Slow Food East End started 2021 with an ambitious agenda. Confident that our school gardens project was up and running — there are now more than 30 (!) on the East End — we started to imagine what to accomplish next in the new world of a pandemic. We had to pivot to online fundraisers where generous local chefs donated their time to create cooking demos using the local ingredients we all look to SFEE to celebrate and promote. More about that later.
Last year we were able to give grants to food producers affected by the pandemic. Read about our partners in that effort. We also donated to food pantries from Riverhead to Greenport and Montauk. So what next?
Our chair, Pennie Schwartz, wanted to include more of the community in our work: the result was Feed the Forks. Our first effort: Flour Power.
Pennie was inspired by a very successful program in Seattle called Community Loaves: give community members a recipe (or they could use their own); they bake four loaves and keep one for themselves; SFEE handles the distribution to local food pantries.
“I thought this was a project we could make our own,” says Pennie, “and actively involve our members to create the smell, feel and taste of bread, which nourishes the body and soul.”
Our first session is April 18, 2021 and features baker and SFEE board member, David Chaffin, who from 1998 to 2017 was the production manager/head bread baker at Amy’s Bread. He uses his recipe for whole wheat bread to demonstrate his method.