Welcome
Our Philosophy
It is called Slow Food. It is the opposite of fast food. Or, as a USA Today article put it, "Slow Food aims to be everything that fast food is not." The term originated with Italian Carlo Petrini who protested the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Rome in 1986.
The Well Traveled Fork believes in the mission of Slow Food — good, clean and fair food for everyone. It means consuming beef from cows that are grass fed and antibiotic free, chickens raised without hormones and are allowed to hunt and peck freely, and vegetables and fruits that are grown without chemical pesticides. It also means eating seasonal fruits and vegetables, which helps limit your carbon footprint. By eating locally grown products you help the environment by reducing energy consumption; it takes 435 fossil fuel calories to fly a five-calorie strawberry from California to New York.
You also support family farms when you buy local and help sustain the farmland for future generations. And then, of course, you eat healthier, tastier food. It's a win-win-win!
Most of us are now several generations removed from rural farm living. A majority of Americans today have grown up in cities and buy their food from supermarkets. A great many of us are completely clueless about where food comes from and how it is grown or processed. Choosing locally grown food that is seasonal and sustainable supports your community and your body.
When you take the Farm and Ranch Tour you will visit Central Oregon farmers and ranchers and learn about what it takes to run a successful operation in our climate-challenged growing season. In Central Oregon, farmers face overnight temperature that can drop below freezing even during the summer months. So it's all the more amazing that we have a thriving community of growers committed to providing alternatives to food produced by large scale agribusiness.
One of Chef Bette's favorite acronyms is FLOSS which just about sums up her philosophy when it comes to food – Fresh, Local, Organic, Seasonal and Sustainable. If we all tried to eat this way, the world and we would be much better for it.
The Well Traveled Fork is a member of Slow Food High Desert, one of the 250 chapters of Slow Food USA whose vision is: A world in which all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it, and good for the planet.