Anchors Aweigh!

We're afloat! With a packed house of 172 people at Event Santa Cruz, Liz Birnbaum stood up on a little soap box of a stage and launched this project, The Curated Feast. You can read the full story of the PopUp Night Event here, but below are some curated selections:

The venue was the commercial kitchen of An Epicurious Lifetstyle. The evening featured eight pop-up entrepreneurs, each telling their unique heartwarming story of how and why they became involved in food. Standing behind a giant metal shelving unit filled with mixing spoons and spatulas, boxes of cane sugar, and giant bottles of olive oil, An Epicurious Lifestyle owners, Adrienne and Marci, welcomed everyone to the event and their kitchen.  The women set the tone for the night, “You come into our space as friends and you leave as family.” Each of the speakers had a similar sentiment: Food is what brings us together. It’s what builds community, and this seems especially true of pop-ups.

Slow Food: Liz Birnbaum

Unlike the other speakers, Liz is not a chef, but a culinary historian and event producer. She has tied her love of food history with her event experience to create a new project called The Curated Feast. Through this project she links food with deeper cultural stories. Her food history research has been focused locally through the Santa Cruz Heritage Food Project, and globally through her experiences with Slow Food. By launching The Curated Feast in front of our eyes, she hopes to tell the generations of stories behind food through special meals where each ingredient is hand-selected to tell tantalizing stories of spice exploration, trade routes, and more.

Learn more about your food and follow her work here: http://thecuratedfeast.com