Slow Food Recommends: Ideas for One More Slow Weekend
17 Apr 2020

We all have probably lost count of how many weekends we have spent at our homes. While in some countries the coronavirus crisis is slowly getting under control, and more and more governments start discussing the steps of deconfinement, it is vital not to rush. It has already become a tradition of ours to suggest some good movies to watch, books to read, or podcasts to listen – anything that can help you to stay home and stay slow and calm in these challenging times of uncertainty.
Here you have our top picks for another slow weekend at home.
BOOKS
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Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science by Rob Wallace
Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it to places more quickly. However, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to heavily industrialized food systems. Agribusiness has known for decades that packing thousands of birds or livestock together results in a monoculture that selects for such diseases as Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants. But market economics doesn’t punish the companies for growing Big Flu – it punishes animals, the environment, consumers, and contract farmers. In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.
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The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber
In his visionary New York Times–bestselling book, chef Dan Barber offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste good, too. Looking at the detrimental cooking of our past, and the misguided dining of our present, Barber points to a future “third plate”: a new form of American eating where good farming and good food intersect. Drawing on the wisdom and experience of chefs, farmers and seed breeders around the world, Barber proposes a new definition for ethical and delicious eating.
MOVIES
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Alaska: At the Edge of the Earth, produced by Aljazeera
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a protected region in Alaska’s far north, is one of the world’s last few unspoiled environments – a remarkable wilderness that is home to endangered polar bears, grey wolves, and wild caribou. But now the Trump administration is pressing ahead with plans to let oil and gas companies drill in the refuge. Inevitably, the proposals have attracted fierce opposition from conservationists, but they are also dividing the area’s remote Indigenous communities – between those who want jobs and income from the energy industry and those who want to preserve a unique habitat and way of life.
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Salt Fat Acid Heat, documentary series available on Netflix
If you master four elements – salt, fat, acid and heat, you master the kitchen. Based on Samin Nosrat’s best-selling book, the documentary series guides you to the basic elements of good cooking. Samin travels to home kitchens of Italy, the southern islands of Japan, the heat of the Yucatán and back to Berkeley’s Chez Panisse to demystify and explore the central principles of what makes food delicious and how each of us can easily incorporate those elements into every dish.
PODCASTS
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The Food Chain, produced by the BBC

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate. Check out episodes about people providing food during the Coronavirus pandemic, or other stories such as why fried chicken became the most popular fast food meat or find an answer to the question if candies will be the next in the firing line.
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Chowhound’s “Table Talk”
The show’s host Hana Asbrink welcomes some of the most influential names in the culinary world for intimate conversations about how they turned a passion for food into a career.
OTHERS
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Cooking Lessons with Borough Market

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, London’s most renowned produce market came up with an idea to strengthen its ties with people who used to come to the market to get their groceries or eat there. To help continue the interactivity that the market’s customers love, it has decided to create a dedicated community space on Facebook called Borough Market Community to keep people connected. The market is sharing recipes, articles, videos, and tips, and it is also streaming online cookery classes on Instagram Live.
You can check out Borough Market’s Instagram page here and Facebook page here.
Enjoy your weekend. Stay slow, stay home!
#SlowFoodSolidarity
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