Fundraisers help fight hunger
Hudson Valley EATS offers series of online cooking classes to raise money for area food relief programs
People can cook along, virtually, with a professional chef while helping fight hunger in the Hudson Valley on Tuesday night, Jan. 19.
Hudson Valley EATS will present the second of five scheduled classes Tuesday in its “Cooking for a Cause” online cooking series that raises funds for food relief programs throughout the MidHudson Valley.
Tuesday’s 6 p.m. interactive 90-minute Zoom class features
Chef Agnes Devereux. The chef and owner of Agnes Devereux Catering will be making her signature pan-seared Hudson Valley Steelhead Trout with escargot butter and butternut squash with onions, sage, and grapes. Tickets are $50, with all proceeds benefiting People’s Place in Kingston.
After purchasing a ticket at hudsonvalleyeats.com/cookingfor-a-cause, participants will receive a Zoom Invite and sent a shopping list so they can go out and buy the ingredients. The event allows participants to ask Devereux questions and show how they are doing, or just follow along.
Classes on Jan. 26 have Leslie Lampert cooking to benefit Feeding Westchester, followed by Denis Whitton on Feb. 2 for Meals on Wheels of Rockland, with Shelley Boris on Feb. 9 for Second Chance Foods. All information is at hud
sonvalleyeats.com/cookingfor-a-cause.
“People’s Place has insured that delicious health food is available to our community during these times of great hardship for so many,” Devereux said. “I am delighted to help contribute to their good work.”
Janet Irizarry, a restaurant consultant with more than 30 years experience in the restaurant and hospitality industry, co-founded Hudson Valley EATS. She has owned restaurants for over 25 years and is now an adjunct professor in the Culinary Institute of America’s School of Business Management, teaching Introduction to the Hospitality Industry.
“I started it a little over three years ago in an effort to bring more exposure to restaurants that might not have a big marketing budget,” Irizarry said about her program. “I go out and eat all the time. I love restaurants and I’ve been in the restaurant business. It’s always been my focus to do what I can to help them get paying customers and get the word out about them. I like to go out and explore new places and I like to share my experiences with everyone. I do that through words with the blog and also through taking pictures and sharing them around. I like to share food experiences, because I like to hear what people have to say and to engage in the conversation.”
Irizarry has 4,000 subscribers to her newsletter and 3,200 Facebook followers.
“Of course, the Hudson Valley is such an amazing place with all the food entrepreneurs and everything that is going on,” said Irizarry, who moved into the area from Rockland eight years ago. “The local breweries, the wineries, the cideries, the tasting rooms that are opening up. It’s just so much fun.”
A motto of her mother’s — “If you are going to be part of the community, you need to find something you can do that will make a difference” — has guided Irizarry.
“She was always big into volunteering in the community,” she said. “I realized that I had created something that can help where everyone in the Hudson Valley could eat and not just those who could afford it. From that moment, that’s
when I decided that was my calling, that was my ‘Why?’
“It’s been a journey. Working on Hudson Valley EATS was more of a passion. I spent so much time on it,” she added. “You say, ‘Okay, why am I doing this, because I wasn’t making money on it. It was just something I was spending time on doing and it dawned on me that I have this platform that I can help the community fight food insecurity.
“When COVID struck, I was in the process of creating a dining club that was going to benefit the programs in the Hudson Valley that provide foot relief,” Irizarry said. “That all fell apart, but I still want to keep it my mission to make sure everyone eats. I started a Facebook group page that focused on food insecurity in an effort to connect the
public with volunteer opportunities and opportunities to donate and to give the nonprofits exposure. I just started focusing doing more articles, volunteering and really talking to people about food insecurity.”
She started spending a lot of time at the Helping Hands Food Pantry in her Gardiner neighborhood, volunteering and providing it with an online presence.
“Unfortunately, many of these small pantries don’t get the exposure,” Irizarry said. “Like I was talking about the restaurants. The pantries don’t either.
“What I’ve been able to accomplish in our local pantry in Gardiner just by giving them a Facebook page, a website and a GoFundMe page, it’s been pretty impressive.”
Diana Polack, who has been creating fundraisers
for nonprofit organizations for over 30 years, approached Irizarry with the “Cooking for a Cause” idea, creating Hudson Valley-wide fundraisers in six counties. Dutchess Outreach benefited from last week’s inaugural event. Irizarry is also planning a Feb. 16 event for Orange County.
“it just seemed that this was just a great way to get the chefs involved and get the nonprofits involved,” Irizarry said. “The whole thing ultimately is all about giving food to those people who are facing food insecurity. By creating a community focused on food and focused on helping to get food to those people who can’t afford it, it just seems to all tie in and just makes so much sense.”