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A Great Way to Spend Wednesday Evenings in September!

Sep 4, 2020 | In The News, Past Events

Join Slow Food East End for Four Virtual Events Featuring Local Chefs, Farmers, and Beverage Artisans

We are bringing Slow Food to the comfort of your own home during this pandemic with the inaugural offering of Slow Food East End Live. This is our way to keep in touch and add value to our members when we are all staying close to home. Slow Food Live will feature conversations and webinars led by our local food community of makers, farmers, fishers, chefs, harvesters, and organizations whose sole purpose is to feed those without access to healthy food.

* Register Here *

The first series, which will kick off our September Membership Drive, (Join here!) is free and consists of three webinars and conversations led by members of our local food community.  Here’s what you will see:

September 9 (6-7 p.m.)

Slow Fermented Drinks with a Local Twist with Leslie Merinoff, founder of Matchbox Distilling Company

Let’s raise a glass together to celebrate our East End Food Community!  Matchbook Distilling Co. is a research and development facility dedicated to bespoke contract production of spirits that champion agriculture, anthropology, tradition, and science.  Join CEO Leslie Merinoff as she teaches us to make two Slow Fermented drinks. The first features Treiber Farms butternut squash and organic wheat from Oeschner Farms in the Finger Lakes.  The second will be a probiotic juice that could be a great mixer with multiple uses. Following the demo, we will have our first virtual happy hour. Register here.

Mark Your Calendar For These Upcoming September Sessions (More information to come for each of these.)

September 16 Snails the Real Slow Food with Snail Wrangler Taylor Knapp of Peconic Escargot

September TBD The Three Sisters with Chefs Elizabeth Ronzetti and Adam Kopels of 18 Bay Restaurant

September 30 Slow Food East End First-Ever Virtual Annual Meeting

These sessions promise to be fun and informative.  To participate you will need Zoom installed in your computer/smartphone; download here.

See you soon!

 

Membership Drive!

Sep 4, 2020 | In The News, Past Events

Every September we work to get our current members to renew and attract new members to the cause of Slow Food: good, clean and fair food for all. As you may have heard, our chapter, Slow Food East End, is one of the largest in the country.

We have a very active and committed membership and through them we are proud of the ways we have been able to help our local communities during the pandemic. Here’s how we’ve been helping:

  • $15,000 donated to food banks on the East End
  • $9,000 in Resilience Grants to oyster farmers, winemakers, farmers and producers
  • $5000 grants to our Snail of Approval Restaurants and Farm Stands to help pay restaurant staff or just keep going
  • 400 fresh chickens provided to CAST (Community Action Southold Town) and Holy Trinity Church in Greenport – helping families in need AND local producers

Won’t you join us as we do bigger and better things in the next year?

Everyone who joins or renews will be put in a drawing to win one of 11 $150 gift certificates to one of our Snail of Approval restaurants or farm stands. They’re good ones! Almond, Art of Eating Catering, The Bell & Anchor, 18 Bay, Deep Roots Farm, Estia’s Little Kitchen, Green Thumb Farm Stand, Love Lane Kitchen, Nick & Toni’s, noah’s, and Sang Lee Farm Stand.

Sign up for an individual membership and receive one chance to win: sign up for a family membership and receive 4 chances to win!! Donations less than $60 do not qualify for the raffle. The winning members will be announced at our virtual annual meeting on September 30. (More to come on that),

Important

Once you join, please forward the thank you email from Slow Food USA to slowfoodeastend@gmail.com, and your name will be entered. No need to be present to win.

 

SFEE Reaches out to Winemaker In Need

Aug 4, 2020 | In The News

Robin Epperson McCarthy of Saltbird Cellars.

What many people miss about the wine business is that it’s year round. There’s a lot going on in between harvest and popping the cork.

“Grapes don’t stop growing because of COVID,” says Robin Epperson-McCarthy, who is the one-woman show behind Saltbird Cellars.

Epperson-McCarthy applied for an SFEE Resilience Grant (you can help fund the grants here) to help her buy screw caps and labels for her 2019 Sauvignon Blanc. “If hadn’t gotten it when I did, I would have put it on a credit card, which many wine growers end up doing.” She adds, “I’m concerned about other people will wind up in debt.”

Sauvignon blanc is Epperson-McCarthy’s specialty and is a grape that grows well on the East End. And winemakers like Epperson-McCarthy have been working to make the wine in the style unique to Long Island that reflects our soil, weather in climate. It’s working with Long Island wine landing in the middle between the two most famous sauvignon blancs: New Zealand and Sancerre.

Like other farmers Epperson-McCarthy had to modify her business model to adjust to the pandemic. She says regular customers are still able to buy the wine at the tasting room she shares with winemaker Alie Shaper, Peconic Cellar Door on Peconic Lane, which sells five different brands through their cooperative Chronicle Wines.

While the tasting room was closed, the wines were set up in the front window so customers can see what’s for sale and pick up curbside. The two have been shipping a lot of wine, she says, and online sales are brisk.

Epperson-McCarthy created tasting kits so customers can have the tasting room experience at home. The boxes include wine notes, tasting mats and five different wines in 50 ml bottles.

