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Cheers to Our First Chef Series of 2022!

Jan 17, 2022 | Blog, Chef Series, In The News

Our first virtual event of 2022 brought together over 80 people from across the Slow Food East End community to learn tips and tricks from two of our favorite East Ends bread bakers. David Chaffin, our very own board member and the creator of the Flour Power bread recipe, baked bread from his home while speaking with sourdough-expert Ana Burcroff. The two of them baked bread using David’s recipe and answered questions from the audience, sharing a peak into their technique and their kitchens.

Thank you to everyone who attended the event and a special thank you to David and Ana for helping us start the year strong! And thank you to our sponsor for this event, Truly Grass Fed, an Irish dairy brand that produces delicious butter and cheese with integrity and care for people, animals, and the planet. We are grateful for their generous support in making this event possible!

We hope that this live event may have sparked an interest in becoming involved in our Flour Power programming, and we invite you to sign up today to join in the fun and give back to your community. Anyone can join – no matter your baking expertise. Check out our winter baking dates, and sign up today on our website!

Reflecting on 2021

Dec 21, 2021 | Blog, In The News

Slow Food East End started 2021 off strong, and kept on going through the whole year with gatherings, educational programming, fundraising, community support, baking and more!
 
 
We initiated new programs, and kept others going despite the global pandemic and its many challenges. Our Resilience Grants supported local food purveyors to help keep their doors open, and our School Gardens Program has continued to fund Master Gardeners and serve veggies from the gardens in the school cafeterias. New programs have been created as well to meet the needs of our community, including our Slow Food Live: Chef Series, and Flour Power.
 
 
Click through the see a few highlights from the year!

SFEE and the Butterfly Effect Project

Dec 20, 2021 | Blog, In The News

Over the past year, as part of our mission to support community-led initiatives, we have had the opportunity to partner with the incredible Butterfly Effect Project (BEP) – a community-oriented non-profit with the mission to create safe spaces for girls to dream and succeed. This partnership began last spring when one of our Master Farmers, Melissa Mapes, joined other BEP volunteers to help build a garden and plant vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The gardens have been a huge success and are used to help teach the kids in their programs about everything from the environment to how to grow their own food.

 
They celebrated the bounty of their gardens by hosting a Harvest Festival and Cook Off in early October. The intergenerational celebration showcased the importance of local food in building community, and included a cook off with chefs competing for cash prizes.
The three winning recipes – a carrot salad, collard greens, and eggplant parmigiana – will be included in a forthcoming cookbook from BEP (you can reach out to them here, to learn more about it). Slow Food East End happily sponsored the event along with 40 other organizations and companies from the community.
 
We then joined the FBC/Michael’s Smile Butterflies to cook up some delicious and spooky treats for a Halloween celebration including honey caramel popcorn, almond butter eye balls, and pumpkin hummus sporting jack o’lantern faces! Children as young as 4 years old looked on, helped cook, and of course helped eat it all up.
 
 
Organizations like the Butterfly Effect Project are essential for the health of our communities. We are grateful for the work they do, and we look forward to continuing to support them for years to come.

Ongoing: Bake Along with Flour Power

Nov 22, 2021 | Events, Flour Power, In The News

Whether you’re a seasoned baker or new to bread, we invite you to join our effort to help feed our community delicious and nutritious food through our Flower Power initiative.

Flour Power is a way members of the community can provide home-baked loaves of bread to local food pantries. The goal is to nourish and bring joy to people through a personal touch. Each cycle of Flour Power provides loaves baked by the community to pantries like the North Fork Spanish Apostolate in Riverhead and CAST North Fork in Southold. Baking cycles take place every 2 weeks.

Anyone can register to bake. Simply sign up and we will send you the recipe that is for 4 loaves; each baker keeps one loaf and donates three. There are designated drop-off points on the North and South Forks (when you register you will receive dates and locations for drop-off.) Please keep in mind that our locations are expanding as we grow.

LEARN MORE & SIGN UP TODAY!

Thank You to Our Feed the Forks Silent Auction Donors

Nov 17, 2021 | Blog, Feed the Forks, In The News

Our Feed the Forks silent auction was open to bidding between November 7 – 14 and overall we raised $18,750 for Feed the Forks! The proceeds will go directly to fund school garden programs; providing resiliency grants for food providers in times of need; maintaining and promoting Flour Power, a grass roots bread baking program to support food pantries; developing and presenting Chef Series programing and much more.

The silent auction was filled with incredible items donated by local businesses. From CSAs to local restaurant gift cards, food was front and center in the items open to bidding, but it also included everything from custom fishing rods to stays at local bed and breakfasts! Thank you to everyone who placed their bids and helped spread the word, and thank you of course to our many amazing donors:

 

Al Goldberg
Captains Cookie & Mike Slade
David Chaffin
 Pennie Schwartz

Baking Bread and Feeding the Community with Members Nancy and Ralph Reinertsen

Sep 27, 2021 | Flour Power, In The News

For Nancy DePas Reinertsen and Ralph Reinertsen, baking with Flour Power, Slow Food East End’s community powered baking co-operative, has been their way to connect to their community through food. They’ve been baking bread loaves every other week since the program began this past spring as a way for members of the community to provide home-baked loaves of bread to local food pantries.

Nancy and Ralph were both teachers before recently retiring, and they’ve both seen firsthand how many people in our communities can use a little extra help getting food on the table. Baking her four loaves of bread has become a regular weekend ritual, but it’s also become about more than just feeding others.

The way it works is this: anyone with a few hours to spare and an oven to bake can sign up to bake bread. Chef David Chaffin, board member and experienced baker, developed a simple, healthy recipe that everyone can bake. As Nancy says: “It’s a foolproof recipe.” Made with half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour, the bread has honey and molasses in it which not only add a delicious flavor but keep the bread shelf-stable – so it’s available to anyone coming to the food pantry even a few days after it’s been delivered.

“It nourishes the soul because I feel so good about doing this, and it nourishes the body,” she says, adding: “My house smells like heaven!”

Nancy has been baking for years with a sourdough starter she created 20 years ago using East End air to bring it to life. But she doesn’t need that to bake these loaves, and you don’t need to be an experienced baker to take part in Flour Power.

After watching the how-to video, and with the recipe in hand, home bakers across the East End of Long Island bake four loaves of bread every other Monday. Three of them will be picked up by a volunteer and brought to pantries like the North Fork Spanish Apostolate in Riverhead, and the fourth is for the baker to eat!

“Flour Power is a really wonderful way to connect to people,” says Nancy. We agree, and we think you will too. We hope you’ll join us in keeping the program going. Register today for the next baking cycle. We’ll provide the recipe; you’ll get to spend a few hours doing kneading bread dough and helping feed your community.