Slow Food Phoenix teamed with the Phoenix Public Market on Saturday to provide healthy $5 meals to customers as part of Slow Food USA’s nationwide $5 Meal Challenge.
Adeline Driscoll, the membership chairperson from Slow Food Phoenix, helped organize the community challenge. Local restaurants nationwide were challenged by Slow Food USA, the parent organization of Slow Food Phoenix, to create a meal that is what Driscoll described as “good, clean and fair.”
“People need to understand where their food is grown,” Driscoll said.
She said good food is simply food that is healthy, adding that clean food is not only food without preservatives but also environmentally responsible.
“Fairness in food comes from fair wages for farmers, as well as accessibility to customers, regardless of income,” Driscoll said.
Natalie Morris, the Public Events Manager at the market, took the challenge a step further by offering ingredients used in Saturday’s meals in the market.
“All the ingredients were either gathered from the local farmer’s market next to us or are marked with $5 Meal Challenge tags in the store,” Morris said.
Jim McMahon, a creator of one the $5 meals offered, is a 51-year-old student at the Art Institute of Phoenix who won a competition to participate in the challenge.
“I gained an appreciation for different cultures while I traveled with the Army to Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany – basically all over,” he said.
McMahon said practicing Meatless Mondays helped in his search for a suitable $5 meal. He studied the Greek, Turkish, and Bulgarian cuisines to create a vegetarian version of musakka, an eggplant-based dish McMahon called a hearty lasagna without the pasta.
“I liked bits and parts of the different musakka dishes, but they all used meat,” he said.
Jason Bordonaro, a creator of another meal served in the challenge, has been volunteering with Slow Food Phoenix for two years. He made a gluten-free quinoa dish for the challenge. Quinoa is an edible seed closely related to spinach.
“When I eat food like this, I feel energized,” Bordonaro said.
Bordonaro said he became interested in eating healthily when he found out he was allergic to gluten.
“I realized how many processed foods I was eating,” he said. “Fast food was affecting me physically, spiritually, mentally, and economically.”
Slow Food began in Italy, when founder Carlo Petrini started a movement to protest the opening of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, Driscoll said. Today, Slow Food is a grassroots organization aimed at encouraging healthful cuisine with thousands of supporters in 150 countries.
Contact the reporter at dmzayas@asu.edu
