Slow Books: Discussion of "Climbing the Mango Trees"
2018-08-29 17:30 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Join us for wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a Slow Book discussion of Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India.
Shelley Witten’s home, Cloverdale (address will be sent upon registration)
Please bring an hors d’oeuvre and beverage to share.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com
What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader will change for each meeting.
Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
The enchanting autobiography of the seven-time James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and acclaimed actress who taught America how to cook Indian food.
Whether climbing the mango trees in her grandparents’ orchard in Delhi or picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint and tucked into freshly baked spiced pooris, Madhur Jaffrey has enjoyed a life marked by food. Today these childhood pleasures evoke for her the tastes and textures of growing up. Following Jaffrey from India to Britain, this memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Also included here are recipes for more than 30 delicious dishes from Jaffrey’s childhood.

Slow Books: Discussion of "Yes Chef: A Memoir"
2018-09-17 17:30 - 19:00
Join us for wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a Slow Book discussion of Yes Chef: A Memoir!
Barbara Micallef’s home, Healdsburg (address will be sent upon registration)
Please bring an hors d’oeuvre and beverage to share.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com
What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader will change for each meeting.
Yes Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson and Veronica Chambers
Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. At his Harlem restaurant, Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fulfilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, and bus drivers. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home.

Slow Books: Discussion of Jacques Pepin's "The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen"
2018-10-09 18:00 | Healdsburg
Join us for wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a Slow Book discussion of The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen
Valerie Pallatroni’s home, Healdsburg (address will be sent upon registration)
Please bring an hors d’oeuvre and beverage to share.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com

What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader will change for each meeting.
The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin
In this captivating memoir, the man whom Julia Child has called “the best chef in America” tells the story of his rise from a frightened apprentice in an exacting Old World kitchen to an Emmy Award–winning superstar who taught millions of Americans how to cook and shaped the nation’s tastes in the bargain.
We see young Jacques as a homesick six-year-old boy in war-ravaged France, working on a farm in exchange for food, dodging bombs, and bearing witness as German soldiers capture his father, a fighter in the Resistance. Soon Jacques is caught up in the hurly-burly action of his mother’s café, where he proves a natural. He endures a literal trial by fire and works his way up the ladder in the feudal system of France’s most famous restaurant, finally becoming Charles de Gaulle’s personal chef, watching the world being refashioned from the other side of the kitchen door.
When he comes to America, Jacques immediately falls in with a small group of as-yet-unknown food lovers, including Craig Claiborne, James Beard, and Julia Child, whose adventures redefine American food.
“The Apprentice” is the poignant and sometimes funny tale of a boy’s coming of age. Beyond that, it is the story of America’s culinary awakening and the transformation of food from an afterthought to a national preoccupation.

CANCELLED-An Afternoon with Healdsburg Author, Lia Huber
2018-10-14 15:00
Please join us for a reading and discussion of Nourished: A Memoir of Food, Faith, and Enduring Love (with Recipes).
Lia Huber is a long-time Slow Food enthusiast and past board member of Sonoma County North. She enjoyed 5 minutes of fame when the Press Democrat featured her backyard Bodega Red potatoes during the time the board members were doing the first grow-out.
She has received acclaim for Nourished: A Memoir of Food, Faith, and Enduring Love (with Recipes). The New York Times calls Nourished, “[A] charming foodie’s travel memoir…[Huber] is endearing, engaging company and the reader roots for her success.”
It was a Buzzfeed Best Book of 2017: “Lia Huber’s Nourished is…deeply heartfelt, exploring her journey toward using food to nourish physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”
Lia will read selections from Nourished, followed by a moderated Question and Answer discussion. Books will be available for sale and signing.
Our literary afternoon will include wine and hors d’oeuvres selected from the book’s recipes, including
Garlic-Lime Grilled Shrimp
Melted Summer Squash
Garlicky Swiss Chard Tartines
Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Stuffed Figs
Watermelon Agua Fresca
Tickets are $20 per person from Brown Paper Tickets. Space is limited.
The last date for buying tickets is October 8.
Nourished: A Memoir of Food, Faith, and Enduring Love (with Recipes)
A noted entrepreneur, food writer, and recipe developer serves up an evocative adventure story about her quest to find healing, meaning, and a place at the table.
Hunger comes to us in many forms, writes Lia Huber—we long to be satisfied not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. “Nourished” invites readers on Huber’s world-roaming search to find the necessary ingredients to nurture all three.
She begins her quest with an Anthony Bourdain moment in a Guatemalan village. From there, Huber takes readers to the Greek island of Corfu, where she learns the joys of simple food and the power of unconditional love; to a Costa Rican jungle house, where she finds hope and healing; and finally to California’s wine country, where she steps into the person she was meant to be and discovers her calling to nourish others.

