Two tons of food fuels a festive three-day celebration of culture that invites people to go Greek for at least a few days.
“We give it everything we got and give from our hearts,” Evan Euripidou said. “If you come down here I know you are not going to be disappointed.”
St. George Greek Orthodox Church kicked off its 37th Annual Greek Festival at 11 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 7, and it will continue throughout the weekend until 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9. The festival is held at the Hellenic Center located at 510 Liberty Street in Schenectady, which is directly opposite of the Schenectady County Public Library. The three-day event features live music, folk dancing, arts and crafts vendors, raffles, activities for children and, of course, lots of Greek food and pastries.
Euripidou, festival chairman and president of the parish’s council, has been in charge of the festival for seven years, but he’s been coming for much longer.
“I have been coming to festival since I was a kid,” Euripidou said. “The dancing, for me, has always been the most special part of it.”
The Aegeans will be playing live Greek music under the outdoor tent each evening to get any festivalgoer moving. The Fotia Hellenic Society is also performing folk dances in traditional Greek costumes. Over three days, the dance troupe will perform 45 different dances from seven regions of Greece and Cyprus.
Scheduled guided tours of the church are available for anyone to attend for free. The church features Byzantine iconography and architecture.
The homemade food also plays a big part and as Euripidou put it, “you would be crazy” not to try some of what’s offered.
Some of the featured dinners inside the Hellenic Center include moussaka (layers of eggplant, potato and sautéed ground beef topped with cream sauce), olympian kotta (chicken with Greek seasonings and lemon) and lamb shanks yiovetsi. Other food items available for individual purchase include spanakopita (spinach and feta cheese between layers of filo dough), dolmades (grape leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice) and pastitsio (seasoned ground beef with pasta and grated cheese, topped with cream sauce).
Outside of the Hellenic Center is an outdoor barbecue area featuring even more food. There will also be thousands of Greek cookies and a bevy of pastries.
To serve up the wide offering of food also takes a lot of preparation and lot of ingredients.
“It is always amazing to me the amount of food they cook in that kitchen,” festival spokeswoman Olga Delorey said. “Each year it seems to get bigger and bigger … we must be doing something right.”
In the dinning room there are 4,300 dolmades, more than 2,000 pieces of spanakopita, 500 stuffed green peppers and 120 pounds of zucchini. The 45 large pans of moussaka and 30 large pans of pastitsio require 75 gallons of béchamel sauce, 200 pounds of ground beef and 200 pounds of eggplant. Also, 300 pounds of lamb shanks and 300 half chickens are used for dishes inside the center.
Outside, the barbecue area will see 450 pounds of chicken and 400 pounds of pork cooked for souvlak by the end of the festival. Four hundred pounds of beef is planned to be used to make gyros. Some of the dessert ingredients include 700 pounds of flour, 250 pounds of sugar, nearly 110 pounds of butter and 60 pounds of walnuts.
The festival is the biggest fundraiser for the church, accounting for about a third of its annual budget, Euripidou said. Though there are other ways to raise a similar amount of money for the church, Euripidou said parishioners continue to host the event to showcase their culture and bring the community together.
There are about 75 volunteers helping support the festival, with 10 organizers doing preliminary work. The two men leading the kitchen efforts are Chris Euripidou and Charlie Koines. Ten of the volunteers aren’t even members of the church, but “come down and do that for the love of the festival,” Evan Euripidou said.
Delorey is a first generation American and said she’s gone to the church her whole life even though she isn’t Greek, but Ukrainian.
“I find that there is something that draws us there. It is not only about your spiritual and religious life, it is a very vibrant, warm and welcoming community,” she said. “People are proud of their heritage and with each generation it moves away from the generation that came to America, so I think it is important to preserve that.”
The event, while celebrating Greek roots, also helps introduce that culture and heritage to people outside of the church.
“Sharing culture … is the bridge to understanding,” she said.
