Image tagged Bostonist by Flickr user Tassadara C

ARK of Taste
Nonprofit Center, 89 South Street
August 27, 6-8pm
[Tickets, $22]

You've heard the term "heirloom" (i.e. heirloom tomatoes), which refers to seed varieties handed down through generations, hailing from the days before produce was bred for sturdiness and shelf life versus taste. Well, Slow Food International is collecting a list that includes not only heirloom fruits and vegetables, but also rare strains of herbs, grains, and even certain kinds of meat and poultry. And on August 27, Slow Food Boston will be hosting a tasting of fruits and vegetables from their ARK of Taste project at the Nonprofit Center this Wednesday. (Heads up: those tickets will likely go faster than you can say "heritage turkey".)

Why create something like the ARK of Taste project, you ask? Well, when the icecaps melt and we must all escape onto "Waterworld"-style boats to survive, we probably won't be concerned about saving two of the cockroaches that infested our college apartments, or two of the ratty seagulls that steal hotdogs from children on the beaches of Boston's shores. But we will want to save some Tuscarora white corn, some Puebla avocado, some dry Monterey Jack cheese, some Carolina gold rice, and some Orange Oxheart tomato, so that after the watery apocalypse goes down, we won't have to go without burritos.

More on slow food and the ARK event after the jump!

Slow Food USA and its "U.S. ARK of Taste" project are preserving these hard-to-find products and more for future generations. In fact, Slow Food believes we'll want to save them right now rather than waiting--according to their Web site, 93 percent of North American food product diversity has already been lost since the year 1900.

Slow Food Boston reveals that the meal will feature "ARK listed varieties of tomatoes, apricots, watermelons, early apples ... served up in various guises - freshly sliced, composed in salads or cooked into small dishes - and accompanied by a refreshing fruit-based iced tea."

So we say, for $22, it's worth it. Do it for Julia Child. Do it for your deprived taste buds. Or do it for the environment, before it all goes underwater. For as Slow Food's founder Carlo Petrini recently remarked, "“I always say a gastronome who isn’t an environmentalist is just stupid, and I say an environmentalist who isn’t a gastronome is just sad."