Board Spotlight: Gerry Warren
Gerry Warren joined Slow Food in 1996. The following year, he founded the Seattle chapter, which was the second Slow Food chapter formed in the United States. For the past 23+ years, he has continuously served in various local, regional and national positions including chapter leader, treasurer, Washington State Regional Governor, and Ark of Taste Committee Chair. Gerry began and sustained the annual tuna canning event for many years. It was so popular, people joined Slow Food just to attend!
An ardent supporter of biodiversity, Gerry successfully nominated many northwest products to the Slow Food Ark of Taste and collaborated with the Makah Nation, Pure Potato, and Dr. Charles Brown to build the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium. Gerry was among the first to receive a Snailblazer award in 2017 for his work in biodiversity.
Gerry is a retired Clinical Professor in Rehabilitation Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Washington Medical School. He was a former president of the Enology Society of the Pacific Northwest and chaired its judging of Northwest wines. He is also founding chair of the Auction of Northwest Wines. He and his wife, Diane, enjoy organic gardening, cooking, and making better wine than they could afford to buy for nearly fifty years.
We will always be grateful to Gerry for his many years of dedicated service to Slow Food, and we look forward to his ongoing involvement on our advisory council and as a life-long champion of good, clean and fair food in Seattle.
Interview with Gerry
SFS: What is your earliest food memory?
GW: At age 4-5 years, I have two memorable taste experiences. The first was after an overnight with my aunt. She served oatmeal at breakfast with genuine maple syrup and butter. The second was in the barn of my grandfather’s farm at milking when the hired man shot me in the face with warm milk directly from the udder.
The worst experience was being required to eat fried liver and onions (a favorite of my father). I quickly learned to cut it up into small enough pieces to swallow whole.
SFS: When did you first join Slow Food?
GW: In 1996 we were planning our biannual trip to Italy and I asked a wine judging colleague who frequented Italy for some travel advice. He recommended we visit his friend Carman in Bra, the city in Piedmonte which, unknown to us at the time, is where Slow Food’s founder Carlo Petrini resides. We had lunch and spent the entire afternoon with Carman (who incidentally was Carlo’s secretary). When we left Bra, we had our first golden snails.
SFS: Why did you join Slow Food? What drew you to the organization?
GW: Our avocation, once affordable, became food and wine and sharing it with friends. In later years, my work was in rehabilitation, primarily helping people with disability improve life function through the use of Assistive Technology. That work is entrepreneurial, “maximizing the potential of their remaining resources”. I found the mantra of Slow Food, and particularly biodiversity, to be similarly entrepreneurial, thus a very rewarding and consuming pursuit.
SFS: What is the most interesting or enjoyable food you’ve eaten?
GW: This is a most difficult question to answer. Consuming a meal can be an organoleptic experience (potentially stimulating every human sense organ), and when it is done in communion with two or many more people, eating together instills bonding and great pleasure in the emotions and memories of participants.
Achieving this type of experience requires participating with an intent to play on common ground using food and wine as a catalyst for sharing. Such events are even more joyful and memorable when they occur spontaneously in new environments. The answer to the question could be: we enjoy all meals with pleasing flavors.
SFS: What was your greatest accomplishment during your board term?
GW: Since founding Slow Food Seattle in 1997, I have served a lot of board terms, some of them as chapter leader, a board member or a committee leader.
Except for a two-year period when Slow Food Puget Sound was formed in order to spawn chapters in the region, I have participated in the SFS board in some capacity. Perhaps the “greatest accomplishment” has been helping to keep Slow Food a presence in Seattle for some 23+ years.
SFS: What was your favorite Slow Food event:
GW: So many… but one that has had the most rewarding outcome, providing such an outstanding product is the eight years of our annual Tuna Canning projects. Through our regional Slow Fish relations, Slow Food Seattle imported the project from Bellingham. Its success was due to the tremendous logistical and product support as well as the preparations and processing tutelage provided by fishers Jeremy Brown and his assistant Nicole.
SFS: How do you live the Slow Food tenets in your daily life?
GW: Diane and I are consistent followers of the Slow Food mantra. We seek to share organoleptic and memorable experiences with all those people we now call friends, who would have been strangers were it not for our connections to Slow Food.
We garden organically, process our harvests and delight in sharing meals with our family and friends. We have great interest in, seek, and often cook a variety of cuisine with people from the region of its origin. One of late-life’s ambitions of visiting all the major wine growing regions of the world will soon be met. It has been very rewarding as we maintain our distant connection with wonderful people who enjoy wine and food with friends.