What's Cookin'? Smithtown - Whole Foods Market Supper Club

What’s Cookin’? – Smithtown

 By Nancy Vallarella  - Photos by Lori Schneider

Whole Foods Market Supper Club – a must try dining experience!

Since April of last year, Whole Foods Market, Lake Grove has been hosting a monthly Supper Club.  After a short hiatus for the busy holiday months of November and December, they resumed this past January. I had the good fortune of getting in before registration closed. Although the menu appeared promising, I have to admit being skeptical due to the low price of $15.00 for a four course meal and the aspect of communal dining as I had anticipated going solo. I am happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised and thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. 

After checking in at the Customer Service and paying the $15.00 fee (receipt is required to be seated) I was greeted at the opposite front corner of the store by Marketing Team Leader and our hostess for the evening Lori Schneider. Lori graciously greeted us and we picked our seats. Suggestion: Get there early if you are picky about seating. 

I really lucked out at my table. Sitting next to me was veteran Supper Clubber Marilyn and her plus one Erwin.  Across from me were Jane, Jerry, Jennifer and June – no Joke!   We all began to share our love for great food, area restaurants and foodie gossip. As the first course arrived there was an abrupt and prolonged silence, generally a positive sign during food service.

Lori gave us a brief description of the ingredients used and how the recipes where developed using minimal amounts of salt and oil in keeping with the relaunch of Whole Foods Market’s Health Starts Here program.  Each dish was packed with flavor.  The full menu for the evening included: No Cream Winter Vegetable Bisque, Cilantro Lime Baked Chicken Wings with Pad Thai Kale Salad, Thai Baked Salmon with Baby Bok Choy and Honey Green Tea Granita with Glazed Pears and Pomegranates. All were very good but the clear favorite was the salmon which was expertly seasoned and cooked to perfection by in-house chefs Gavin Fitzpatrick and Siara Mole who made an appearance to take questions and pass along published copies of their recipes to take home. 

The Supper Club is usually held on a Monday night although this month will be an exception and will be held on Tuesday, February 25^th.    For the official menu check the Whole Foods, Lake Grove facebook page but early info has Spiced Sweet Potato & Broccoli Crostini, Winter Squash Carbonara, Balsamic Glazed Cornish Hen with Barley, Cauliflower & Fresh Herb Buratta and Myer Lemon Cream with Graham Cracker Sea Salt and Whole Trade Fruit planned. The four course meal is $15.00. Guests will be asked if they would like to make an additional voluntary $5.00 donation to the Whole Planet Foundation.

The Whole Planet Foundation was founded to help alleviate poverty and hunger in world-wide communities that supply products to Whole Food Stores. They provide grants to microfinance institutions which service 59 countries. These institutions offer microenterprise loan programs, training and financial services to the self-employed poor. Since 2006, over forty million dollars have been committed with a 97% repayment rate. 

Seating for this event is limited.  To register for this Supper Club event call Whole Foods, Lake Grove at 631-588-1466.

Thai Baked Salmon with Ginger Marinated Mushrooms

Kings Park's St. Patricks Day Sweatshirts Are Very Special

Maureen Ledden Rossi

The 4^th annual Kings Park St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be held Saturday March 1^st.   Thousands of people will descend on the small community that has strong Irish roots.  Adorned in green, they will come to hear the dozens of pipe bands and enjoy what has rapidly become one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day parades in Suffolk County.    To help keep those marching and parade goers both warm and green, this year the St. Patrick’s Day Committee purchased one thousand Kelly Green sweatshirts from Spectrum Designs. 

Committee member and owner of Professors Diner, Kevin Denis was thrilled by his recent tour of the Nassau County facility where the hooded sweatshirts were made.  “I fell in love with these kids, it was amazing to watch them hard at work – they produce a quality product for a fair price,” he shared.  Spectrum Designs hires young adults on the spectrum, a term used and associated with Autism because symptoms  and severity of impairment vary greatly.   Autism is a considered a neural developmental disorder; it’s generally characterized by impaired social interaction and verbal and communication difficulties.  

