So much goes into the baking. Baklava, baklava cheesecake, koulourakia, kourabiedes, paximadia, tsoureki. The first few months are all baklava and the cheesecake, because they can be frozen long term without much change to the texture and taste. As we cut and bake it all, the crispy ends are saved for the booth that sells baklava sundaes.
The tsoureki is baked last, and sells out quickly. Every year there are women that come on the first day of the festival and load up their bags with paxi and tsoureki. One lady that comes every year buys 15-20 bags of paximadia that she gives out as gifts at Christmas. She must have a good size freezer!
All in all, Philoptokos (a women's philanthropic group) makes quite a bit of money during the festival, which helps fund both our regular donations to non-profits and other needs that come up.
It's a rather large commitment to the baking schedule, which is every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from 12:30-4 or longer and sometimes shorter.
Have a great week, even though it's going to hot enough to cook an egg on your driveway :-)
Love, 365
What an event! Last one we attended was in Temecula, CA. What a rowdy group! Dancing was amazing.
ReplyDeleteNearly every Greek Orthodox Church has a Grecian Festival. They seem to be at all times of the year. I believe our festival is purposely scheduled during the Abq Int'l Balloon Fiesta. And that's great, because the balloon stuff is all done by 10am and many are eager to go do something else.
DeleteI love that last photo of the choc lab and police officer! Wow that is a lot of baking in this heat. But I love all of that food. We used to go to an annual Greek Festival in my hometown, Rick and I went mainly for the food. Pitiful I know, but we don't get that kind of food often. Enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI love the Greek chicken. And giros. With beer too please.
DeleteOur festival is probably one of the very few that bakes their own pastries. One of the guys who helps us said their festival in Las Vegas buys all their pastry and re-packages it for sale. Their church is bigger than ours, and a much larger community, so it's probably not feasible for them to bake all their own stuff.
I got such a kick out of that photo montage of the policeman and his partner, haha.
You and those Greek women do an amazing amount of work. I'd be one of the first there buying ysoureki for a start.
ReplyDeleteGreek friends who live in Athens buy a dozen bags of Poros paximadia when they go home. I don't like the things . You have to brought up on them. My husband loves them for breakfast to dunk in his coffee.
I'm glad all your work gets you some of the money you need.
Well done girls
It is a lot of work. Almost as difficult is finding volunteers to do it all.
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