The Slow Money gathering aims to fix the economy from the ground up, one small food enterprise at a time. At a time when the big business in town is a struggling stock market, disgraced investment bankers, and a market overrun with poisonous factory-farm produce – the Slow Money Gathering is bringing to bear a new kind of investing. They call it natural capital, farmer capital, social capital, local capital, nurture capital & cheese capital (why not?).
In the last two years, the gathering has hosted more than 1000 people form 24 states, and more than $4.25 million dollars have been invested in 16 of the presenting small food enterprises. The event has also given rise to local chapters, who have begun investing around the country.
Tagged in: vote with your dollar , The Great Turning , regenerative agriculture , movement , money , invitation , fundraising , environmentally sustainable , entrepeneur , eco-friendly , difference , creating an opening , consiousness , conscious products , Choosing , Anti-GMO , abundance
My name is Andrew, I’m a brand new employee at Cafe Gratitude’s central office, and I want to share some inspiration with you. What inspires me is compassionate food--food that’s kind to the soil it’s planted in, the people who prepare it, and the hungry bodies that make it part of them. This inspiration has lead me to work with Cafe Gratitude, and also with another organization re-imagining good food, and one I’ll talk about today: the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, or CoFED, which empowers college students to launch food cooperatives.
Sometimes the simplest, smallest and seemingly most tangential recipes are the most important. A dish composed of many ingredients might need just a dash, splash or hint of a spice, seasoning or topping to pull it all together and make it delicious. Just think of what salt and pepper can do...or Parmesan cheese! 
Last Wednesday was a very eventful day at Café Gratitude’s central office. A few long-term computer issues came to a head, moved past the point of unworkable, and becoming what can only be called “Breakdowns.”
This year, the California Label GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Campaign is committed to proposing legislation to ensure that all GMO foods sold are labelled as containing GMOs. Currently, food distributors are not required to label their food as containing GMOs. Cafe Gratitude is a stand for the labeling and regulation of GMOs, the use of which pose untold threats to the health of our community and planet.
This spicy soup is as delicious as it is satisfying! Try it as an entree with some raw bread, or a salad.
This Saturday, an exciting new film, Within Reach, enjoys its world premiere in Berkeley. The film chronicles a young couple’s 19-month bicycle journey across the U.S. in their search for what they call “sustainable communities.” They visited 100 communities that seek to live sustainably, exploring not only how these communities interact with the Earth, but also how they practice commerce, how they raise children, and how they build a cohesive social structure. The communities visited are diverse: they range from an electricity-free “radically simplistic” farmstead in Missouri, to a household of Buddhists in Wisconsin (who flourish while spending only $40 each per month on food), to the urban, creative Berkeley Student Housing Co-ops right in our backyard. Not all visits were harmonious—on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, the filmmakers were chased out of a secluded squatter community by an unstable man—but overall, the directors Ryan and Mandy discovered that living in loving harmony was a common thread amongst these communities, which not only brought them together but also sustains them.