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Your Electric City Food Cooperative is now doing business as the Electric City Community Grocery. 

Greetings, one and all!

 
We’ve had a lot to celebrate this March, including the great news on Monday evening that Schenectady City Council voted to continue partnering with us by granting us a four month extension to secure our site. Thanks to all for coming out in support!!! This ARPA funding is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, just like April 8th's full eclipse - it's time for a totality of action, cooperation and fun!

Indeed, themes of cooperative action, solidarity, and food sovereignty are woven throughout this month’s newsletter as we celebrate Women’s History Month, St. Patrick’s Day, the Spring Equinox, National Farmworkers Awareness Week, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, and holidays of Ramadan, Holi, Purim, and Easter. 

 
If you view this email in your browser (link at top of this email), you can use this table of contents to jump straight to what makes your heart beat:


Celebrating Community & Solidarity!

March has provided ample reason to celebrate the growing strength of our Member-Owner Community!

Growing Our People Power

We are now a community of more than 1,030 Member-Owners, and we’ve found so many different ways to contribute to our people-powered movement to open a community-owned grocery store in downtown Schenectady! 
 

Powerful Showing at City Council

THANK YOU (!) to everyone who showed up at City Council on Monday night in support of the resolution to provide a four month extension for securing our site, in order to receive the $1,000,000 of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding from the federal government.  We counted 48 of us inside Council Chambers, and we know we had even more of us waiting outside! In a city where voter turnout tends to be very low, it was exciting to see Council Chambers overflowing with committed citizens. We were surprised to discover that Council passed our resolution on the “Consent Agenda,” and delighted to show up together as a community, with full support from our elected leaders. True to the name of our original ARPA proposal, we can build back better, together! (See: electriccityfood.coop/buildbackbetter
 

Great Momentum with Dream Team Fund


THANK YOU (!!!), also, to all of you who have contributed to our Dream Team Fund!  Thanks to the generous contributions of our community, we have raised over $10,000 toward our goal of $40,000 to fund phase 1 of our contract with National Cooperative Grocers (NCG).  

As you know, NCG - a co-op of food cooperatives - is our nation’s expert in providing start-up support to food cooperatives. When we open, our partnership with NCG will also enable us to stock affordable staple goods, alongside foods sourced from our local growers and vendors. Please consider contributing to this vital next stage of our development at donorbox.org/the-dream-team

 

Springing Forward through Partnerships

Together, with our community of 1,030+ Member-Owners and the support of NCG, the City and County of Schenectady, and MetroPlex, we are well on our way to securing our site and moving forward through our construction and start-up phase. 


Invitations and Opportunities for CooperACTION!


We are proud to be a people-powered movement and there are so many ways to contribute your time and talents! 

Explore Volunteer Opportunities

If you’d like to get more involved, let us know more about yourself so we can connect you with the right people and projects - please share your interest in this form, and we’ll be in touch shortly!  

And of course, read on for some specific invitations and calls to action that can propel us forward now!
 

We’re Putting On A Show - May 17!


It’s happening!  Thanks to our fantastic (ever-growing) Cabaret Planning Team, we’ll be putting on a show, May 17, 2024!

This inspiring (fun)draiser will: 
  1. Shine a spotlight on our community’s creative talents, and
  2. Continue growing our Dream Team Fund!

How can you help? 
Please share your ideas for performers - we’d love to have a wide range and community-reflective line-up!

We welcome sponsorships and in-kind donations of many types - from beautiful cakes and charcuterie boards/small plates, to graphic design support and printing.   

The next planning team meeting is this Saturday, March 30, at 10:30 am at the Karen B. Johnson Central Library. 

If you are interested in joining us on the 30th, or more generally being a part of this team, please fill out this Cabaret Interest Form.

We look forward to shining a spotlight on our communities creative talents, and raising money to bring the best talent among cooperative grocers to town!   

 

You're invited! Food Council Meeting, April 3rd


The Schenectady County Food Council is ready to welcome everyone and anyone to the table who is passionate about ensuring that all who live in our county have access to healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food. 

Please consider joining the Food Council for its General Community Meeting this coming Wednesday, April 3, 2024, 6-7pm. 

 
To RSVP or for any inquiries, please contact schenectadyfood@gmail.com
RSVPs are encouraged but not required.

