Member Spotlight: Katherine Pryor
Slow Food advocate and children’s book author Katherine Pryor has been involved with Slow Food Seattle since 2016. Her newly released book, Bea’s Bees, is about a girl named Beatrix who hatches a plan to inspire her school and community to save the bees from disappearing forever. Thank you, Slow Food member Katherine for your good work in food literacy!
• Name: Katherine Pryor
• Seattle Neighborhood: Magnolia
• Member of Slow Food Since: 2016
SFS: What are your favorite spices?
KP: Is "salt and pepper" too boring?
SFS: How did you first learn about Slow Food?
KP: I fell a little bit in love with Carlo Petrini while studying sustainable food and farming systems in grad school. Here was a person who believed in all the same sustainability criteria I did, but had found a way to make good food fun, sexy, and delicious. I love that Slow Food brings both standards and joy to the table.
SFS: What do you do to embody Slow Food in your daily life (career, home, hobbies, etc)?
KP: When I'm not writing books or articles about food and gardens, I'm trying to cultivate a curious palate in my identical twin toddlers. It's fun introducing them to new and unexpected flavors, but it's also a living sociology experiment on taste and food preference.
SFS: What is your favorite dish or food that has profound meaning for you and why?
KP: As a kid growing up in a Northern California commune and then in married student housing at Berkeley, I ate a lot of weird hippy foods before they were mainstream. Avocado on rice cakes was a staple for me, and it's still my go-to snack of choice. I had to laugh when "avocado toast" became a thing, because that specific food is more weirdly comforting and familiar to me as anything else in the kitchen. Thank you to whoever made that happen!
SFS: What is the last great book or film about food that you read/saw and would recommend to Slow Food members?
KP: I just watched the "Chefs Table" episode about Cristina Martinez and wow--I don't know that I have ever heard such an eloquent spokesperson for so many issues affecting food in the United States right now. She touches on everything from the power of indignous food to the need for immigration reform, all while creating a taste of home for herself and her community.