Several years ago, when Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, visited the San Francisco chapter of his international organization, he gave them this advice:

"Slow down. Pause and savor. Enjoy the bounty of the Earth. Wrap yourself around family, friends and your culinary heritage, and know the source of your food. Plant Utopia and harvest a new reality."

Slow Food, in a simplified definition, is exactly the opposite of fast food. The concept began nearly 25 years ago when a McDonald's restaurant opened on the Spanish Steps in Rome. Petrini, an Italian journalist, saw this event as an invasion and a threat to his heritage and culture. He organized a protest on the Spanish Steps. The idea grew, and a few years later, he founded Slow Food, now an international organization that supports the preservation of culinary heritage, ecological awareness and commitment to sustainable agriculture. The movement became viral, and today, members number more than 80,000 in 130 countries.

The Slow Food movement arrived in Sacramento in 2002 when Kira O'Donnell, then a communications director of the department of viticulture at the University of California, Davis, established a local chapter.

Chapters in Slow Food are called convivia, which means to live with, hence to feast with. There are 170 convivia in the United States, including the Sacramento chapter, which now has about 150 members.

Members of Slow Food include those who are enthusiastic about preserving the heritage foods identified by Slow Food as endangered, including things such as heirloom tomatoes, heritage turkeys, cheese made by Old World methods or wines made from heritage grapes. The Sacramento members, however, are more concerned about eating locally and seasonally.

A devotion to freshness

Most grammar-school kids who brown-bag their lunch take a bologna or PB&J sandwich. When James Triche, now 13, was in grammar school, his lunch was often pasta with homemade pesto. His parents are foodies. But not just foodies: Dr. Maga Jackson-Triche and David Triche are passionate about cooking from scratch and using fresh ingredients purchased at specialty stores and farmers markets.

Johnnie Beer, an attorney who lives in east Sacramento, spent Super Bowl Sunday seeding pomegranates while he watched the game. For Beer and his wife, Melinda, dinner is an event. They spend hours planning menus and wines and shopping for ingredients. Their backyard garden is packed with tomatillos, tomatoes and peppers.

For a living, Charity Kenyon, an attorney who lives in Galt, makes righteous prosecutors eat humble pie. At home, she and her husband, Mike Eaton, spend most of their time tending their 7-acre property. Six years ago, they moved from the Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento so they would have the space to grow all their own fruits and vegetables. Their expansive gardens provide ample produce to keep them, their friends and many neighbors well supplied.

These three families have, in their own way, embraced Petrini's Slow Food mantra.

"For me, preparing food, planning a menu, gathering my friends around the table, serving fresh, seasonal and locally produced food, that is what Slow Food is all about," says Johnnie Beer. "It's about pausing to experience the flavors and appreciate the effort that the farmer has made to grow the food and how it was prepared."

"It's definitely about eating seasonally but also cooking from scratch rather than packages," says David Triche, a teacher at Luther Burbank High School.

The Triche family relocated to Sacramento after losing their home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Their midtown home doesn't have space for a vegetable garden, so the family shops at farmers markets for locally grown produce. Other shopping trips include visits to ethnic markets.

"Here in Sacramento, we are very blessed to have so many farmers markets where we can meet the farmers, learn where the food was grown or produced. It's important to preserve and support that resource," Triche says.

Learn more about membership in Slow Food and to find a convivium near you, visit the Web site at www.slowfoodusa.org. Call The Bee's Gwen Schoen, (916) 321-1146.