At a Slow Food Café, diners give thanks

As an early Thanksgiving lunch, Slow Food UW served sweet potato brioche with turkey or with farmers cheese, cranberry relish and spinach and a side of farro with butternut squash and pumpkin seeds. / AFR photo by Carol Guensburg

After months of temptation, Eileen Cumming finally succumbed to the aromas wafting from the basement kitchen where Slow Food’s University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter hosts its weekly Wednesday lunch café

“I meditate on Tuesday nights upstairs. I’ve been smelling the food for a year,” said Cumming, pushing a wisp of salt-and-pepper hair from her face as she spoke. But the scent of roasting turkey being prepared in advance, and a sign advertising an early Thanksgiving repast, finally overcame obstacles of cold weather, heavy traffic and limited daytime parking.

A week before the holiday, Cumming was at a long table with her friend Frank Clover, a professor emeritus of history and classics, leaning over the ruins of a small feast: a trace of garlic mashed potatoes, a shred of stuffing, with half a turkey sandwich set aside for her supper.

“We had all the sides, except we were too late for dessert,” Cumming said.

That was spiced pumpkin pudding with a dollop of sweetened sour cream, the finale in a menu heavy on sustainable and healthful fare. Orange was the color of the day, from the pudding to sweet potato brioche stuffed with turkey or farmers cheese and cranberry relish to the roasted butternut squash tossed with farro and pumpkin seeds. (Bring on those nutritious, cancer-fighting carotinoids.)

Health consciousness — of consumers and of the environment — is a hallmark of Slow Food. The self-described “eco-gastronomic” nonprofit organization and movement began in Italy in 1989 to counter fast food and to sustain local and regional food traditions.

Slow Food USA has about 40 campus chapters. UW-Madison’s chapter, with about 90 members, runs the weekly café, Monday-night family meals and other events, most featuring locally grown or produced foods. The goal is to bring affordable local food to campus, where anyone is welcome. At $4.50, the turkey sandwich was that day’s most expensive offering. The luncheon café drew 210 paying customers, including Cumming.

Student intern Paige Kelly, who oversees bread-making operations for the café, began joining in the café’s Tuesday-afternoon prep sessions almost a year ago. Slow Food, she said, “has changed my identity. It has forced me to think about every meal and every ingredient,” leading her to meet “amazing farmers and producers.”

Kelly also said she has “learned that the value of food extends beyond consuming a meal.”

Good food, communally shared, provides a spiritual experience of its own.

And, for Cumming and others who missed dessert, Slow Food UW shared its pumpkin pudding recipe.