EVENTS, PROGRAMS, & WORKSHOPS

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for our monthly events email here.

Upcoming Programs

It's Not Too Soon to Think About Gingerbread Houses!

May be an image of text that says '2021 Sugar & Spice Gingerbread Contest Entry Drop-Off Theme Maker's choice Nov 26- 26 Dec 2 TAUNY'

Our 2021 theme is … Maker’s Choice! We are taking a hiatus from competition and categories this year. All makers who enter will receive a prize. Whatever your skill level, TAUNY invites you to participate and make this tradition continue! We are excited to see the outcomes and look forward to all of your gingerbread houses.

Submissions can be dropped off at The TAUNY Center during business hours Friday, November 26th through Thursday, December 2nd.

Visit here to download the submission form:

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:54a73687-fe70-4c90-8b15-2d90fa8aa8ec#pageNum=1

As always, the Sugar & Spice Gingerbread Contest entries must be made of gingerbread baked from scratch and be entirely edible. Maximum base size is 20" x 20”. Please bring in your submission on a sturdy base of some kind. A registration form (available online at tauny.org and in The Folkstore) will include space for a brief description of the gingerbread house and/or a statement from the artist.

Photo Caption: Set your ovens to bake!

Gingerbread house construction is under way as we’re quickly approaching house submissions starting November 26th at the TAUNY Center.

Some of our favorite recipes for Gingerbread building materials and royal icing: here

Visit here for your submission form: here

Link to the facebook event posting: here

Personal Collections: Holiday Cards by Bill Newman

Personal Collections: Holiday Cards by Bill Newman is an exhibit of original holiday cards created by artist Bill Newman, Canton, for his friends Anneke and John Larrance and Lois Ann and Bob FitzRandolph, 1990-present. Each card features an original artwork on the front, with a message and cartoon of the artist on the back. As an artist, Bill is known for painting what he sees from the perspective of the farm where he lives. For his holiday cards, he often paints or sketches from his family’s collection of ornaments. For his friends, these collections of cards have become an annual feature of their seasonal decorating.

Exhibit is open on our second floor from November 6th-27th 2021.

Photo Captions: Bill's handmade Card included full artwork on the front and a quirky note and self portrait on the back.

Personal Collections: Hand Tied Fishing Flies by Fran Buckley

Fran Buckley, Canton, began tying fishing flies as a young man, 85 years ago. Personal Collections: Fishing Flies by Fran Buckley, is a collection of flies that he has tied over the years, displayed in a table made specially for the purpose by his daughter and woodworker, Kathleen Buckley. Fran was always more of a stream fisherman than a pond or lake fisherman. He traveled all over the world on fishing trips, where he used the bamboo rods he made and often flies he’d made from his own patterns. Each year, Fran and his fishing friends would get together regularly starting two months before the season opened to build up their inventory of hand-tied flies.

Exhibit is open on our second floor from November 6th-27th 2021.

Photo Caption: Close-up of six hand tied flies on display by Fran Buckley

It's Not Too Soon to Think About Gingerbread Houses!

Our annual Sugar & Spice Gingerbread House display is a favorite of visitors to The TAUNY Center. Usually, we choose a specific theme each year, but this year we are leaving it up to wherever your imagination takes you. Our 2021 theme is … Maker’s Choice! We are taking a hiatus from competition and categories this year. All makers who enter will receive a prize. Whatever your skill level, TAUNY invites you to participate and make this tradition continue! We are excited to see the outcomes and look forward to all of your gingerbread houses.

Submissions can be dropped off at The TAUNY Center during business hours Friday, November 26th through Thursday, December 2nd. Click here to download the submission form.

Photo Captions: Some submissions from the “2020” Gingerbread Contest.

Making Bissap with Lauren and Ena Diop

“I’m from Canton, NY, where I live with my husband Abdoul and our four daughters, Ena, Coura, Rokaya, and Adaleen. I’ve been watching or helping in the kitchen with my mom and sisters for as long as I can remember, and it’s the same with my daughters, who always want to be cooking with me as well as making up their own creative dishes.