Book Discussion: Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California
2018-11-29 17:30 - 19:00 | Healdsburg
Join us for wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a Slow Book discussion of Jonah Raskin’s Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California
Joyce Ortega’s home, Healdsburg (address will be sent upon registration)
Please bring an hors d’oeuvre and beverage to share.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited.
Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com
What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader will change for each meeting.
Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California by Jonah Raskin
Sooner or later, nearly everyone who cares about wine and food comes to Sonoma”—so begins this lively excursion to a spectacular region that has become known internationally as a locavore’s paradise. Part memoir, part vivid reportage, Field Days chronicles the renaissance in farming organically and eating locally that is unfolding in Northern California.
Jonah Raskin tells of the year he spent on Oak Hill Farm—working the fields, selling produce at farmers’ markets, and following it to restaurants. He also goes behind the scenes at Whole Foods. In this luminous account of his experiences, Raskin introduces a dynamic cast of characters—farmers, chefs, winemakers, farm workers, and environmentalists. They include such luminaries as Warren Weber at Star Route Farm, the oldest certified organic farm in Marin County; Bob Cannard, who has supplied Chez Panisse with vegetables for decades; Sharon Grossi, the owner of the largest organic farm in Sonoma; and Craig Stoll, the founder and executive chef at Delfina in San Francisco. Raskin also offers portraits of renowned historical figures, including Luther Burbank, Jack London, and M.F.K. Fisher.
Field Days is a heartfelt celebration of the farm-to-table movement and its cultural reverberations.

Slow Books: "Coming to My Senses" (event full)
2019-03-26 17:30 | Healdsburg
Join us for wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a Slow Book discussion of Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters.
Lisa Hunter’s home, Healdsburg (address will be sent upon registration)
Please bring an hors d’oeuvre and beverage to share.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to Slow Food Sonoma County North

What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader changes for each meeting
Coming to My Senses: The Making of A Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters
When Alice Waters opened the doors of her “little French restaurant” in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape—Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naiveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers.
In “Coming to My Senses,” Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity.
Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, “Coming to My Senses” is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman’s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food. (Amazon)

Slow Books: Discussion of Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential"
2019-05-21 17:30 - 19:00 | Healdsburg
Join us for a Slow Book discussion of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com. Once we receive your registration, we will send you additional information and directions to the event.
What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader changes for each meeting.
*Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain*
“Kitchen Confidential” reveals what Bourdain calls “twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine.”
Bourdain uses a “take-no-prisoners” attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain’s first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable.
“Kitchen Confidential” will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You’ll beg the chef for more, please. (Amazon)

Slow Books: Discussion of Daniel Stone's "The Food Explorer"
2019-06-24 17:30 - 19:00 | Windsor, CA
Join us for a Slow Book discussion of The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats,” by Daniel Stone.
There is no charge for this event, but space is limited. Please RSVP to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com. Once we receive your registration, we will send you additional information and directions to the event.
What Is Slow Books?
Slow Books is a series of discussions of food-related books written from a variety of perspectives–chef, critic, consumer, producer. Meetings are held every 6 weeks and are open to everyone with an interest in the current book. Books are chosen by the group. Hosting and discussion leader changes for each meeting.
The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats, by Daniel Stone.
David Fairchild was a late-nineteenth-century botanist who traveled the globe and introduced diverse crops such as avocados, mangoes, seedless grapes—and thousands more—to the American plate.
In the nineteenth century, American meals were about subsistence, not enjoyment. But as a new century approached, appetites broadened, and David Fairchild set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater.
Kale from Croatia, mangoes from India, and hops from Bavaria. Peaches from China, avocados from Chile, and pomegranates from Malta. Fairchild’s finds weren’t just limited to food: From Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionized an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening America’s capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. But his culinary ambition came during a formative era, and through him, America transformed into the most diverse food system ever created. (Amazon)