Kathleen Lanese is the Kings Park mother of two autistic boys and a well-known Autism advocate.  She introduced Denis to Spectrum and accompanied him on his tour of the Port Washington plant.    “This company is so important, so many of our kids are aging out of services and need meaningful work,” she explained.  Lanese said after the age of twenty-one, they no longer receive services from the public school system.  “Are they supposed to just sit home?” she questioned.  Lanese applauds what Spectrum is doing and hopes that this wonderful organization can continue to expand and offer employment opportunities for Kings Park residents with special needs.

Spectrum is presently celebrating their third birthday. They employ 30 teens and young adults with Autism.  They are optimistic that if they continue to get the word out about what they do, their business will grow.    Partners Patrick Bardsley, Nicole Sgrue and Stella Spanakos are proud of the non-profit business they have built together.   “I came to know Nicole when I was working at a summer camp a few years back, I was working with her son Nicolas who has Autism,” Bardsley explained.   Born in the United Kingdom, Bardsley earned his graduate degree in Special Education with an emphasis on Autism.   He is happy to report that Nicholas who is now 22 is employed by the company and enjoys coming to work.   “I love to work as well – I’m blessed to have interaction with the guys every day; if I’m having a bad morning they cheer me up,” he laughed.

New York State Industries for Disabled (NYSID) works with companies like Spectrum, known as social enterprises.   “By employing people with special needs, we help lower Social Security costs,” he continued.   Municipalities are supposed to come to NYSID companies first.   “We don’t even have to technically bid if our price is with what they paid in previous years or within 10% of market price,” he added.  

Bardsley laughed when saying their quality control is second to none.   “Kids with Autism tend to be very meticulous in the way they do things, they are very detail oriented,” he said.  His employees will notice the smallest error in an order, like a crease in a sweatshirt or uneven printing.    He said the expectations for the employees are very clear and they respond to that.   “They find so many things challenging if life; they like to know exactly what they have to do and they like being successful at it,” he said. 

The sweatshirts for the St. Patrick’s Day parade are $20 – for size XL or larger they are $25 (sizes go up to 3XL).  They are being sold at Professors Diner in the Key Food Parking Lot.   The St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee is hoping to sell all one thousand hoodies before the parade and optimistically be able to order more from Spectrum.    The company also makes party favors and promotional products.   “Your patronage and support assists us in our mission to employ these highly capable individuals while helping them achieve fuller, more productive, meaningful lives,” said Bardsley.

Smithtown Dish – small bites of foodie news - Elegant Eating Goes To Bloomingdales

Smithtown Dish – small bites of foodie news

By Nancy Vallarella

T O D A Y!!

Bloomingdales Walt Whitman Mall, Huntington @ 1:00pm

Join Myra Naseem and Neil Schumer from Elegant Eating of Smithtown for a food demonstration in honor of Black History month.  Menu includes Double Corn Muffins, Southern Fried Chicken with Apple Cider Syrup and Sautéed Collard Greens, Kale, and Swiss Chard.

Editorial - Town Government Is In Shambles

“All’s well that ends well” Supervisor Patrick Vecchio after the special town board meeting Thursday evening.

With a 3-0 unanimous vote, Patrick Vecchio and Lynne C. Nowick were appointed to their positions on the Town Board. Thus ending the vulgar one week saga of Oathgate. A kumbaya moment. Right? Hardly.

While many people attending the meeting were overjoyed with the appointment of Patrick Vecchio to his position of Supervisor, not everyone was satisfied with the meeting.  In fact few people were satisfied. Many in the audience wanted the opportunity to speak. They wanted to applaud the board’s unanimous decision and they wanted the opportunity to say what was on their mind face to face to Town Clerk Vincent Puleo and others who they believed knew in advance that the oath’s were not signed.  Audience members wanted to proclaim their anger that a town board made up of all Republicans could have been decapitated by Town Clerk Vincent Puleo, a member of the Conservative Party. They wanted to say they didn’t believe that it was an accident or a coincidence that thirty days passed without the clerk’s office noticing that the paperwork was not filed as required by law. 

