Church event Saturday includes Greek lunch, dinner, dessert

VIRGINIA BEACH

Each year, the women of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church scour the local supermarkets to purchase ingredients from their lists.

The baking begins in April and what they create is an enormous array of traditional, mostly homemade Greek pastries, cakes, cookies, breads and many other delicacies.

They will all be available during their annual bake sale from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday.

Normally held on a Friday, they decided to push it back a day and have added dinner, along with lunch entrees purchased as combos or a la carte. Items such as pastichio, spanakopita, dolmathes (grape leaves with rice and meat), and gyros will be among the Greek cuisine.

Ethnic desserts such as karithopita (walnut cake with syrup), vasilopita (sweet coffee bread), kulich (Russian nut bread) and more will be sold by the piece. Variety boxes and church cookbooks will be for sale. Tours, along with questions and answers about the Orthodox faith, will be led by Father James Pavlow.

For more than 30 years, the women, who are part of the church’s Philoptochos Society – a charitable organization meaning friends of the poor – bake their hearts out in order to help others.

“We give away almost every penny,” said Flo Blankenship, who has been involved with the bake sale for the past 10 years.

Proceeds benefit various local, national and international charities, including Lee’s Friends, Samaritan House, Orthodox Christian Fellowship, Judeo-Christian Outreach Center, Operation Smile, Love and Caring Ministries and Global Volunteers. A portion is budgeted for the next year’s bake sale.

“The whole purpose is to help people,” said Blankenship, who is in charge of the tiropitas, cheese triangles in phyllo dough. “We make approximately 180 boxes over the summer and freeze them.”

They have already made more than 12,000 of one of their best sellers, koulourakia (cinnamon twist cookies).

Last year, heartbreak struck when the church’s freezers failed and they lost 95 percent of their frozen goods. But, this year, everything is in perfect working order and the 25 bakers are spending their days busily preparing the fare that also includes frozen items.

Marshia Maestas has chaired the bake sale for the past two years and although she has the huge undertaking of scheduling the baking and taking inventory for supplies, Maestas said it all runs smoothly thanks to the dedicated women and quality equipment.

She also credits a book filled with family recipes and specific instructions detailing cooking, packaging, cooling and more, to help with the enormous project.

“It’s a lot of work,” Blankenship said. “But, it’s so nice for the ladies to get together and work on this.”

That seems to be the consensus of the volunteers, including the men, women and children who help run the concessions and transport large purchases to vehicles.

“Being here and raising money to help the poor,” Maestas said, “it gives me such satisfaction like nothing else does.”