 

Background on Food Council

As Board President Eric Johnson emphasized to the City Council in committee on Monday, March 18 (see slide below), opening a community-owned grocery store in downtown Schenectady is a critical priority for elevating community health and wealth in Schenectady.  Yet, we know that our efforts are just one part of larger efforts to move our city beyond food insecurity and food apartheid. This is why Board Member Adine Viscusi has been representing our food co-op as part of the Schenectady County Food Council (hereafter “Food Council”), where more than 30 organizations have come together to create systemic, collaborative solutions.   


 

Co-op Updates

Our cooperative spirit and forward momentum in 2024 has been fueled by extraordinary volunteers serving on our Board of Directors and active committees.  This month we shine a light on updates from our Site Committee, Finance Committee, Nomination Committee, and Communications Committee. 
 

Site Committee Updates

The Albany Business Review covered the Electric City Community Grocery this past weekend, shining a spotlight on the strong partnership we have with MetroPlex as we work to secure a site for our community-owned grocery store.


Click on image for a link to the story.

Thanks to the four month extension granted by the City for our $1,000,000 in support, we will continue our momentum and secure a site for our future community grocery in a short time. Our Site team is meeting several times a week to this end. We have established a weekly check-in with our team at MetroPlex.

We are in search of additional support with commercial real estate expertise, lease negotiation and associated legal review. If you have this experience and can help for an hour a two per week for the next 1-3 months, please sign up here 

 

Finance Committee Updates

 
We are well along the way for fund raising for the NCG agreement - we’re about a quarter of the way toward our goal for the Dream Team Fund.  Please consider supporting this by clicking on this link

We have invested approximately $11,000 of the $20,000 directed grant received from the Schenectady Foundation that is intended for:
  • Community engagement
  • Collaborative design
  • Cooperative education
  • Membership development
  • Cooperative governance capacity building
This grant has been critically important to supporting our development. So far, it has covered cooperative education workshops during national co-op month, our brand refresh process (resulting in a new logo, website, and brand guide that more powerfully express our vision, values, and spirit), supplies for the Holiday Parade and for tabling, stickers with our new logo, supplies and decorations for our Beloved Community Pie Social, and more. 

If you or someone who you know is interested in looking into supporting a tax deductible donation for the benefit of ECCG through the Schenectady Foundation, please reach out to eatlocal@electriccityfood.coop for more information.

 

Nomination Committee Updates

 
Our volunteer Board of Directors is strong and growing, and it’s also time to expand our team and deepen our bench. Not only are there a few Board members who have indicated needing to move on due to various life events at the end of their term (totally normal, and we respect each person’s needs), our needs are changing as we move closer to store construction stage. 

We have a specific need for Board Members and Committee Members who have experience in: 
  • LAW 
  • ACCOUNTING & BOOKKEEPING
  • CAPITAL CAMPAIGNS
  • COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
  • REAL ESTATE & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT


If you have any of these skills and have 2-4 hours per week to support this important effort, please reach out here. We would like to have some new Board Members in place prior to May 17th.

 

Communications Committee Updates


We are thrilled to officially announce the launch of our fresh, new website!  Now, when you visit electriccityfood.coop, you’ll find much of the same great content, but with a fresh new look and expanded features. 



Thank you to everyone who’s played a part in bringing this new website and brand identity to life!
  • Thank you to Beth Mickalonis and Sable Trappenburg, our creative design partners with Adsalt Creative for helping us bring our new “up-beet” look to life, reflecting our dream of opening a community-owned grocery store that serves as the heart-beet of a thriving local food system that nourishes every body.  Our new website design and brand guidelines package will help us more clearly convey our vision, values, and spirit. 
  • Thank you, Bashir Chedrawee for initiating this brand refresh effort while serving as a Board Member and Chair of our Communications Team (March 2023-November 2023). 
  • Thank you, Board Member Alex Mytelka, for stepping up to lead the Branding Refresh committee in November, and seeing us through this process. 
  • Thank you, Eric Johnson, Elizabeth Walsh, Laura Koennecke, and Zeta Klemmer for your service on the Branding Refresh Committee over the past six months. 
  • Thank you all to all of you who provided feedback on the brand refresh along the way, including 85 community members who provided thoughtful feedback through our online survey, and the careful attention of our Member Relations team. 
  • Thank you, Zeta Klemmer, for lending your web-design and coding talents to the challenge of customizing our website. If anyone needs website assistance, Zeta has some serious talent. Please contact them at zetaklemmer@gmail.com
Together, we’ve established a strong foundation to present Electric City Community Grocery as a warm, welcoming, and well-organized co-op, ready to serve the cooperators of Schenectady and beyond as we move into the next exciting phases of our development!
 