Around the Slow Table, Cookbook Version (full, waitlist only)
2019-09-12 18:00 | Cloverdale
Around the Slow Table, Ruth Reichl, “My Kitchen Year”
Do you like to try new recipes and share the results with a small group of friends? Do you enjoy discussing a dish’s ingredients and process of creating it? If your answer is YES, then join us for dinner based on recipes each guest prepares from My Kitchen Year, by Ruth Reichl.
The location is Shelley and Sam Witten’s home in Cloverdale; their address will be sent upon registration.
For this dinner, Shelley has selected recipes from My Kitchen Year to create a menu. When you register, she will send you the list of recipes. Select which one you’d like to make and let Shelley know. Make enough for 12 people to have a small amount (a recipe that serves about 6 people should be sufficient).
At dinner you’ll get to know each other and discuss your experiences preparing your dish. You may also nominate your own favorite cookbook for another Slow Table meal.
Limited to 12 people (including hosts)
Please also bring a beverage to share.
Please RSVP by September 6 to slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com.

Ruth Reichl, My Kitchen Year
My Kitchen Year follows the change of seasons as Ruth Reichl heals through the simple pleasures of cooking after the abrupt closing of Gourmet magazine. Each dish Reichl prepares for herself–and for her family and friends–represents a life’s passion for food: a blistering ma po tofu that shakes Reichl out of the blues; a decadent grilled cheese sandwich that accompanies a rare sighting in the woods around her home; a rhubarb sundae that signals the arrival of spring. Part cookbook, part personal narrative, part paean to the household gods, My Kitchen Year reveals Reichl’s most treasured recipes, to be shared over and over again with those we love. (Amazon)

Slow Books: "The Omnivore's Dilemma"
2020-02-24 17:30 - 19:00 | Cloverdale
On Monday, February 24, Slow Books will discuss The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. We will meet at 5:30 pm at Denaire Nixon’s home in Cloverdale. RSVP required
What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating. (Amazon)

Slow Books: Clementine in the Kitchen (virtual)
2020-06-29 17:30 - 19:00
When “Clémentine in the Kitchen” first appeared in 1943, it immediately captivated American readers. Written by the artist Samuel Chamberlain under the pen name Phineas Beck, it recounts the gastronomic adventures of the Beck/Chamberlain family during the decade that their beguiling Burgundian cook Clémentine produced wonderful French meals for them, both in France and in their New England home in Marblehead, MA. An appendix contains 125 recipes–classic dishes, regional specialties, and much that is useful for special occasions. But the most compelling are plain and old-fashioned. These are the dishes that identify the Clémentine family style, a style so French, so civilized, so knowing in its use of ingredients that it cannot become impractical or ever go out of date: filets de sole au vin blanc, boeuf à la mode, endives braisées― trophies of la cuisine bourgeoise that never fail to please. (Amazon)

Slow Cookbooks
2022-06-29 16:00 - 18:00
Please join us for the inaugural meeting of Slow Cookbooks!

There is no charge for the meeting, but please sign up now because space is limited. Our first meeting will be in Cloverdale, the address will be sent to you when you register.
Register Here
What Is Slow Cookbooks?
Slow Cookbooks is an informal group which will gather 4 times a year in someone’s home to discuss the book(s) chosen for that meeting and share food each participant prepares from the book. Each meeting will have a different food theme or cookbook, selected by participants, and is open to everyone who wants to explore that focus.
What Is the Theme of the June 29 Meeting?
For our first meeting we would like to meet you and your favorite cookbook. Each of us will introduce our book and share why we love it.
Please prepare a finger food from your book selection (sweet or savory) to share with the group and bring your beverage of choice.

