I do, in fact, think that the slow food movement can make people feel guilty about making a “wrong” choice. For example, in another comment, read Jessie’s lament of using canned food, and Heidi’s consoling her.

Read the wikipedia article I mentioned. The whole thing started with a simple dish of pasta, because pasta is a simple, fast, cheap, local food! Do you think Petrini grew, threshed & milled the wheat, raised the chickens for the eggs, and drew the water from his own spring to make the pasta? That’s how some slow food people insist it must be done — those who’ve taken the slow food thing a little too far for the general public to manage. Either you make it yourself from scratch, or you buy it from someone local who made it by hand. You can get there, but you have to use your own time or your money….sometimes both.

What I’m saying in this article is that you can make some compromises and still follow the spirit of the Slow Food Movement. If you don’t have the time, take some shortcuts. If you don’t have the money, prepare food at home, in advance, using the best ingredients you can afford, based on your own personal grocery budget. Don’t spend your rent money on heirloom veggies!

For the health of the planet, we’re supposed to consider food miles, right? Consider the oxymoron of how most gourmet foods play into this equation. Are you roasting a piece of (imported) sustainably caught wild barramundi for your dinner? Drizzling (imported) Italian olive oil over your salad? Are you sprinkling it with (imported) Celtic sea salt? Will you wash it all down with an (imported) Australian chardonnay? Even if those things are all sustainably produced in their local environments, buying that handful of veggies from the farmer’s market doesn’t undo the carbon footprint.

There is pleasure in excellent, fresh, local food… that’s why I’m growing a garden! If you can’t manage a garden, but you’re able to support a farmer’s market vendor, that’s great, too. Those fancy araucana* or ameraucana eggs are just costly. You’re paying for a colored shell. I you can afford that, more power to you… but they have the same* nutrition as the ones that (OMG FINALLY!) came from my 9 little chickens, provided those fancy birds were also raised on a free-range organic diet.

I’m hoping to encourage people to follow the original spirit of the slow food movement. Go home and make a simple dish of pasta in 12 minutes, instead of going to the drive thru.

I didn’t intend that this reply came out to be another whole blog post but I hope I clarified my point to @Kimberly and anyone else who might have misunderstood.

*http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PS013 scroll down to “The Egg: The Cholesterol Myth”

Carla, very good point, and it is unfortunate. I’m glad you enjoyed Chef JoAnna’s message in the post, and thank you for your visit.

There’s no reason at all to feel guilty about taking a “shortcut” by using prepared/canned products. Understand what a difference you’re making in your life when you chose between brands of canned beans, instead of of choosing between a big mac or a whopper.