Member-Owner Spotlight
Corinne Hansch

 
In celebration of Women’s History Month and National Farmworkers Awareness Week, we’re especially excited to shine a spotlight on Member-Owner #207, Corinne Hansch of Lovin’ Mama Farm (lovinmamafarm.com)

Corinne is an organic farmer, activist, and mother to three (nearly grown!) homeschooled kiddos. She farms with her husband Matthew Leon and a crew of awesome farmers in Amsterdam, NY.  She is passionate about sharing her skills and insights as a farmer, both as a writer and a mentor to beginning farmers.  

The Beet to Corinne: What do you like about being part of the co-op community?

Corinne: The co-op community gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling that it is possible for humans to work together for the greater good.  Food is the foundation around which the co-op is forming, and truly, food is the foundation of life.  So the movement created by the co-op is truly foundational work for our community.  To build a community store that sources nutrient dense, organic, and locally grown food is an essential service.  As a farmer, I love being part of creating a food system in our community, and I am so grateful to have organizations like the Electric City Community Grocery Store joining me in the hard work required to create a just and sustainable food system.  So being part of the co-op community is truly part of my life's work - to build a regenerative food system.

The Beet to Corinne: What will having a downtown grocery mean to you?

Corinne:  Though we grow a lot of our own food and then buy or trade for much more at the regional farmers markets, I currently have to drive 45 minutes from our home in Amsterdam to access organic food.  To be able to stop in at the Electric City Co-op on my way home from the Sunday Greenmarket will simplify my life so much!  Or if I run out of supplies mid week, I will only need to drive 20 minutes to get to an organic and ethical grocer.  I'm guessing there are lots of other folks living out in rural Montgomery County who are going to be ecstatic about a co-op in Schenectady.  

The Beet to Corinne: What do you love about Schenectady?

Corinne:  Schenectady has such a thriving community.  The Greenmarket is my absolute favorite place in Schenectady.  Besides being a year round source for local food, the Schenectady Greenmarket has a strong drive to make a positive impact on the community.  The market is run by an inspiring group of volunteer community members and they are running the most awesome program - The Food Box, which buys full price items from farmers and then offers a subsidized box for low income shoppers, who can also use EBT to purchase the box.  Not only does this program support our most vulnerable community of low income folks to get access to the freshest and most nutrient dense food, it truly makes an impact on our farms as a small subsidy for our hard work of growing, especially in the slow winter months.

 

Tried and True Recipes

Plant-Based Easter Egg Dyes (Kat Wolfram) &
Lemon Posset (Carmel Patrick)

 
This month, we feature two Member-Owner recipes, just in time for celebrations of Easter and/or Cesar Chavez’s birthday on March 31.  

Kat Wolfram (MO#1) shares recipes for food-based easter egg dyes. As some of you may remember from some of her past fantastic kids art activities hosted by our food co-op in the past, Kat has a knack for creating beauty out of food scraps, including creating watercolor paintings with food-based dyes. 

Carmel Patrick (MO#952) shares one of her favorite Easter desserts, a light and refreshing lemon posset by way of Ina Garten. 

 

Kat Wolfram’s Incredible, Edible Egg Art

 
Hard-boiled eggs are a delicious and nutritious snack all year round, but this time of year, they get to become stunning works of edible art.  With Kat Wolfram’s tried and true recipes for food-based dyes with ingredients you likely already have at home - or could pick up at the farmer’s market - you can rest assured that you can fully enjoy your incredible, edible eggs in all their rainbow glory. 
 