Slow Books-Black, White, and The Grey: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship and a Beloved Restaurant
2022-09-28
Our Slow Books group is currently full, this month we are reading:
Black, White, and The Grey: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship and a Beloved Restaurant by Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano

Slow Cookbooks: Focus on Alice Waters
2022-10-26 16:00 - 18:00 | Cloverdale
Please join us for the next meet-up of Slow Cookbooks!
Register Here
Alice Waters has written numerous cookbooks during the many years since she founded Chez Panisse in 1971. Please join us on October 26 to share food from her recipes, and discuss her philosophy of food and cooking, what she has contributed to the world of food, and your critique of her cookbooks.
To participate, please select a recipe from one of Alice Waters’ books and prepare a snack or “finger food” to share with the group. We will let you know how many people will be attending.
There is no charge for the meeting, but please sign up now because space is limited. The meeting location will be sent to you when you register.
What Is Slow Cookbooks?
Slow Cookbooks is an informal group which will gather 4 times a year in someone’s home to discuss the book(s) chosen for that meeting and share food each participant prepares from the book. Each meeting will have a different food theme or cookbook, selected by participants, and is open to everyone who wants to explore that focus.

Slow Books - Beans: A History by Ken Albala
2022-11-09 17:30 - 19:00
Our Slow Books group is currently full, this month we are reading – Beans: A History by Ken Albala

Meet the Author: Craig McNamara
2023-02-12 13:00 - 15:30 | Relish Culinary Adventures, 14 Matheson St, Healdsburg, CA, 95448, United States
Please come to meet author and farmer Craig McNamara, in conversation with Slow Food leader Michael Dimock, over a family-style lunch.

Slow Food Sonoma County North invites you to lunch and conversation with Craig McNamara, son of President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, now an organic walnut farmer and former president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture. Craig will read from his book and engage in conversation with Michael Dimock, former Chair of Slow Food USA. Their topic will be the healing power of agriculture as reflected in Craig’s recent book Because Our Fathers Lied. Craig will sign books at the event.
Lunch includes appetizer, lasagna, local green salad, Quail and Condor bread, and dessert, accompanied by wines from the region. The starter and dessert will feature Craig’s Sierra Orchard walnuts.
Packages of shelled and cracked walnuts ($12) and extra virgin olive oil ($20/bottle) from Sierra Orchard’s 160-year-old trees will available for purchase at the event. Credit card payments for products will be accepted.
Individual tickets include a copy of Craig’s book; couple tickets include one book per couple. TICKET SALES WILL END ON FEBRUARY 9, 7:00 PM.
$55 for Slow Food Members, $65 for non-members
$85 for Slow Food couples, $95 for non-member couples
Tickets
Craig McNamara is the president and owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified farming operation producing primarily organic walnuts.
By connecting people, policy and agricultural best practices, Craig works to protect the land that feeds us, to promote social justice and support the next generation of farmers.
In that capacity, he serves as the founder of the Center for Land-Based Learning, an innovative program that helps high school students build greater social and human capital in their communities. He also created the California Farm Academy that is training the next generation of California farmers.
He is past President of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture and served on the University of California President’s Advisory Commission on Agriculture and Natural Resources. He has served as a board member of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute, the American Farmland Trust, Roots of Change, and the Public Policy Institute of California. He currently is a board member of the Edible Schoolyard Project.
He is the recipient of several awards including CAFF Climate Smart Farmer of the Year, California Agriculturalist of the Year 2014, James Irving Leadership Award, Leopold Conservation Award, the California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, the UC Davis Award of Distinction and Outstanding Alumnus Award.
He is passionate about sharing his knowledge in sustainable agriculture and leadership with the world around him. Together with his wife and three children he lives in Winters, California.
Michael R. Dimock, Founder and President of Roots of Change (ROC), is a national food movement organizer and thought leader on food and farming systems needed for the 21st Century. He is a regular contributor to the blog sites Civil Eats and Huffington Post, and was featured in feature Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing The World (Fried, 2012).
Michael has focused on agriculture and food since 1989. He was a marketing executive in Europe for agribusiness, farmed organically for three years in Sonoma County, and in 1992 founded Ag Innovations Network, where he began his work on consensus building and strategic planning to create healthier food and agriculture. From 2002 to 2007, he was Chairman of Slow Food USA and a member of Slow Food International’s board of directors.
Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today
Craig McNamara came of age in the political tumult and upheaval of the late 60s. While Craig McNamara would grow up to take part in anti-war demonstrations, his father, Robert McNamara, served as John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and the architect of the Vietnam War. This searching and revealing memoir offers an intimate picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history. Because Our Fathers Lied is more than a family story—it is a story about America.
Before Robert McNamara joined Kennedy’s cabinet, he was an executive who helped turn around Ford Motor Company. Known for his tremendous competence and professionalism, McNamara came to symbolize “the best and the brightest.” Craig, his youngest child and only son, struggled in his father’s shadow. When he ultimately fails his draft board physical, Craig decides to travel by motorcycle across Central and South America, learning more about the art of agriculture and making what he defines as an honest living. By the book’s conclusion, Craig McNamara is farming walnuts in Northern California and coming to terms with his father’s legacy. (Amazon)

