Terra Madre/Salone del Gusto

To start our week long break, we traveled to Torino for the bi-annual food festival, Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto.   It is sponsored by Slow Food, an international movement that promotes Good, Clean and Fair food.  This event was a foodies dream come true; there were over 1,500 food vendors from all over the world, representing more than 150 countries. There were also numerous free conferences with topics ranging from edible educations to pasta making, to seed freedom. Some big names in the food world were there including Alice Waters, Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini, and I got to see each of them speak.  We spent Thursday-Sunday at the event... I am pretty sure I spent over 40 hours there and didn't even see everything it had to offer.  The event was held in the old Fiat factory as well as the olympic speed-skating arena.

I got to try a variety of foods and drinks ranging from Palm Tree Beer to Rose Gelato to Reindeer Meat from Sweden (yes, Rudolph).   Almost every booth had some sort of sample with their country or regions signature food.   There was one room devoted to international foods and another two rooms solely for Italy.  The Italy room had enough meat, cheese and wine to last a life time.

On Saturday night I went to a pizza making workshop put on by the men of Naples.  Napoli was the birthplace of pizza. I tried five different pizzas and got the secret crust recipe to bring home....

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

homemade tagliatelle pasta!

palm tree beer from Brazil....apparently high in antioxidants

eating an Arancini- fried rice ball stuffed with peas, carrots and meat

Enoteca- wine tasting room.. over 2000 wines from Italy!

pizza with broccoli rabe, sausage and mozzarella di bufala 

Overall the weekend was very inspirational and gave me hope that this food movement is about to take over the world.  

Post by Christina Wolf, Recreation Management & Policy and EcoGastronomy Dual Major, UNH