika Lesser, by referring to Sonoma food deans Bob Cannard, Sr. and Ig Vella, and Bob Cannard, Jr. (Bobby), as “philosophers,” and in the best sense of the word.
“Slow Food” has developed an image itself as being a bit rarified, while in fact, it focuses more on the most humble and pure ways of growing and eating, with the goal of replenishing the earth in a natural cycle of growing, eating, digesting, and, well, manuring, all of which Petrini sees as metaphors for life and sustainability.
Along with guests who paid $75 to have lunch at the Sonoma Community Center to hear father and son Cannard and organizer Gary Edwards, Petrini indulged in Oh-So-Sonoma local foods – so local that much of the meal was picked that Saturday morning.
Guests found rounds of Artisan Bakers’ breads, to be broken in Edwards’ effort to, in his mind, re-introduce diners to sharing a meal. Not even the male contractor at our table could break the bread, so his wife, a chef, cut it with her knife. But the goal was definitely accomplished.
Short Italian-looking bottles of Jacuzzi Family Winery’s Rosso dei Siete Fratelli and Bianco dei Sei Sorelli wines were placed every few seats, and at the door everyone enjoyed nibbles of cheeses from Vella Cheese and Edwards’ Carneros Caves cheese aging facility.
Sonoma chefs John McReynolds, Nick Demarest and Preston Dishman prepared the meal with the help of Elizabeth Skylar, who cooked at Ramekins Sonoma Valley Culinary School and with McReynolds at the renowned Café LaHaye, and just became team leader for Whole Foods Sonoma’s prepared foods.
Many vegetables came from Bobby Cannard’s organic “farms,” scattered between Second Street East, Arnold Drive, and Green String Ranch that he runs with Fred Cline of Cline Cellars, and from The General’s Daughter’s biodynamic garden at Benziger Family Winery and organic farm in Petaluma’s Corona Creek vineyard.
What came out of the kitchen included Dishman’s chilled snap pea soup with mint, followed by two salads that included bread baked and grilled by Andy Saks, Edwards’ Sonoma Valley Olive Oil, vinegar made by Edwards from 100-year-old “mother” reputedly from the late winery founder Samuele Sebastiani, and Vella blue and Mezzo Secco dry Jack cheeses. The second salad was dressed by Dishman with local honey, vinegar, peaches, and blue cheese from Carneros Caves.
Next, guests enjoyed Dishman’s grilled heirloom beets, fava beans, braised kale with cream, and leg of lamb rubbed with garlic, mint, peppers and rosemary and grilled over manzanita by Nick Demarest of Harvest Moon Café. Demarest also made slightly spicy lamb sausage lollipops on sticks that were served and passed around.
After Bobby Cannard and the Cline family were praised for their many sustainable practices, including the use of Don Watson’s Wooly Weeder sheep to gobble-trim vineyards, I asked Edwards if, by any chance, we were dining on Wooly Weeders. When the answer was “yes,” I couldn’t eat another bite. I have really become friends with those little guys, and couldn’t possibly swallow them.
Bob Cannard, Sr. spoke first. Remember, this is a man who worked for years for Ortho, but raised his entire family to grow all of their food sustainably.
Cannard asserted that 70 to 90 percent of all crops in Sonoma were introduced by General Mariano G. Vallejo, and that the first grapefruit in the United States was grown in Sonoma, in fact, across the street from the Sonoma Community Center.
Cannard’s main theme was that we must get back to producing and eating locally, and that every home should have its own chickens. I will be marching into City Hall on Monday to begin pursuit of a “poultry permit,” required to raise chickies within the city limits. Will keep you posted.
Ig Vella, called by Carlo Petrini “a man of few words,” reminisced about when people had a “Victory Garden” during World War II. “We cannot live on imported things. Time has come to go back to what this country is – which damned few people remember!” I assume he meant go back to the basics, growing our own food, and eliminating huge transportation and fuel costs.
Bobby Cannard opened with, “It is absolutely true that which the elders have addressed!” to laughter. We have gone from homegrown to industrial farming. People learned agriculture to clear land of nature, all for people and none for nature. They abandon one piece of land when it gets overused and then move on and use up another piece.
