This month, the Provincetown Stop & Shop celebrates Spring and SKIP with its BLOOMIN FOR GOOD program. BLOOMIN FOR GOOD is Stop & Shop’s initiative to help fight hunger. For the month of April, Stop and Shop will donate $1 to SKIP for each bouquet (with the red circle sticker) sold. Celebrate Spring with a bouquet of flowers and support SKIP at the same time!

Happy Spring Everyone!

Donna

Many of you already know our SKIP Chef, Gina Larkin, and most of you have enjoyed her delicious & nutritious food over the course of the winter in Provincetown. We all think that she’s a star among us and we are so grateful to have her cooking at SKIP this year. So let’s get to know a little bit more about Gina.

Gina was born and raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, in the southwestern corner of Boston. She first visited Ptown about 25 years ago, and fell in love with it (does this sound familiar to any of you?)! Gina stated that she moved here full time 11 years ago, in 2011, because, “well, I just had to be here.” Gina grew up in an Italian family, where food was a centerpiece of life. She began cooking at home, and then took a job cooking at a nursing home while she was still a teenager.

Gina loves cooking and feeding people. Over the years, she has cooked at the Harvard University Dining Halls. She spent 10 years cooking at the non-profit Women’s Lunch Place, which provides meals for needy and homeless women in Boston, and at the Boston Living Center. Locally, she has cooked at Fanizzi's and at Liz’s Cafe in town and at the Blue Willow Cafe in Wellfleet among other places.  

When asked what her favorite food is to cook or what her favorite recipe is, the answer is “soup!”, which makes Gina a natural for the soup kitchen. Gina served as the SKIP chef in 2011, and then went on to do other things. We are so happy to have her back at SKIP this year. Our guests compliment her food again and again.  

Gina brings a lot of things to SKIP, including immense patience and an easy going manner, which makes our volunteer staff enjoy coming to the kitchen each day. Gina loves cooking for people, and feeding people because by doing so, it’s about everyone else and not about yourself. She loves the sense of community that SKIP fosters and she relishes the chance to give something back to the community. She enjoys the relationships that she has built with our SKIP regulars, some of which go back to when she cooked here a decade ago!

Working with an all-volunteer staff can be very challenging, because you have different people with different levels of skill in the kitchen every day. Working with the volunteers is always in the forefront of Gina’s mind. There is a lot of teaching and demonstrating that goes on in the kitchen and she enjoys that aspect of the job. And besides, says Gina, “there’s nothing else to do in the winter in Ptown.” 

Thank you, Gina, for a season of fantastic food and great camaraderie. You have kept us all fed and happy and we are thankful that you spent the winter with us at SKIP.

Gina plans to honor our guests' requests for some of your favorite meals in April! She'll also celebrate the last day of the season with cheeseburgers on the grill! As always, you can view the current lunch menu on our website:

www.skipfood.org/menu  

Image by rawpixel.com

Roberta first came to Provincetown for the summer on May 11, 1979 from New Jersey (yes, she remembers the exact date!). She was in the process of getting a divorce, and although she didn’t realize it at the time, she felt safe being around gay people and quickly settled in. She could barely make toast but was hired at The Hideaway as their breakfast cook. Like most folks that come for the summer, she ended up staying and has held many jobs over the years; she estimates 20! She said her favorite job is working on boats, and to this day she still works for the Dolphin Fleet. One winter (around 1984) she left to work as a scallop picker on a trawler out of Coco Beach, Florida. Once they were finished dragging, the pickers would be awakened to process scallops, one time for 36 hours straight! She was at sea for 13 consecutive nights processing scallops, and she loved it!

Roberta lives in a very unique house. On Christmas Eve 1995, she and her late husband Peter (they met at the Governor Bradford!) saw the property at the crest of the hill on Shore Road in Truro and they knew that’s where they would build their dream house. Peter was a stonemason, and he got granite from cathedrals, stone sculptures from city buildings, and all kinds of rocks and geodes that littered their property waiting for the artisan to use them. Within 6 months the house was built, yet the stonework continued for nearly two decades after. Roberta recalls having scaffolding in her living room for 3 winters while Peter put up the stone for the massive fireplace. The granite mantle alone weighs 400 pounds and is from Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Lowell. It took Peter and his friend 4 hours to lift it in place. 

The house that Peter built, is an amazing display of granite and stone with magical geodes embedded in spots on the exterior of the house, along with two massive fireplaces inside. Roberta’s husband passed away in 2016 after a battle with Alzheimers and left one small area in the back of the house unfinished.

