Reprinted with permission from the October issue of the Ester Republic.

Eating local is a value that is reasonably easy to pursue when you only a household to feed, but I knew that my local food values would be tested when planning to feed 120 guests at my upcoming wedding. My fiancée Alysa and I are marrying on October 13^th of this year. Skeptics say that Slow Food only works for the small, and a congregation of 120 people is by few measures small. So our wedding, it would seem, was an opportunity to prove them wrong.

Fostering a thriving social context for food is at the foundation of slow food movements. Eating brings people together like no other activity, so a set of food values must not merely support the supper table but also this scale of social communion as well. Obviously, large-scale social events did not come into being with the dawn of the agro-industrial food system: the Native American Potlatch is the most proximate example, feeding community members and other guests for three days of celebration and mourning. So it stands to reason that one meal for a wedding reception can be both delicious and socially responsible, without breaking the bank.

The ceremony will take place Grass Valley, California, an area for which we have absolutely no foreknowledge of the local agricultural community. Local food industries are heavily connected, so we knew that a local caterer who could relate to our priorities would be our most important ally in this venture. When we met with our first lead, a family friend who works in the food industry and runs a freelance catering service, you might imagine that his ‘Tyson’ pen made me feel less than optimistic. Hoping for the best, I started by explaining our lifestyle in Alaska and how food factors into our social and political values. I found very quickly that we were not speaking different languages, and when Jack (the caterer) suggested to us that we print up a menu for each table that tells the stories of the food, we knew that he ‘got it.’

Here’s a summary of what’s on that menu. For each item we went as far away as necessary, which was rarely beyond Sacramento, never sacrificing that chain of control and trust – we trust Jack to make safe and appropriate decisions, and he trusts his suppliers to provide safe and appropriate food. The ceremony itself is at a small vineyard that runs entirely on solar power, and we are serving their wine; the lamb is grass-fed, from a co-op of small family ranches that use no hormones or antibiotics; the fish is wild-caught black cod, which is fished under a progressive community-managed quota system; the coffee is Free Trade and Organic, sold by a company that does not operate a chain of cafés but instead supports local coffee houses.

Granted, Northern California is a particularly productive agricultural region, well known for its vineyards, and proximate to the productive fisheries of the Pacific Northwest. The same menu might not have been possible in Phoenix, or Cincinnati, but some other menu that doesn’t compromise the well being of others would have been. It is an incorrect simplification to suggest that Slow Food movements value local food only. Rather, we should make use of what is local first, and be both informed and responsible when we do choose to import foods from afar, never sacrificing that chain of control and trust I described. No coffee is grown in Northern California to my knowledge, but it was not hard to find a trusted local roaster whose social values match our own.

The lesson in this experience is not just that a Slow Food wedding is possible, but that it is practical. In fact, because we went to the local community to help us make our connections and contacts in the first place, it was downright easy. Had we not already a great contact for catering, for instance, one would certainly have been suggested by someone at the local farmer’s market, or at the vineyard, or by the cake artist. Indeed the entire process felt natural – perhaps the way community food systems should work?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 10:34 am and is filed under Food, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.