“It will take a hundred years for the soil to heal itself. Our soils have collapsed. It took me thirty years to get my soil back to what it was when the white man came to Sonoma.
“We have to learn how to work with the natural process, planting one sector for people, and an equal section to renew the soil, which will nurture the land and actually stimulate productivity naturally. Productivity will become easier.”
At the luncheon Erika Lesser translated for Carlo Petrini, whose passion thundered in Italian in Room 110, and her translation was expert.
Petrini praised Vella and Cannard as “the youngest people in the room” for their old advanced ideas.
The Slow Food creator said “We are part of nature, and nature is us. We talk about human rights, but we don’t think about nature’s rights.
“We must return to understand the music of life and listen to what the poets say.
“Humans have metabolism. The earth has metabolism. We eat, digest, and transform food. The earth eats, digests, and transforms into food. It is a cycle of energy and material waste. We have to give back our manure. History tells us there is joy in manure – that is where the energy of the earth rests. Eat, digest, give it back to the land.
“Let’s give half to the earth, our Mother. If we love the earth, it will love us for it, because we become part of the music of the earth.”
People who attended Petrini’s presentation at the packed Sebastiani Theatre that same afternoon heard the slightly longer version.
He added, “We are losing biodiversity after 150 years of applying chemical products to our soil, which is actually resulting in infertile land. It’s taking more energy to produce food than we’re getting from that food.
“We have concentration camps of growing food, like for millions of pigs in Italy. A pig pollutes the earth seven times more than a human. Pig pollutants go into the Po River by way of the soil, and then the Po’s water irrigates the land to grow food.
“It’s a destructive cycle. In Lake Victoria in Africa there used to be 3,000 species of fish. Then the World Bank funded big fisheries, which freeze the fish and sell it in Europe. Now there are only 200 species left and small fishers are starving.
“We can’t eat computers. We need a new generation of farmers who will go back to the land and get satisfaction for doing it.
“The culture of food should be a service of society. The revolution is here in Sonoma, where you grow your own food. We are going back to simplicity: love, generosity and conviviality,” which is why Slow Food chapters are called “conviviums.”
“Gastronomy and gastronomes have a bad name. Brillat-Savarin said gastronomy is everything to do with food, which is political economy, local economy. We forgot that lesson.
“Food is a multi-disciplinary science. If we love and understand food, it is the essence of life.
“It used to be that 67 percent of companies were in food production. Now only 2 percent of American and 4 percent of Italian companies produce or grow food.
“I am tired of economies that have nothing to do with nature. Economy means to run a household. ‘Economy’ and ‘ecology’ have the same root. Local economy can save us and the whole planet.
“The culture of food is the base of ecology. We can acquire ecology if we study and respect the metabolism of the earth.
“While feeding at our mother’s breast is the essence of life, we have our own metabolism. It is different from the earth’s but in harmony with it. To be part of the earth is to share it.
“America that invented fast food has come back to Sonoma to learn. Bravo to Sonoma! You are sustaining the earth. It’s time to help and adopt a community in South America or somewhere to learn what you are doing in a new concept of virtuous globalization, based on friendship.”
After Bob Cannard, Sr., Ig Vella and Paul Wirtz of Oak Hill Farm were awarded Slow Food symbols of metal sculpted snails with river rock bodies, crafted by Festa & Co. of Glen Ellen, and each recipient commented.
Cannard: “Locally grown food will change the nation. There are three calories in a strawberry, and it takes 150 calories of energy to transport it from here to New York. Spend one dollar a day on locally grown food, whether your own, on food carts or at farmers’ markets.”
Vella: “If you’re not interested in Slow Food or sustainability, you probably aren’t here. St. Paul told about the person who looks in the mirror and goes away and forgets what he looks like.”
Then Carlo Petrini got around to a couple of the other reasons for his trip: promoting and signing his new book, “Slow Food Nation: Why Our food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair,” and announcing his Slow Food Nation conference next May 1-4 at Fort Mason in San Francisco.
I highly recommend the book, and Readers’ Books in Sonoma has a few signed copies left.

Bon appétit!

Check out “The Kathleen Hill Show” on KSVY 91.3 Sonoma or ksvy.org Mondays 4-5 p.m. and read what’s hot and not in her Epicurious column at sonomasun.com.