Greek churches offering food without the festivals
Several Greek churches are trying to to resurrect their COVID-ravaged food festivals, which are a source for a large chunk of their income each year.
Typically, churches start planning for the annual event during the previous year’s holiday season and begin preparing some of the foods in the beginning of the year. So when the pandemic hit in March, churches had already made the moussakas, lamb shanks, pastitsios and cookies, and stored them away.
One such church is the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Oakland.
Marcie McGuire, festival publicity chair, said the church had prepared all but one item for its seven-day festival in May that was supposed to have wrapped up on Mother’s Day weekend. But COVID struck and shut everything down. With a huge freezer stuffed to the gills, the church had to find a way to use everything up.
So St. Nicholas and several other churches are pulling off drive-through-style festivals, adapting to the setup and offering limited menus. Some of the smaller, outlying churches have had to cancel altogether for this year.
On its website, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church in Mt. Lebanon has announced that its festival has been postponed, but new dates have not yet been announced.
Organizers at St. Nicholas are hoping for a scaled-down festival during the week of Sept. 13. In the meantime, they are offering takeouts every other Saturday. The next dinner will be from 3 to 6 p.m. July 25; orders have to be made no later than 6 p.m. July 23 at stnicksfoodfestival.org.
Vasili Copetas, festival cochair and church president, said the dinners have been a good way to start clearing out the freezer.
“It’s working,” he said. “With the pre-orders, we know what we have to prepare.”
A new crop of younger volunteers is coming out to help, sparing the more vulnerable, older generation from some of the public exposure. All the work is now volunteer, whereas 50 percent of a typical festival
overhead would have gone toward paying people to cook and clean tables, he said.
“We’re not making what we would make during a festival, but every little bit helps,” he added.
Vegan items may be added to the menu as the summer progresses. He’s currently trying to hornswoggle his mom and some of her friends into coming down to the church building to make tiropitas (cheese pies).
“I told her, ‘I’ll buy you all lunch,’” he said, noting that the preparation of tiropitas is “an art that the old-timers have.”
Depending on how the September festival turns out, Mr. Copetas said there might be enough food in the freezer for the church to run the twice a month
Saturday dinners for the remainder of the calendar year.
Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Ambridge is gearing up for a takeout-style festival from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. through Saturday (the festival started Tuesday). Orders are accepted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 724-266-5336 or holytrini -tyambridge@gmail.com.
Connie Barlamas, church treasurer and a festival organizer, said the church budget depends on this annual event.
“We have capital improvements that we have to do,” she said. The church’s 43-year-old boiler has broken down three times this year and needs to be replaced. The congregation also wants to rehang the bell that hung over 100 years ago in the original church building on First Street in Ambridge.
Holy Trinity has a slight advantage over other churches — A number of its members are restaurant owners. So they have been cooking up a storm since Beaver County moved to green phase, she said.
“We’re cooking everything in about a month that we’d normally do in three months,” she said. That includes roasted lamb, chicken oregano, spanakopita, tiropita, stuffed zucchini, stuffed peppers, stuffed grape leaves, Greekstyle meatballs, moussaka, pastitsio (Greek lasagna), several sides, gyros, lamb souvlaki and 16 different pastries.
“But we’ll figure it she said. “Positivity!” out,
At Presentation of Christ (Ypapanti) Church in East Pittsburgh, the usual 42-hour festival has been shrunk to 24 hours, organizer Mary Doreza said.
The takeout-only festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Aug. 21 through 23 with a reduced menu and no dancers.
“But we will have videos [of dancers] outside so people can watch something as they’re driving through” to pick up their orders, she said.
The menu will include many of the usual Greek favorites served at other festivals, including gyros, pastitsio, chicken a la Greco, pork souvlakia, Greek meatballs with rice, stuffed grape leaves, spanakopita, honey balls, baklava and other pastries.
Online ordering will be available at ypapanti.net, or people can just drive through and give a volunteer their order from their car.
Oakmont’s Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church already held its drive-through festival in late June. Customers were told to stay in their cars and pop their trunks so volunteers could drop in their orders of gyros, souvlaki, spanakopita and pastries.
Instead of holding a festival, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in McCandless decided to go a different route this year. It is hosting two programs — Greek4Home and Greek2Give.
People can order 20-by-13inch pans of spanakopita and tiropita at holytrinitypgh.org until the food runs out. Each pan, scored into 28 servings, will be wrapped and frozen. A pan costs $99 and comes with baking instructions.
Alternatively, Holy Trinity members have been given the option to donate $99 toward sending a pan of spanakopita or tiropita to a local hospital, safety services agency or other workplace for frontline workers during the pandemic.
The church welcomes outsiders to sponsor a pan for frontline workers, but Father John Touloumes said, the main intent is for the church to give a “generous thank you” to the community for its support over the past seven years since the church moved from the North Side to McCandless.
“We want to use [the frozen food] in as many ways as we can to bring blessing to the people around us,” he said.
The festival committee kicked around many options, he said, but the group finally decided to cancel the festival this year “out of an abundance of caution.”
The annual festival brings about 25,000 to 30,000 people to the church each year.
“We are blessed to be able to weather canceling the festival this year” because of community support. We hope to see everybody during Labor Day weekend 2021,” he said.