Slow Food Orange County BBQ

Are you familiar with the concept of Slow Food? You can read the principles of Slow Food HERE. It is an international group that promotes eating locally, eating healthy, and slowing down to enjoy your life and your food with family & friends. My market-buddy Claudia and her husband also live in Laguna and invited me to a dinner this evening hosted by the Orange County chapter of Slow Food. Claudia's daughter did a great video of the event that you can watch HERE. Here is the entrance sign today:
The dinner was held in a local canyon that is closed to the public; the old cattle loaders are there at the entry, which was about a mile up from the main road; we saw these for years on El Toro Road when it was still part of Irvine Ranch and the cattle still grazed there; no longer:
The entrance to the dinner area:
The area is at the base of Bommer Canyon; from our house we hike along the ridge to the top of the canyon, which is called Bommer Ridge:
I had no idea what to expect this evening, but suddenly in the middle of this tranquil space there were several hundred people, seated on long picnic tables under the magnificent oak trees; there was a group hike at 4pm:
in front of the long tables was a bluegrass band:
And off to the side, a serious BBQ pit with 6 staffers;
chicken, portabella mushrooms and potatoes in the pans:
Tray after tray emerged from the small kitchen, like this, with grilled chicken and arugula; garlic potatoes were also piled on:
on the table:
and salads with watermelon and cucumber and feta:
the band was great!
here from a farther view:

and a barn-style bar:
I donated baskets and net bags to the auction:
some of the baskets got stuffed with wine and linens and were over $350 value:
I took a few pics of the happy winners; I just noticed she has my Moo card in her hand!

so happy to have won, in the day's last light~
Slow Food did all the packaging, I just gave them the baskets:
Between the auction and dinner we had an awesome speaker that I will post on tomorrow. But then we moved on to dessert, organic local strawberries topped with lemon biscuits:
I plan on going to more Slow Food events in coming months. Thank you Claudia and Terry and all of the wonderful people who produced this lovely event.