Attending a Slow Food event

The Slow Food movement started in Italy a few decades ago and since I had read an ESL Reader on the topic (published by Cengage/National Geographic), I was delighted to discover that our host in Benevento is the leader of the Slow Food in his area of Italy. He is a professor, but said his passion was the Slow Food movement. On the day we arrived he told us he and his wife were going to an event that evening on making traditional Italian bread. He invited us to attend and we drove to the event with his wife.

It was held in a Caritas lot next to a hospital. They told me that the space is used for indigent families to garden and have community meetings (or that is at least what I understood in our mix of basic English and Italian).

In the small building they were making what someone said to be “biscuits.” These small donut-shaped items were made with yeast dough, so it took some time. But those eating them said they were flaky and delicious.

We seemed to have come in the middle of this part of the event (I don’t know how many total hours some of the people had been there but I estimate we were there 3-4 hours and we missed the first part).

Then we moved outside–which is where I saw the traditional ovens. By that time, they were baking breads.

Outside, we met three refugees that had been sponsored by the church of our hosts.Two were from Pakistan (one missing from the photo) and one from Mali. They were training for work in pizzerias. They had all been in Italy less than six months. The woman on the right is our host for our rented flat.

The one young man in the plaid shirt (from Pakistan) had a good command of basic English and so we got most of our information from him. He seemed to also be able to communicate in basic Italian. He said he had finished his first course in Italian and was starting his second.

The young men (and the others participating in the event) had made bread, which finally came out of the ovens.)

They seem proud of their products, don’t they? It had been a couple of hours and I thought the event was over, ma no (but no), they had to yet make the pizza.

Finally, we were asked to go back inside the small building to eat and we were served piazza (which, of course I couldn’t eat), some traditionally made cheese (also not eaten by me), and the finally some traditional sausage, which, I will say I ate with gusto (after 4 hours of no dinner) and which I enjoyed very much.

What a fun evening.