Slow Cookbooks: Focus on Lidia Bastianich’s cookbooks.
2023-02-28 16:00 - 18:00
More informaton coming soon.

Meet the Author: Jim DeMartini with Sophia DeMartini
2023-03-26 15:00 - 17:00 | Cloverdale Druids Hall, 111 N. Cloverdale Boulevard, Cloverdale, CA, 95425, United States
Please join us for an afternoon with Cloverdale author–and forager–Jim DeMartini and his illustrator daughter, Sophia! Jim will read from his book, The Cloverdale Forager, and they will discuss the art of foraging and the creation of the book.
Cloverdale Druids Hall, 111 N. Cloverdale Boulevard
Appetizers and wine will be served.
Tickets
$35 for Slow Food members, and $45 for non-members.
The book will be available for purchase (cash, check, credit).

The Cloverdale Forager: Your Guidebook for Gathering, Preparing, and Savoring Wild Food
by Jim DeMartini and Sophia DeMartini

If it’s in the wild – and allowed to be hunted, picked, or collected in Northern California – chances are good that longtime forager, Jim DeMartini, has a story to tell and advice to give. From a lifetime of experience crawling around on all fours looking for the perfect mushrooms, to wading through the surf and capturing succulent surf smelt, to bribing 10-year-olds to gather hard-to-find banana slugs, to fishing in the pristine waters of Clear Lake, California for black bass, DeMartini shares humorous and informative reflections, stories, and recipes.
The Cloverdale Forager provides ideas and recommendations for the best ways to capture wild food, while inviting you to sink your teeth into:
▸ Learning how to identify, capture, and collect the tastiest, most flavorful wild animals, fish, birds, and plants;
▸ Savoring the amazing taste that is unique to food that’s been prepared literally minutes after bagging it;
▸ DeMartini’s extensive repertoire of recipes and food preparation tips;
▸ Forging a deeper connection with nature, the creatures that inhabit it, and the socially conscious foraging community.
From acorns, spring mix, and blackberries, to quail, abalone, and surf smelt, The Cloverdale Forager is the essential guide for both veteran and new foragers alike. Discover the fun, amazing, and exquisite taste experience that only foraging can provide!

Slow Books, Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen, by Yasmin Khan
2023-04-24 18:00 - 19:30 | Cloverdale
Slow Books is currently full, but we are currently reading Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen, by Yasmin Khan.