I love how food can bring people together and connect us back to people, places, and memories. Everywhere I have been able to travel has influenced my cooking, and recreating dishes transports me back to those places. The same I think is true for my husband, who is from Senegal. We eat Senegalese recipes weekly in our home, some of which I have learned from my husband's mother and sisters. We are grateful that our daughters love and regularly request drinks like bissap and Senegalese meals. This tradition provides the flavors and memories of home as well as giving our daughters that connection to their culture.” —Lauren Diop

For the Grow and Tell project, we visited Lauren Diop and her daughter Ena (Canton, NY) to learn about how they use the mint from their garden in making bissap. Watch this video of them sharing how they make this delicious drink that is very special to their family.

Tending the Wild Edible Garden with Jane Desotelle

At the peak of the summer time, while everything is so green and lush, we paid a visit to herbalist, native plant conservationist, and TAUNY North Country Living Traditions Award recipient Jane Desotellle in Plattsburgh, NY for our Grow and Tell video project. Watch this video here, see how Jane grows her wild edible and medicinal garden, and listen to the stories that she shares about family, friends, traditions, and plants.

A “Grow and Tell Project” Call: Share Your Story!

Will you be growing anything this year that is connected to your personal, family, community, or cultural food traditions?  
  

As part of our collaboration with littleGrasse Foodworks Community Farm on the 2021 “Grow and Tell Project”, we’re looking to learn about how the food we grow reflects and helps sustain our food traditions. From a single potted plant to small kitchen gardens to homestead plots and everything in between—we’d love to hear your stories of the food you grow, the meaningful meals you make with it, and more! Drop us a line at camilla@tauny.org or 315-386-4289. 
  

Photo Captions: Starting top left, moving clockwise: First fresh greens of the season in the littleGrasse Foodworks Community Farm greenhouse, March 2021. Growing and preserving food are important North Country traditions. Over the years, Dawn Atkinson of Pierrepont, NY (TAUNY North Country Heritage Award recipient) has regularly preserved hundreds of jars of vegetables, meat, jams, pickles, and more in a season, all from her farm and garden. Rosemary growing in the TAUNY Center classroom window.

“Folk to Table” Project

You know we at TAUNY have always loved food--we love learning about people’s food traditions and practices, from recipes treasured over generations to new family favorites that shine a light on stories and experiences important to North Country life. And we love sharing food with you--at events, gathered round our own TAUNY Kitchen counter, and through stories, photos, and videos online.

So in some ways, it’s nothing new for us to be focused on food--from the abundance of foodlore that’s come up in our varied research projects, to the award-winning Good Food, Served Right cookbook and smaller recipe gathering projects, to the opening of The TAUNY Center Kitchen, to the work of Kitchen Specialist Teresa Stone over 2020 and the regular contributions of many volunteers, interns, and project participants--and of course the years of sharing delicious and meaningful tastes of food traditions at countless programs.

Going forward, we’re thrilled to have the chance to build on all this and more by diving into our new “Folk to Table'' Project. Over the coming months, Director of Research and Programs Camilla Ammirati will be shifting focus to this project in order to develop TAUNY’s work with the food traditions of the region and all who live here.

The initiative will include things such as: ongoing research into regional food culture and the food traditions individuals and communities carry on throughout the North Country; projects and presentations featuring these food traditions; live (in-person and/or virtual) cooking demonstrations and workshops; videos and other social media features; and more. As we get this initiative going, we’re especially excited to start with a 2021 partnership with littleGrasse Community Farm to highlight the connections between food-growing practices and the food traditions they reflect and sustain. This project will feature food-growing both at littleGrasse and in personal gardens around the area and beyond. Stay tuned for more about this project, and let us know (at camilla@tauny.org) if you grow food (whether a single herb or crops that help sustain you) to help support your own food traditions and would like to share your story--and maybe a glimpse of your garden and the dishes you make with ingredients from it--for this project!

As with all our work, this is a community project--learning about, documenting, sharing, and celebrating the food traditions of our region begins with you! Keep an eye out in the coming weeks and months for calls to share stories, recipes, traditions, and more. And meanwhile drop us a line any time at camilla@tauny.org if you want to let us know about your own food traditions--or anything food culture-related you see around you that you think we should know about--or if you’d like to get involved in the program as a volunteer or intern.

Pictured: Camilla happily dives into the wonderful Adirondack Cookbook by Hallie Bond and Stephen Topper, to brush up on some research--and maybe decide on a dinner plan--as she starts shifting her focus to North Country foodways.