Things are getting back to “normal.” Peconic Cellar Door is now open Friday through Monday from 12pm to 5pm with outside seating and masks required.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the grant,” says Epperson-McCarthy. “Slow Food East End reached out in a time of need; we’re a community.”

WATCH: SFEE Featured on News12

Jul 24, 2020 | In The News

We at Slow Food East End are super excited our chair, Dr. Pennie Schwartz, was interviewed on News12 about the grants we’ve given to East End food producers to help them make it through the pandemic. Also featured Noah Schwartz, whose restaurant received our Snail of Approval (and is Pennie’s son) and oyster farmer Meg Strecker of Yennicott Oysters.

Here’s three blog posts about some recipients:

 

Oyster Farmers Hit Hard by COVID-19; Have to Pivot | Grant from Slow Food East End Helps

Jul 3, 2020 | In The News

All food producers and purveyors on the East End were hit hard by the shut down due to COVID-19, but few were hit so fast as the oyster industry. Most of those farming our waters sold their oysters to restaurants. When they closed, their entire market dried up.
 
“I know of one farmer who had to take oysters back from the wholesaler,” says Karen Rivara, an owner of Aeros Cultured Oyster Company in Southold, which sells seed oysters to many local farmers.
 
So when Slow Food East End offered resilience grants to help the food community, more than half of the applicants were oyster companies. You can donate to help us support all our farmers and food producers.
 
Steven Schnee of Founders Oyster Farm also in Southold said he got clobbered when the restaurants closed. “It’s been getting better in the past two weeks,” he says. “But I’ve found a sweet spot selling at the wineries.” It requires a lot of precautions and sterilizing. “I wear gloves and a mask, the table is six feet away from the customer; I’ve got wipes and spray. And the customer puts the money in a jar.”
 
He used the bulk of his grant for maintenance and to buy seed. “I had to fix the boat and the engine. It really helped to keep the wheels greased and the operation running.”
 
“One hundred percent of my business is direct to restaurants,” says Meg Strecker of Yennicott Oysters. “That turned out to be a lesson. You think you’re preparing for everything but you cannot prepare for everything.”
 
Strecker has taken to selling her oysters at KK’s The Farm’s farm stand in Southold. But the unsold oysters were getting big — restaurants like them four inches and under — and not many people know what to do with a bigger oyster. “They’re not comfortable shucking them, so we came up with the idea to teach customers how to cook them on the grill or in a pan,” she says. “And use ingredients from the farm. One of my favorites, because I have celiac, is the fried oyster po-boy tacos.”
 
Strecker used her grant money to buy biodegradable packaging, create shucking kits and to print postcards with recipes. She adds, “It turns out you have to spend a lot of money to help you make money.”

NO SHUCK…NO FUSS
HOW TO GRILL AN OYSTER

Clean oyster with cold water & place on tray
preheat grill or oven to med heat
place oysters cup side down on grill or in oven proof pan/skillet
when oyster opens pull off top shell and spoon in:

Ira’s Stinging Nettle Pesto from The Farm
compound butter
1”-strip local bacon, chopped shallot & white wine
grated cheese, white wine & chopped greens/herbs.

Close grill lid cook for 3-5 min

PROFILE Mimi Edelman, board member and farmer. SFEE is here to help

Jun 21, 2020 | In The News

Recently we’ve written about two of our initiatives — donations to local food pantries and funds to our Snail of Approval restaurants — all made possible through your generosity. So far, 14 grants have been awarded. Here is one story of how a grant will be used with others to come in the weeks ahead. You can help by donating to SFEE.
  
“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Francis of Assisi
  
Mimi Edelman has been a farmer for 11 years, at first in Hudson County and, for the last three years, in Orient. She exemplifies the quote above as she reimagines her business in this challenging time as so many others are doing.
 
IandMe Farm, on Terry family land, is a two-acre property growing organic and biodynamic crops with views spanning from the Sound to the Bay. Over the last three years, Mimi worked with like -minded chefs locally and in New York City to grow crops requested by chefs during menu planning sessions in the winter months. The business was growing and gaining a following… then the pandemic hit. Restaurants closed with no opening in sight at the time.
 
During this period of uncertainty, Mimi picked herself up, began speaking with friends and colleagues and slowly began to create a new vision for her farm. Along the way she established important partnerships with purveyors like Peeko Oysters and North Fork Flower Farm. She would now expand beyond chefs and begin serving local consumers by growing crops that as she puts it “spark creativity, delight the palate and introduce new foods with flavors and aromas that people may not be as familiar with.” Harvest boxes filled with these out-of-the-ordinary vegetables, herbs, microgreens and shoots will be grown and then either delivered or picked up by the consumer.
 
When Slow Food provided a grant of $500, Mimi knew exactly how she would use it: to build a communications channel to her customers by designing a website describing her products and the philosophy which guides her choices. “This grant really jump started my ability to reach my customer and I am most grateful to Slow Food East End and their members who genuinely care about local food providers, particularly in times of need.” Take a moment to see what the website offers by visiting iandmefarm.com.
 
Right now, there are many struggling small businesses like Mimi’s that may never be built back because of lack of money and support. Won’t you please donate to SFEE to ensure our East End home can once again thrive and return to normal. You can help by donating to SFEE.