Families, foodies, and friends will again be flocking to Fresh Fridays!
Next Friday, Aug. 7, the Dorchester Community Food Co-op and the Sustainability Guild will be providing nourishment for the soul as well as for the body as they launch Fresh Fridays 2015: four consecutive Fridays of local food, live music, and creative fun for everyone. The month-long series of start-the-weekend-healthy get-togethers celebrates summer and community with outdoor dining and socializing and music/arts representing Dorchester’s diverse cultures.
“Fresh Fridays is an opportunity for Dorchester residents to meet with neighbors in an outdoor community space. The event brings together people of all ages to eat, dance, and socialize while celebrating food and exchanging ideas,” said project manager Darnell Adams of the Dorchester Community Food Co-op, the organizations that also runs the Dot Winter Farmers Market.
2015 will be the fourth year that this al fresco café experience will be attracting neighbors from Bowdoin and beyond. The ultimate purpose of these gatherings is to foster support, appreciation, and a feeling of community ownership for the brick-and-mortar home that the Co-op is preparing to build.
Fresh Fridays will be held from 6 p.m. to dusk outdoors at the Bowdoin-Geneva Community Hub at the corner of Bowdoin and Topliff Streets on Aug. 7, 14, 21 and 28.
To kick off the season on Aug. 7, Fresh Fridays will welcome local women-owned catering TrinCity, Aesha Raw and Sister Act 3. TrinCity Cuisine, based at 340 Washington St., is an informal eatery that’s winning raves for its Trinidad-style dishes such as roti, doubles & meat & veggie curries. Both Aesha Raw and Sister Act 3 are known for their healthy and scrumptious desserts.
Afro-Latin band Cornell Coley and Afrika Gente will provide the music while Dot Art keeps little hands busy with creative art projects.
Each Fresh Friday will feature a new caterer, highlighting the diverse cuisines of Dorchester, as well as recipes and food demos.
Additional programming will include a pre-event community bike ride on Aug. 14, spoken word performances, Los Sugar Kings, and DJ Nomadik. Recycling and composting by CERO Cooperative will help make Fresh Fridays a zero-waste event.
Fresh Fridays has a $10 suggested donation for adults, but it’s actually pay what you can whether it’s more or less than suggested; children attend free. The donation covers a plate of food and the evening’s worth of entertainment and socializing. For a full schedule visit dotcommcoop.wordpress.com. FF has a rain location for Aug 7, 21 and 28th at the First Parish Church.
The Dorchester Community Food Co-op is an initiative to build a community & worker-owned cooperative market that provides economic opportunity and healthy affordable food. You may have seen their dancing veggie puppets in the Dorchester Day parade. On July 4, the Co-op announced that it had reached its goal of enrolling 400 local household member-owners, on schedule to hit 500 members by year’s end, hoping for 1,000 by the time the Co-op building opens.