Slow Cookbooks: Focus on Deborah Madison
2023-05-17 16:00 - 18:00 | Cloverdale
Please join us for the next meet-up of Slow Cookbooks!
Deborah Madison is the author of 14 cookbooks and countless articles on food, cooking, and farming. She is revered for bringing vegetarian cooking to a wide audience, including non-vegetarians, via Greens restaurant in San Francisco and her cookbooks. A bestselling and award-winning author, her first cookbook was The Greens Cookbook.
Please join us on May 17 to share food from her cookbooks, and discuss her philosophy of food and cooking, what she has contributed to the world of food, and your critique of her cookbooks.
To participate, select a recipe from one of Deborah Madison’s books and prepare small bites to share with the group. We will let you know how many people will be attending. Please also bring a beverage.
There is no charge for the meeting, but please sign up now because space is limited.
Register Here
What Is Slow Cookbooks?
Slow Cookbooks is an informal group that will gather 4 times a year in someone’s home to discuss the book(s) chosen for that meeting and share food each participant prepares from the book. Each meeting will have a different food theme or cookbook, selected by participants, and is open to everyone who wants to explore that focus.

Slow Books: California Soul by Tanya Holland
2023-06-05 18:00
The Slow Book group is currently full, but we are reading California Soul by Tanya Holland.

Slow Books: The Cooking Gene
2023-09-05 18:00 - 20:00
Slow Books: The Cooking Gene

We have two places open for the next meeting of Slow Books. Please join us!
Tuesday, September 5, 6-8 pm
Cloverdale
For this meeting, we are reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty.
Our meetings include a discussion of the book and a meal. Everyone makes a dish from a recipe in the book. Just select a dish you’d like to bring and let the group know by email.
There is no charge for the meeting, but please sign up now because there are only two places available.

Register Here

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty.
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.
Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who “owns” it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.
From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.
As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. (Amazon)

©2023 Slow Food Sonoma County North | P.O. Box 1494 | Healdsburg CA | 95448

Slow Books: The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World
2024-02-19 18:00 - 20:00
Although the Slow Books meet-up is currently full, you can join us in reading this month’s selection.
The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World by Amanda Little
In the fascinating story of the sustainable food revolution, an environmental journalist and professor asks the question: Is the future of food looking bleak – or better than ever?
Climate models show that global crop production will decline every decade for the rest of this century due to drought, heat, and flooding. Water supplies are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to grow another 30 percent by midcentury. So how, really, will we feed nine billion people sustainably in the coming decades?
Amanda Little, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an award-winning journalist, spent three years traveling through a dozen countries and as many US states in search of answers to this question.Through her interviews and adventures with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers, Little tells the fascinating story of human innovation and explores new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale.
Throughout her journey, Little finds and shares a deeper understanding of the threats of climate change and encounters a sense of awe and optimism about the lessons of our past and the scope of human ingenuity. (Amazon)

Slow Books: The World Central Kitchen Cookbook by Jose Andres
2024-05-13
Although the Slow Books meet-up is currently full, you can join us in reading this month’s selection.

Slow Books: How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
2024-06-24
Although the Slow Books meet-up is currently full, you can join us in reading this month’s selection.
Written to inspire courage in those daunted by wartime shortages, How to Cook a Wolf continues to rally cooks during times of plenty, reminding them that providing sustenance requires more than putting food on the table.
M. F. K. Fisher knew that the last thing hungry people needed were hints on cutting back and making do. Instead, she gives her readers license to dream, to experiment, to construct adventurous and delicious meals as a bulwark against a dreary, meager present. Her fine prose provides reason in itself to draw our chairs close to the hearth; we can still enjoy her company and her exhortations to celebrate life by eating well.

