happy hour: hausbar farm, 4/19/2012

Date: Thursday April 19, 2012, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: Hausbar Farm, near 3278 Govalle Ave, Austin, TX 78702
RSVP: karlal@slowfoodaustin.org

Slow Food Austin will host our seasonal third thursday farm Happy Hour at Dorsey Barger and Susan Hausman’s Hausbar Farm. The evening will feature food sourced directly from the farm and prepared by Chef Matt Taylor of BC Tavern, cocktails by our Tipsy Texans, David Alan and Joe Eifler and music by Jerry Hagins and Crew. This should be a beautiful evening! We hope to see you there. A suggested $15 will cover food and drinks. Proceeds from the evening will go to support Slow Food Austin Programming.

slow session: the essentials of refrigerator pickling, 4/11/2012

Date: Wednesday April 11, 2012  6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Chef Sonya Cote’s Urban Kitchen: 2104 Rosewood Avenue, Austin, Texas 78702
(It’s a blue house on top of the hill just past Chicon as you are heading east from downtown.)
Recommendations for Parking:
Parking is available on Northwestern (free street parking)
The Learning Center parking lot on the corner of Rosewood and Northwestern
The Church parking lot on Rosewood and Coleto
Also, there is parking on Coleto St and Alamo – the two street surrounding the hill where the house is located
RSVP: Only 20 seats are available. Please email Chelsea Staires at chelsea@slowfoodaustin.org.

Spring and summer veggies will be coming up soon!  Come to our April Slow Session to learn how to put up some of the beautiful bounty from your home garden, neighborhood local farmers’ market, or farm stand from Kate Payne, author of The Hip Girls’ Guide to Homemaking and Austin’s resident hip homemaker extraordinaire.

In this Slow Session, you’ll learn the basics of refrigerator pickling, a quicker, convenient, less labor intensive way to store your fresh veggies and create delicious snacks, meal accompaniments, and gifts!  This method applies to cucumbers of course, but much more including zucchini, artichokes, eggplant, and peppers.

About Kate Payne:
Kate Payne is an author, grant writer, after-hours poet, occasional painter, committed doodler, drive-by trash collector, big-time procrastinator, tea, toast and jam obsessed Austinite. She collects old typewriters; some of them still work. She studied anthropology and sociology in the Sonoran Desert. She worked on a tomato farm once, and paper-mached gigantic thumbs once, too.

The creator of the Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking website and book, Kate is the go to girl for domestic advice–an expert on hip home tricks, thrift stores, flea markets, and Craigslist, and a frequent consultant for design, decorating, cooking, crafting, and urban living sites–as well as an instructor in canning and pickling classes here in Austin, TX.

Kate Payne
www.hipgirlshome.com
@hipgirls

austrian wine dinner, 3/27/2012

Date: Tuesday, March 27th, 6:30 pm
Location: Springdale Farm, 755 Springdale Road, Austin, Texas
Tickets: 5 Course Seated Dinner $65 a person (includes wine) THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.

Please Join Slow Food Austin for a very special 5 course dinner at Springdale Farm featuring incredible biodynamic wines from Austria paired with a locally sourced Austrian meal by Wolfgang of Fabi & Rosi. This Dinner will not only be delicious, but educational, too. Attendees will enjoy a beautiful meal while learning about the history of the Austrian biodynamic wine movement. This is sure to be a fun, engaging and magical night at Springdale Farm.

A very special Thank you to our Sponsors, Pioneer Wines, Whole Foods Market, Fabi & Rosi and Springdale Farm.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE.

farm tour: indian hills farm, 3/18/2012

Date: Sunday, March 18th, 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Location: Indian Hills Farm, 267 Big Bow, Smithville, Texas  78957
Tickets: $20, purchase online

Slow Food Austin is happy to announce the return of farm tours for the 2012 season. Please join us on an educational tour of Indian Hills Farm, where we will meet Hersh and Karen Kendall, along with their grass-fed herd. All proceeds from your ticket purchase go entirely back to the farmer; guests leave with a package of beef and a selection of seasonal produce– buy now, space is limited. Come out and meet the farmers who are helping to bring you food that is good, clean, and fair!

slow session: slow down with food on wheels: austin’s food trailers, 3/14/2012

Date: Wednesday, March 14th, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: Habitat Suites Conference Room, 500 East Highland Mall Boulevard  Austin, TX 78752
RSVP: Please email Chelsea Staires at chelsea@slowfoodaustin.org

We know you love Austin’s delicious and thought-provoking trailer food movement as much as we do.  So we invite you to join us as Tiffany Harelik, founder of Austin’s wildly popular Gypsy Picnic and the force behind The Trailer Food Diaries (one of Culture Map’s Favorite Austin Food Blogs) and TFD cookbooks, talks with us about what’s keeping the trailer food movement rolling on full force.  This Slow Session will include discussion on:

  • What’s happening with the food trailer phenomenon in Austin and across the US
  • What it takes to open and run a food trailer
  • How trailer food is different than restaurant food
  • How trailer food is actually Slow Food!

