STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — With the Richmond Town chili cook-off a dead gig and Beer Garden’s beef-on-bean deliciousness gone for good, where can a chili head get a decent bowl of the stuff? Shelia Hewitt points to Christ Church at 76 Franklin Ave. for its annual chili contest on Saturday, Oct. 21.
Enter for free. Stay to taste. And if so, pay a nominal amount for samplings with proceeds slated for a good cause — the New Brighton church’s Breast Cancer Awareness effort.
Here’s how the contest will roll.
Pumpkins from New Mexico support domestic labor with pickers from Native American populations in the area. (Courtesy of Erin Urban)
“We ask people to have their chili there by 10 a.m. and it goes all the way until 3 p.m. You don’t have to be there. If you drop off your chili you can leave your contact information and the church folks will serve it. At 3 p.m. we will count to see who are the winners,” said Hewitt.
She added, “We earn our money by selling the chili. A small is $3 and large is $5.”
Chilies are numbered. Guests are the judges. The most tickets in a bag set in front of the chili gets a prize. Three lucky chefs can earn gifts of new kitchen ware.
Hewitt with fellow church ladies Bonnie Franz and Connie Black have organized this event for about seven years, halted only briefly by COVID.
Hewitt also called attention to Christ Church’s pumpkin patch offering “quality pumpkins with a long shelf life” from Farmington, NM. The patch is open through October on the front lawn from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Children and adults are welcome. Proceeds go to after-school youth programs that include ukulele lessons.
She explained, “They start at $1. They are picked by Native Americans.”
The Boy Scouts Troop 76 purchased the hand-loaded truckload to support American labor. The youth expressed in a message, “Unlike many other produce growers [the sources] use no undocumented labor. Nearly 100% of [the source’s] farm workforce is Native American. We…
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