… I’m writing the Tuesday Three on a Monday. Here’s a little event that if you’re local to me—include the Berkshires because this is fun—you might like to hop on to downtown Northampton for it. It’s a pie contest at Tuesday Market. There will be four categories: best pie, prettiest pie, best gluten free pie and best pie made by a kid. There will vanilla ice cream to a la mode it, scooped by Steve Herrell his very self.
The pies will use ingredients that are local, but of course.
We have Gina Hyams to thank. I interviewed her about her Pie Contest in a Box (now, I think you could say, a franchise) and as my elder teen and I regarded the fun in the box one summer afternoon we thought about how much greater a larger scale pie contest than one we could produce from the kit would be. We thought of Tuesday Market. Then we thought of the doubling of the doubling of SNAP Benefits’ effort—and how nifty it would be to hold a pie contest for a worthy cause such as Food StampsX2. And then we thought to ask Ben and Oona whether this sounded fun, doable, and sweet. We happened to know that Ben and Oona love pie, because their wedding reception featured a potluck pie component where mere non-local-food-loving-non-farmers would insert cake. Picture a table groaning with pies. Oh, you don’t have to picture their wedding reception; all you have to do is make your way to Tuesday Market to see such a sight.
You could even wish them happiness about their marriage, just because that’s a nice thing to do.
Back to the Food StampsX2: the doubling of those benefits helps 50-60 families get double the amount of healthy, local, delicious food at Tuesday Market each week. No one will save the world, solve the food supply issues or whack out either poverty or the crisis around food access by doubling the food stamp benefits at Tuesday Market, obviously. I see it like pie, a sticky sweet moment that fortifies you to go on and find the joy in a longer journey that includes whatever’s next to make the world better. It’s easier, simply because you saw and tasted the sweetness.
Because I’ll be mighty busy on Tuesday, I’ll post three interesting things today instead. And first tell you three good things: one is despite every up and down (well, down), I had the double (see there’s that double again) pleasure of hanging out with one of my favorite babies with my original baby (now nearly 17) on Sunday afternoon while her mama took a bike ride; two is my little girl literally skipped between turns at her gymnastics class on Saturday, her enthusiasm uncontainable and three is the weekend featured loads of friend time for the little girl and the next-up boy, including a neighborhood party with a bounce house and water balloons. One small one jumped almost to her heart’s content; one boy came home wet.
My three offerings this week are things you might like to know about:
The NAEYC or National Association for Education of Young Children began a site for families, and it’s a resource that will be of use for families regardless of whether their child is in a center that’s part of NAEYC or elsewhere including home.
Mine is a bronze level walk-friendly city. We should go for silver or gold! We have improvements to make, yet, really hooray for Northampton and for the notion of honoring walk-friendly cities says this walker.
Mine is a cool alma mater that will have a symposium on Food and Farm for the Future next month. I think this is an event to plan on, destination participation.
