June - Strawberries!!

We're having a Strawberry Celebration! Slow Food Maumee Valley is teaming up with SFMV Members Fernando and Martha Mora, owners of Johnston Fruit Farms in Swanton, for a family-friendly event. Taste strawberries and learn about the farm: its history and the ideas that Fernando and Martha have for its future.

Saturday June 13th
4-6 PM
Johnston's Fruit Farm
1 mile west of Swanton on Airport Highway

July - Mindful Eating with the Toledo Zen Center

Slow Food Maumee Valley in conjunction with the Toledo Zen Center presents a workshop on Oriyoki: the art of Zen eating. Oriyoki is the liturgical sharing of a meal in a Zen monastery. Oriyoki which translates as 'that which contains just enough' is a transformative practice of mindful eating. During this day long workshop we will practice traditional Zen meditation. We will also watch a film about a Zen Priest who was head cook at the San Francisco Zen Center. After a lunch break we will return to hear a talk on Oriyoki, then prepare and eat food according to this ancient and venerable tradition.
This will be a wonderful opportunity for us to enter deeply into the practice of gratitude and satisfaction as we taste, once again, for the first time.
July 18 9-5
Toledo Zen Center
6537 Angola Rd
Holland OH
toledozen.org

Please bring:
Your favorite cutting knife and board
3 nesting bowls about the size of a soup bowl
4 large cloth napkins
a spoon
a mug
a small spatula

Cost:
All Day $55 nonmembers
$50 members
Half Day $30 nonmembers
$25 members

Please RSVP before July 16

Anyone Up For A Field Trip? Revolver!

On Thursday, June 25th, Slow Food Maumee Valley members and friends will be traveling to the much-celebrated Revolver Restaurant in Findlay where chef/owner Mike Bulkowski will prepare a seasonal dinner and talk with us about how he partners with local farmers to produce great food.

The price for this special evening will be $80 for SFMV members, $100 for non-members, plus wine if you care to order it. Please contact us: slowfoodmaumeevalley@gmail.com if you are interested in reserving a seat at this very special event. Menu details will be available as the evening approaches.

Chocolate From Bean to Bar

The Mansion View Inn was a beautiful setting for last night's chocolate event. Some of Toledo's savviest food purveyors were on hand - Flying Rhino, Downtown Latte, Phonenix Earth Food Co-op and the Original Sub Shop were all represented - to learn about Ecuador's Kallari Chocolate Co-operative, where indigenous families harvest, ferment, and roast cacao beans in the foothills of the Andes, then make fabulous organic dark chocolate bars at nearby factories in the cooler highlands.

We blind-tasted 10 dark chocolates, and the Kallari bars were a clear favorite. Look for them now at Whole Foods, perhaps soon in Toledo!

Chocolate Event Details Set

SFMV Members and Friends are invited to the Mansion View Inn, 2035 Collingwood, at 7 PM on Tuesday March 3rd to meet Enrique Cerda, a member of the Kallari Association in Ecuador, whose Kallari Chocolate bars were recently launched at Whole Foods stores in the U.S. Cerda will be traveling with a translator, Rebecca Roebber, an intern from the University of Oregon

The Kallari Association is a cooperative of over 850 Quichua families in Napo Province in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Recognizing that most of the profit is to be made from sales of chocolate bars, not the cacao beans, the Quichua people created a cooperative where they would have more control over revenues. The Kallari Association, with its self-reliant governance and innovative economic model, is nothing short of revolutionary in the global chocolate industry. Cacao production provides the Quichua people with a viable income so they have the economic resources to resist logging their forests or succumb to the short-term riches offered by petroleum extraction. A full 100 percent of profits from sales of the chocolate bars are returned to the Kallari Association.

Chocolate Can Be Good, Clean And Fair - Learn How

On Tuesday March 3rd, SFMV will host Kallari chocolatier Enrique Cerda and intern Rebecca Roebbler, who will be visiting Toledo to share the techniques of organic cacao production and artesanal chocolate making.

The talk and tasting will be held at 7 PM at a location to be announced. The cost will be $10 per member, $20 for non-members.

Participants will also have the opportunity to sample various chocolates in a blind tasting, including several gourmet, organic, fair trade, and single origin dark chocolates.

The Kallari Association is the first indigenous organization of cacao growers to receive 100% of the proftis from their own line of chocolate bars.

Kallari cacao growers transport their cacao harvest to a nearby factory in Quito Ecuador. The Amazon beans are processed when they are still fresh, only weeks after the harvest. Kallari is one of the few chocolate bars made without the typical Methyl Bromide fumigation of cacao beans prior to export, weeks spent in airtight shipping containers and months/years spent in storage as brokers await price hikes in cacao or chocolate makers churn out bars.

Healthy Living Series

"Skyrocketing health care costs send the message that things need to change."
SFMV Members Lisa Bowe and Kris Johnson have lots of suggestions for those who want to change the way they eat. Their Healthy Living Series at Grace Lutheran Church begins on January 19th.