Slow Books: Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods, by Sarah Lohman
2024-08-05
Slow Books is an ongoing activity of our chapter. The group meets every 6 weeks to discuss a food-related book and enjoy a potluck dinner based on the book. We meet in people’s homes which can usually only accommodate up to 8 people. For this reason, we are usually unable to invite others than our core group of participants.
But we’re learning a lot from the books we’ve read, and thought you might want to enjoy the books as well. We will therefore let you know what we’re reading each meeting through the newsletter and our website.
August Selection
Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods, by Sarah Lohman
In Endangered Eating, culinary historian Sarah Lohman draws inspiration from the Ark of Taste, a list compiled by Slow Food International that catalogues important regional foods. Lohman travels the country learning about the distinct ingredients at risk of being lost. Readers follow Lohman to Hawaii, as she walks alongside farmers to learn the stories behind heirloom sugarcane. In the Navajo Nation, she assists in the traditional butchering of a Navajo Churro ram. Lohman heads to the Upper Midwest, to harvest wild rice; to the Pacific Northwest, to spend a day wild salmon reefnet fishing; to the Gulf Coast, to devour gumbo made thick and green with filé powder; and to the Lowcountry of South Carolina, to taste America’s oldest peanut—long thought to be extinct. Lohman learns from those who love these rare ingredients: shepherds, fishers, and farmers; scientists, historians, and activists. And she tries her hand at raising these crops and preparing these dishes. Each chapter includes two recipes, so readers can be a part of saving these ingredients by purchasing and preparing them.

Animated by stories yet grounded in historical research, Endangered Eating gives readers the tools to support community food organizations and producers that work to preserve local culinary traditions and rare, cherished foods—before it’s too late. (Amazon)

Slow Books: The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia, by Laura Tillman
2024-09-16
Slow Books: The Migrant Chef, The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia

We have 3 places available at our next Slow Books meeting, and invite you to join us for a potluck dinner and discussion of the book, The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia,by Laura Tillman.

Monday, September 16, 6 pm, Cloverdale

There is no charge for the meeting, but we must know who is coming. Please sign up here and we will confirm your attendance: slowfoodsonomacountynorth@gmail.com. The address and details about the meeting will be sent upon confirmation.

The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo Garcia, by Laura Tillman A chef’s gripping quest to reconcile his childhood experiences as a migrant farmworker with the rarefied world of fine dining. Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes. Mexico City–based journalist Laura Tillman spent five years immersively reporting on Lalo’s story: from Máximo’s kitchen to the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, to Lalo’s hometown of San José de las Pilas. What emerges is a moving portrait of Lalo’s struggle to find authenticity in an industry built on the very inequalities that drove his family to leave their home, and of the artistic process as Lalo calls on the experiences of his life to create transcendent cuisine. The Migrant Chef offers an unforgettable window into a family’s border-eclipsing dreams, Mexico’s culinary heritage, and the making of a chef. (Amazon)

Slow Books: The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
2024-10-28 17:30 - 19:00 | Sebastopol
Slow Books is an ongoing activity of our chapter. The group meets every 6 weeks to discuss a food-related book and enjoy a potluck dinner based on the book. We meet in people’s homes which can usually only accommodate up to 8 people. For this reason, we are usually unable to invite others than our core group of participants.
But we’re learning a lot from the books we’ve read, and thought you might want to enjoy the books as well.

OCTOBER SELECTION: The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading, by Dwight Garner

Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this book: breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.

Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family (“Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box”), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more. (Amazon)

Slow Books: Invitation to A Banquet, by Fuchsia Dunlop
2024-12-02 17:30 - 19:30 | Healdsburg
Our Slow Boods group is currently full, but please enjoy reading along with us.
DECEMBER SELECTION: Invitation to A Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, by Fuchsia Dunlop

Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world’s best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication—but today that is beginning to change.

In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it’s the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine.

Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland. (Amazon)

Slow Books: Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir, by Padma Lakshmi
2025-06-23 17:30 - 19:00
Slow Books is an ongoing activity of our chapter. The group meets every 6 weeks to discuss a food-related book and enjoy a potluck dinner based on the book. We meet in people’s homes which can usually only accommodate up to 8 people. For this reason, we are usually unable to invite others than our core group of participants.

But we’re learning a lot from the books we’ve read, and thought you might want to enjoy the books as well.

JUNE SELECTION: Slow Books: Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir, by Padma Lakshmi

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn
Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home—and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.
Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.
Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family—both the ones we are born to and the ones we create—and their enduring legacies. Amazon