About Tiffany Harelik:
The dynamic 4th generation Austinite and Trailer Food guru Tiffany Harelik offers a fun blend of professional enthusiasm and sexy hometown charm that the broader foodie & locavore audiences will find both humorous and interesting. With her Masters’ degree in Health Psychology, and a passion for sustainable health and green living, Tiffany is a strong advocate in eating locally, minimizing negative environmental impact and leaving the camp site a little better place than when she set up the tent. She has been engaged in a number of visionary projects and enjoys yoga, biking and playing with her foster dogs from the Heart of Texas Labrador Rescue. She also loves equestrian sports, cooking for friends, traveling and writing.

Tiffany is inspired by her great-grandfather Haskell Harelik who came to the states as a Russian immigrant and opened a banana food-cart in the early 1900’s. Without speaking a word of English, he pursued the American dream one penny and one banana at a time. This entrepreneurial endeavor ultimately led to opening 5 general stores in central Texas called “Harelik’s. She remains inspired by Haskell, whose ideas and work ethics allowed him to live his dreams while providing for his family and having a smile on his face even during the toughest of times.

Kallari Chocolate Tasting and Educational Presentation, 2/26/2012

Date: Sunday, February 26, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Location: Center 61, 2921 E. 17th Street in East Austin 78702
Tickets:
$10 for Slow Food members; $15 for non-members (Seats are limited)
Proceeds benefit the Kallari Association

Learn about regional flavor profiles of chocolate from cocoa seedlings to chocolate bars:

Participants will savor gourmet chocolates from around the world during the session while developing sensory control of the palate and texture identification. The audience will gain familiarity with the numerous stages in cocoa production and bean preparation from an Amazon cocoa grower. Then, Judy Logback, an experienced chocolatier, will share information about the regional flavors of cocoa beans, the process involved in chocolate making, and the economic impact of the world’s third most important commodity. Chocolate bars processed near the cocoa groves will be matched up against the top rated leading gourmet, fair trade, and organic dark chocolates in a blind tasting that will challenge even experienced chocoholics.

The cacao beans for Kallari Chocolate are a blend of several varietals, with the main flavor attributed to the Cacao Nacional de Arriba bean. In 2004, these rare beans were singled out by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity as a Presidium heirloom varietal.

happy hour: foreign and domestic, 2/16/2012

Date: Thursday, February 16, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: Foreign and Domestic, 306 E.53rd Street, Austin, TX 78751

Our  monthly Happy Hour will be Thursday, February 16th at Foreign & Domestic 5:30-8pm featuring a special charcuterie menu prepared by Chef Ned Elliott and a $5 Slow Drink Menu featuring beer from St. Arnold’s Brewery.

Please dress appropriately for the weather, there is limited indoor seating.

 

*A portion of the proceeds will benefit Slow Food Austin

slow session: the mighty cocoa bean, 2/8/2012

Date: Wednesday, February 8th, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: Gallery Black Lagoon, 4301 A. Guadalupe Street, Austin TX, 78751 (Parking is available in the shared parking lot with The Parlor Pizza Restaurant next door, as well as 70 parking spots below the office building directly behind the gallery.)
RSVP: Please email Chelsea Staires at chelsea@slowfoodaustin.org
See the Event page on Facebook

Spark your romance with chocolate just in time for Valentine’s Day as Austin foodpreneur Tom Pedersen of Austin’s wonderful Cocoa Puro teaches us all about chocolate.  This Slow Session will include:

-A presentation from Tom about how cacao is grown
-Discussion on the look, feel, and taste of the bean itself
-A demonstration of how to make rough chocolate
-Information on where you can find ingredients for chocolate here in Austin

And tastings of white, milk, and dark chocolates as well as Cocoa Puro’s famous Kakawa Cocoa Beans!


About Tom Pedersen:

I have an art/music/writing background. I’m self trained in the culinary world. I always wanted my own business and had a passion for great food. I wondered what made chocolate tick, learned it was the bean, got some from the President of a Venezuelan chocolate company, and experimented until I created Kakawa Cocoa Beans. I tried them out on friends then brought them to the downtown Austin farmers’ market and sold out our first day. They were selected for the Saveur 100, editors’ favorites from around the world, and received other local and national praise. That encouraged us to build a small family artisan business, concentrating on creative products from fine flavor cocoa beans.

Cocoa Puro
Kakawa Cocoa Beans
Pure Whole Bean Chocolate
www.CocoaPuro.com

happy hour: contigo austin, 1/19/2012

Date: Thursday, January 19th 2012, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: Contigo Austin, 2027 Anchor Ln Austin, Texas 78723
RSVP here

Slow Food Austin’s monthly Happy Hour will be Thursday, January 19th at Contigo from 5:30 pm until 8:00 pm featuring a very special menu prepared by Chef Andrew Wiseheart and a $5 Slow Drink Menu featuring El Tesoro Tequila and (512) Brewing Company.

Slow Food Happy Hour Menu:
Crispy Pig skins – Richardson Farm
Chicken Wings w/ wing sauce, shaft blue cheese – Dewberry Hills
Chicken Terrine – Dewberry Hills
Meatballs w/ Fresh Pasta, Arugula – Richardson Farm, Windy Bar
Fried Rabbit liver w/ Tangeriene and Jalapeno marmalade – Countryside Farm

Please dress appropriately, there is limited indoor seating.

RSVP here.

*A portion of the proceeds will benefit Slow Food Austin