Guide to Ingredients & Colors

  • Red cabbage →  cobalt blue
  • Blueberries →  blue
  • Blueberries + turmeric →  green
  • Turmeric →  beautiful yellow!
  • Yellow onion skins →  beautiful browns - wrapping egg in onion skin gives lovely patterns. 
  • Beet powder (not beets) →  pale pink/brown. Note: (1) beet powder is more highly pigmented and will create a light pink, but regular beets mostly turn white eggs the color of brown eggs (2) beet dye tends to result in sticky eggs. 

Basic instructions


Hard Boil eggs
  • Place eggs in a pot
  • Cover eggs in pot with cold water
  • Bring water in pot with eggs to boil
  • Turn off heat
  • Let set for 15 minutes
  • Place eggs in an ice bath. 
Prepare each color of your dye separately, with the same method
  • In a pot, combine 4 cups of water + 2 tbsp. of vinegar + your chosen spice or food. 
  • Bring to a boil
  • If you need to, strain out the remaining food.
Basic Method: Soak eggs in your dyes
  • Pour dye over eggs. 
  • The longer the eggs stay in the dye, the more intense the color. 
  • Minimum 30 minutes; maximum 10 hours.
Fancy Methods: 
  • For leaf and flower patterns, place the leaves or flowers on egg and use panty hose or cheesecloth to hold in place as you soak eggs in dyes. 
  • Rinse. 
  • Remove covering. 


A Couple of Videos

Dyeing Easter Eggs with Natural Ingredients  -- mentioned shopping at food co-ops!
Dye Easter Eggs With Natural Ingredients Recipe - includes fancy tips for using flowers and leaves, and pantyhose/nylon stockings! 
Onion Dyed Easter Eggs -  more of a blog than video, but has great ideas for imprints.

 

Carmel Patrick’s Lemon Posset

Carmel Patrick (MO#952) loves to make Ina Garten’s lemon posset for Easter. So yummy!

Recipe excerpted from Modern Comfort Food by Ina Garten. 

With four tablespoons of limoncello and a generous amount of lemon zest, this is the perfect sweet for lemon dessert lovers. 

Ingredients
3 cup heavy cream
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest (2 to 3 lemons)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
⅓ cup lemon juice
4 tablespoon limoncello liqueur
1 cup fresh raspberries
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries

Directions
Step 1. Combine the cream, 1 cup of the sugar, the lemon zest, and salt in a medium saucepan.* Bring to a boil over medium-high, stirring with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Lower heat to a vigorous simmer and cook 6 minutes, without stirring. (Watch the mixture carefully. If it begins to boil up toward the edge, take the pan off the heat for a few seconds before continuing to simmer.)

Step 2. Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the limoncello; set aside 20 minutes. Strain mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a 4-cup glass measuring cup, pressing on zest to release as much liquid as possible. Discard zest. Divide mixture evenly among six 8- to 10-ounce glasses or bowls. Refrigerate, uncovered, 3 hours or until firm. Or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate up to 3 days.

Step 3. Thirty minutes before serving, combine raspberries, strawberries, the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and limoncello in a bowl and allow to macerate. To serve, spoon the berries and their juices onto the custards. Serves 6.

* Don't use a saucepan smaller than 6 inches round and 5 inches tall.

Tips. Cold, firm lemons are easier to zest than soft ones.

To read more or find a print-friendly option, visit: https://www.bhg.com/recipe/english-lemon-posset/?utm_source=emailshare&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mobilesharebutton2
 

Food For Thought

Marching toward Food Sovereignty:

From St. Patrick’s Day through National Farmworkers Awareness Week 


Themes of food sovereignty and solidarity have been woven throughout our March Newsletter… 

This possibility reverberated through City Hall on Monday, March 25, as over 50 of us and our elected leaders showed up in support of our community-owned, democratically governed grocery store, and many others showed up in support of a world where we can all gather in peace and break bread together.  As Reverend Amaury Tañón-Santos (MO#968) expressed so powerfully in his remarks (click here to hear his words for yourself), so many of us gathered in commitment to moving forward through solidarity, cooperative development, community resilience, and collaboration. 

This month’s food for thought is inspired just as much by the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as it is Cesar Chavez’s birthday… These two celebrations may seem wildly disconnected on the surface, but at their roots they are both deeply connected by the histories of food injustices and people-powered movements for food sovereignty. 