The following year, Roberta joined SKIP because she was looking for some structure in her life. That 2017 season she signed up for 5 days a week, double shifts! That’s dedication at 72 years of age! She’s scaled back to 2 days a week now, and also volunteers for the thrift shop every Saturday. She says she misses serving and seeing people, but loves the camaraderie of prepping food in the kitchen with others. Roberta loves people, is fun to be with, and throws herself the best birthday parties! Thanks Roberta, for all you do for our community!

Peter’s masonry skills can be seen around town, like the very unique house on Center Street (below) across from the library, and the walkway in front of town hall.

NEW YORK GIRL

We featured volunteer Jane Kogan in last month's newsletter. Since then Jane has been chosen to display an original piece for a juried exhibition being held by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) and the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (PMPM). Jane painted this 6 feet high piece back in 1966 and it is titled “NEW YORK GIRL”. Jane remarked that “This was done in the days when I was still calling women girls”!  I asked Jane to describe this painting in her own words. 

“She's in a black coat---I had a sort of heavy plastic white one like that at the time, those were the Mod years---with a yellow cab, and the top of the Chrysler building behind her. Also, I was living then in Manhattan near a Con Ed. plant, and that is the building with a smoking chimney on the right, another similar chimney over her shoulder on the left. And one can see part of a bridge over a river, maybe the East River, maybe the Harlem river, as I lived at different times near one or the other.”

“NEW YORK GIRL” will be on display at the Pilgrim Monument Museum (PMPM) for the entire season, April 1st through November.

SKIP will serve the last meal of the 2012-22 season on April 29th.  We are actively working on providing our guests with a list of resources which will be distributed to you the last week of April.  Please contact our office via email: [email protected] or by phone: 508-487-8331 should you require assistance.

A special thanks goes out to Paul Fanizzi of Fanizzi's and Rob Anderson and Loic Rossignon of The Canteen for their donations of food and paper products to SKIP. We love our community!

Photo Credit: RawPixel

ACROSS

2 - SPRING RAYS

3 - SPRING BURST OF COLOR

6 - WITHOUT SHOES

8 - FIRST FLOWERS

10 - PRANKSTER'S DAY

14 - CALLING ALL GREEN THUMBS

DOWN

1 - BOSTON'S BIG RUNNING EVENT

4 - GRAB YOUR DUSTER

5 - SPRING BIRDS

7 - WE'VE GOT MILES FOR THIS

9 - BASEBALL IS BACK 11 - BRIGHT YELLOW DISPLAY

12 - MORNING SERENADE

13 - BOATSLIP 4 PM 

APRIL 6:  Health Program - 11:30 to 1:30 @ SKIP 

APRIL 20: Health Program - 11:30 to 1:30 @SKIP

APRIL 29: Last Day of SKIP for the Season

www.skipfood.org/events

SKIP would love to feature our local talent. If you are a poet, artist, writer or cartoonist, we have a guest columnist section. Space is limited in this format, but please let us know if you would like to contribute to SKIP SCOOP by emailing us at: [email protected]

HEALTH PROGRAM

The Program involves health monitoring by a registered nurse for any SKIP guest who wants it. A nurse will be on-site to check blood pressure, review medications and answer health-related questions. The program is completely confidential for every participant. It is on the first and third Wednesday of each month during SKIP’s season. The nurse will be available from before lunch at 11:30am until 1:30pm on those days. 

HOMELESS PREVENTION COUNCIL

The Homeless Prevention Council has office hours in Provincetown from 10 - 2 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday at the Provincetown United Methodist Church. For more information, please refer to their website. www.hpccapecod.org/provincetown-community-support

TRANSPORTATION

If you are physically unable to get to SKIP, a friend or neighbor can pick up a lunch for you. If you have no one to ask, we may be able to arrange for delivery. Please call the SKIP office at 508-487-8331 to let us know about your special need. We will see if one of our first shift volunteers can drop it off or if Helping Our Women (HOW) can assist with delivery.

CROP SWAP IS UP AND RUNNING

It is a program sponsored by the Ptown Health Department, the Ptown Public Library and SKIP. Crop Swap is Ptown’s source for fresh, uncut fruits and vegetables and is open year round. Anyone may donate fresh fruits and vegetables, and all are welcome to take what they need. All fruits and vegetables are free. Please bring your own bag.

Crop Swap is located in the Ptown Library, 356 Commercial Street, to the left as you enter the front doors. Hours are:

Mondays & Fridays: 10-4:30

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays: 10 - 7:30

Saturdays & Sundays: 1 - 4:30

There is a refrigerator for perishable items and shelves with bins for non-perishables, such as potatoes and squash. Be sure to take advantage of this valuable resource. 

GINA LARKIN, Executive Chef| HILARY McHUGH, Office Coordinator |

DIDIER CORALLO, Dishwasher/Utility Person |