Together at the Table through the Seasons
SLUGS (Sensuous Living Under Glittering Stars)
“Gerardo Gonzalez needs to come here and cook” is what dear old friend curator Stuart Comer said to me - a few times - on his first visit to Salmon Creek in 2015 during my early months on the land. I pay attention when Stuart offers a name, he is the great connector of peoples, and so many long artist friendships have been born through his introductions over the years. Later in 2018 when I was in Mexico City installing a show I finally had the chance to meet Gerardo in person. And then when we were both living in Los Angeles in 2023 we started meeting for doggie walks around the reservoir, talking about the possibilities for the future of food at SCF. Since his first visit to the land in early 2024 he has been cooking up something quite special and precious at the very heart of Salmon Creek Farm, a new food program called SLUGS (acronym changing daily) Slow Living Unleashes Great Secrets. Food for Gerardo is about taking care, the pleasures of flavors, a connection to the land and to the seasons, but most importantly the way a shared meal can foster community the way nothing else can. He has been bringing in a rotating cast of artist-chef lovelies who have been cooking through the seasons and feeding our rotating cast of community with memorable daily meals. And as Salmon Creek Arts takes over year round programming this year, food is at the heart, as the most fundamental form of human culture. If you want to taste, learn, and visit for yourself, there are still a few spots left in our first cooking school programs he will be leading this summer and fall: Seasonal Cooking Arts. ~ Fritz Haeg
I’m writing this as I return from our hosting our first Salmon Creek Farm meals off-the-land, a daytime soup social followed by a dinner benefiting Salmon Creek Arts at TIWA in New York City. The energy and philosophy of SLUGS found the perfect ambassadors: communal dining, rooted in care, hospitality, and the land. That night, every plate carried the Mendocino coast—seaweed, nettle seeds, flowers, pine pollen—transformed by friends of the soil. The dinner began in the earth and ended in a room full of folks now bound by shared flavors, stories, and taste. It was a reminder that food can bridge memory and geography through its simple capacity to gather.
Over a year ago, I began this journey at SCF. Month after month, meal after meal, the vision took shape in shared spaces and shared dishes. I’m so grateful for SCF, Fritz and all he’s built—a garden, a grove, a philosophy. In my time here, I’ve fed hundreds of people, I’m sure. Too many dishes to recall, too many dinners to count. But I don’t mark them by name, event, or, even, guest list. I mark them by season: the chanterelles rising after the rain, the bolting mustards, the first waves of stone fruits, berries, apples… the tides receding with the moon to uncover a forest of sleeping seaweed. These moments, held in time, became the way I remember dishes.
When we planned the dinner in New York, it was clear what mattered most: return to the land. In Mendocino, I rarely start with a recipe. I begin with the farm—what the orchard and old trees have born, what the garden is giving, what the forest whispers. That process—listening to the place—guided our menu in New York. We collaborated with friends, our guest chefs Andy Baraghani, DeVonn Francis, and LJ Almedras, all who have spent time at Salmon Creek. A wonderful team of volunteers joined us, along with a suitcase full of ingredients—foraged, sourced, and traded with neighbors and community members, including people from the original commune and others from nearby towns. We exchanged stories, ingredients, and labor. That exchange—this collaborative weaving of land-based narratives—is exactly where my love begins. An economy of reciprocity in its truest form.
A month passed since those meals and I was so lucky to return back to the land, excited for what's up ahead.
SLUGS isn’t a restaurant, and cooking here isn’t a process to refine; it’s a vessel for presence, a celebration of generational gardens and overlooked folds of wilderness. The culinary program is designed to honor those who came before—the original Pomo peoples of the Northern California coast, the communards who planted the orchard, turned over the soil, and reshaped the landscape. We honor their work by tending the seedlings, gathering fruits, using branches and wood, cooking scraps into something sustaining, by preserving the abundance for future use. The kitchen here is many things: studio, school, church, library, party—and most of all, a gathering place.
There’s a reflective solitude in harvesting leaves in the Mendocino fog, sorting beans at Dawn, the cabin and at the start of the day, or building a fire for warmth or for cooking. But as soon as the first spoonful hits the plate and the table is set, the kitchen becomes social. I’ve sat alongside farmhands, artists, builders, chefs, and wanderers—listening to what drew them here, what they hoped to find. That conversation, the convivial nourishment alongside the food, is part of what makes cooking at SCF uniquely human. It’s crucial to listen to the people who become part of each meal’s story: learning from those who gather the food, guiding newcomers on the region, sharing recipes and stories, supporting others’ inspiration, curating the music, arranging the flowers, and relying on collective cleanup. The meal becomes a collective forum—where we offer emotional and practical support for one another.
Now, with SLUGS on the road, we’re bringing this sensibility to new places. Our dinners across the country aim to connect people through shared meals that support the nonprofit’s mission. We aren’t chasing speed or spectacular novelty—instead, we’re asking guests to slow down, to eat together, to honor roots and anticipate the future.
One of our main goals, especially through these cooking retreats, is practical. We teach fundamentals—skills, preservation, foraging and fermentation—but we also teach how to cook en masse: communal cooking, feeding a group you know and sometimes a group you don’t. Learning how to organize volunteers, scale recipes, shift energy from preparation to service—this is what cooking for others truly means, and why it matters. This is our humble response to a larger question of why we cook and who gets to eat.
At its heart, this project isn’t about the person cooking, or even the food. It’s about people, place, season, and care. I hope these dinners carry a small piece of that redwood sunlight, that orchard-quiet, that care-filled table across the miles. I hope they remind people what it means to gather—and how gathering can engage, connect, and inspire.
SLUGS is honored to present our first cooking workshops on the land this summer and fall. We hope you can join us! With gratitude for every story shared over the fire and every spoon passed across the table, I am excited for all to add a bit of SLUGS into their lives: Sensuous Living Under Glittering Stars.
by Gerardo Gonzalez