But they were not alone. Town Clerk Vincent Puleo also wanted to speak. Had he been allowed he would have talked about an intolerable situation at Town Hall, where two years lapsed without communication between he and the supervisor. He would have said that it was Vecchio and Nowick’s responsibility to file the paperwork and that he should not be blamed. He would have said that he never tried to disenfranchise Smithtown voters by negating an election on a technicality he was doing his job. Puleo, if he had been allowed to speak, would also have said that he is a man of integrity. He would have said that leaving for vacation immediately upon submitting his memo vacating the offices held by Vecchio and Nowick should not be attributed to a plan, but rather an innocent scheduled vacation. 

Also in the audience were people like Eddie Haeffer the candidate who opposed Vincent Puleo in last November’s election. Haeffer speculated that a deal was negotiated to allow the two appointments. He said he would be watching votes carefully over the next year to see if board members change their positions. A sobering thought for some members of the audience who worked tirelessly to elect members sympathetic to their positions.

The appointment of Vecchio and Nowick was the right thing to do. Election results should not be overturned by a town clerk. An investigation by an outside agency is warranted. Locally, the Board should review town code to amend it to assign responsibility for the oath of office and its filing to the clerk’s office. On the state level this archaic law needs to be addressed and changed not for Smithtown as a local law but for the entire state. Never again should a voter feel that their vote doesn’t matter.

Oathgate is far from over. No one is buying into this kumbaya moment. Town Hall has been ripped open and people are watching. Smithtown’s Town government is in shambles. 

All’s well that ends well? We won’t know that until it’s over and that’s not going to happen any time soon!

Pat 

Editorial - Smithtown's Highway Department Gets Us Through The Week

Recent events at Town Hall have cast a pall over town government negatively tainting the perception of the leadership, responsibility and concern for the public by some of our elected officials. A special Town Board meeting during Thursday’s snow/ice/rain/snow event could have prevented the public from attending. For many (myself included) there was more than a little anxiety about driving and parking at the meeting venue. But thanks to Smithtown’s Highway Department, not only were the roads clear, the parking lot at Smithtown’s Senior Center (the site of the meeting) was plowed and accessible for the attendees who filled the center. An amazing accomplishment given the fourteen inches of snow that fell.

Even though there are four and a half weeks of winter remaining,  Smithtown Matters would like to acknowledge the work being done by the Smithtown Highway Department. Snow removal is not an easy task. Keeping the roads clear of snow and ice has certainly been a challenge during the 2013-14 winter season, but  Superintendent of Highways Glenn Jorgensen and the men and women of the department have risen to the challenge and gotten the job done. 

Although most residents will acknowledge that they would prefer not to see another Smithtown Highway truck out plowing for the rest of the winter, it is the highway workers that we look for as the snow begins to fall. It is you who we bemoan when the bottom of our cleared driveway is plowed-in and needs to be re-shoveled, but it is also your work that allows us to get to our jobs, grocery stores, schools etc.. And, it is the Highway Department workers that clear the way for  emergency vehicles to get to hospitals, fires and accident scenes. 

This weekend the weather service is predicting an additional 2-4 inches of snow in our area . By now everyone should know the commonsense rules: don’t obstruct the path of the plow by parking on the roads, don’t tailgate plows and sanders, don’t shovel snow into the road and when there is limited visibility don’t go out. Hopefully knowing the rules translates into following them.

Enough said. Although people are often readily available to criticize, good work is not often publicly recognized.  Kudo’s to the Highway Department employees and private contractos for allowing Smithtown’s drivers to get through the week, and the 2013-2014 winter. 

Pat