Every Sunday evening through the end of March, something remarkable is happening in the woods of West Tisbury, regardless of snowdrifts: Stillpoint’s community suppers. Attendees of all ages enter the gently lit barn to find two long tables adorned with tablecloths, candles, and scores of table settings.
The bountiful, locally sourced dinner accommodates alpha-gal syndrome and other food sensitivities, offering vegan, vegetarian, and meat-based entrées; diners eat with live background music; after the meal, as servers clear the plates and deliver desserts to the table, the lighting shifts to highlight the musicians, who perform with guest artists joining in.
The whole evening is free of charge. (Donations are welcome.) Even more impressive, the whole evening is upcycled.
“We use a lot of upcycled food at the Charter School, where I’m running the kitchen,” explains Betsy Carnie, the cook, “so we’ve tapped into networks of food rescue. People bring things to the school and ask: ‘Do you want this?’ We get produce from the farms that is in excess — more than they’ll sell before it rots.”
Another common source of food is the “mispick,” meaning “mistaken and picked up.” Carnie explains, “Things come to Cronig’s as mispicks — for example, they have no place on the shelf, they have no way to itemize it, etc. — and they don’t want the expense of returning it, so they offer it to us.”
The team works with Cronig’s because it’s right across the road from the Charter School; Carnie takes students with her to collect the food, which gives the students an up-close understanding of the supply chain. The food is prepared at the Charter School, because Stillpoint doesn’t have a kitchen: “Using a kitchen that does exist is using what we already have to make something more for more people.