 

St. Patrick’s Day & The Mystery of the Potato

This St. Patrick’s Day at the GreenMarket, MOs Latyonia Lee and Elizabeth Walsh shared stories with one another of the ways both of their Irish American families would gather together over a special yearly feast.  Like most Irish-Americans observing St. Patrick’s Day, their families almost enjoyed a meal of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes.  While featured dishes sometimes vary, the celebratory meal almost always includes potatoes in one form or another - whether in an Irish stew, a pot-pie, or a side dish of colcannon. This is unsurprising, given how many Irish Americans share ancestral lines tied to the “Irish Potato Famine” between 1845 to 1852, when more than 1 million Irish people fled Ireland due to threats of starvation and disease. 

Given the prominence of the potato as a historical source of nourishment, including it in an Irish-American feast day makes a lot of sense, right? 

But wait - aren’t potatoes native to the mountainous regions of South America, especially Peru? How did the potato make its way to Ireland and become a staple for the Irish?  

It is true that the potato didn’t reach Ireland until the late 1600s, centuries after St. Patrick lived and died, and well into the 700 year period of British colonial control of the Emerald Isle. 

Prior to colonization, including the time St. Patrick roamed in Ireland’s era of Saints and Scholars, the people of the Emerald Isle appear to have enjoyed a traditional bioregional diet of oats, dairy and eggs (products of cows and chickens, which were rarely used for meat), and a variety of vegetables (e.g., cabbages, onions, garlic, and parsnips, with some wild herbs and greens), wild berries (e.g., blackberries and rowanberries), apples, and - for the many communities along the coast - fish and edible seaweed like dulse and sloke.

The arrival of the potato was both a result of European colonization of South America, and a tool for British colonization of the Emerald Isle. The potato brought an end to the Irish way of eating that had persisted for thousands of years prior. It came at a time of intensifying violence, political oppression, economic exploitation, cultural erasure, and enforced poverty associated with British colonization. Together, these forces largely destroyed the traditional food culture of the island. Potatoes were easy to grow in Ireland’s soil and could feed the mouths of domestic laborers, while the British exported other Irish agricultural products. Soon, the Irish people were left dependent upon a single, starchy crop.  

Today, most of us recognize this as a recipe for disaster; we know that diversity is a necessity for ecological, economic, and cultural resilience. Yet, how often do we recognize that this is an unnatural, empire-designed disaster?  How often do we recognize that our current food system is also designed in ways that produce profound social inequities and ecological harm?  How often do we come together, across our different roles in the food system, to stand in solidarity to co-create thriving, regenerative, agricultural systems that can nourish everybody?

 

Moving forward together in solidarity

Thankfully, as a diverse community of Member-Owners, we are increasingly rising to these collective challenges together in solidarity. 

Each of us, as Member-Owners in the Electric City Community Grocery, are doing so by creating a community-owned grocery store that supports our local farmers and vendors who care for our land as they work to nourish our communities. 

A few of us, like MO Corinne Hansch, grow nutrient dense, organic food through sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices that not only nourish people, but also nourish soil.  Our local farmers are the foundation of a resilient and thriving food system. 

Many of us vote with our dollars week by week, choosing to invest in locally produced, nutrient-dense food cultivated with care for the earth, and future generations. 


We are each finding our part to play, whether through our choices as consumers, through participation in some of the many organizations that belong to the Schenectady County Food Council and Sycamore Collaborative, or participating in regional efforts in reparative and regenerative agriculture, like those of Soul Fire Farm (Rensselaer County) and the Waterfall Unity Alliance at Skywoman’s Forever Farm (Schoharie County)

As we close out March in celebration of National Farmworkers Awareness Week, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, and Women’s History month, let us also pause to lift up stories of solidarity from our past in the fight for food justice. Powerful figures like Dolores Huerta expanded representation for not only farmworkers, but farmworker women. Inspiring leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer - who established the Freedom Farm Cooperative in 1969 - have led the way for farming economies rooted in solidarity.  

Indeed, as Rev. Amaury Tañón-Santos expressed this past Monday, we will find our way forward together into nourishing and flourishing futures through "solidarity, cooperative development, community resilience, and collaboration."

 

For further reading:  



 
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PO Box 1416
Schenectady, NY 12303

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