The about 20 ladies of the church’s women’s organization, called Philoptochos, have already spent hours upon hours baking, and will continue to bake across four to five days preparing homemade desserts for sale at the annual St. John’s Greek Festival in Blue Point.

Olympia Gouvis, the current president of the organization, helps run the kitchen with advising baker and past president Toula Dimos, who leads about 15 to 20 women in baking large quantities of about a half-dozen family recipes that have existed with the church.

“Just a bunch of hardworking women—they are very, very dedicated to St. John’s parish and the community,” Gouvis said of the baking efforts. “We don’t just bake for the festival; we bake for Easter and Christmas. We also do a lot of fundraisers, and we really support the church.”

In the last year, she noted, the group raised close to $100,000 for the church’s restoration.

The desserts include galaktoboureko, a custard-filled dessert and a crowd favorite, as well as the ever-popular baklava. Their famous loukoumades, a hot, fresh, fried-dough pastry topped with honey syrup, will be prepared on-site and made to order.

The process started last week on Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, and continued on Monday, June 17, Tuesday, June 18, Wednesday June 19 and this Thursday, June 20. They start early in the morning.
“We also will take part in a few smaller days to finish up,” explained Gouvis.

The women donated all the ingredients, and the rest of the costs were covered by the Philoptochos treasury, including hundreds of pounds of flour, lots of honey, butter, syrup, and plenty of walnuts.

The sales from desserts alone have raised up to $26K in past festivals for the church. All the proceeds, including the money raised from the desserts, support the “Restoring for the Future” campaign to repair the church.

“Our Ladies Philoptochos put a tremendous amount of baking time in and make sure the homemade pastries are fresh and delicious,” said Fr. Dean Panagos. “There are loyal customers who come long distances every year to the festival just to get their annual fill of our Greek sweets.”

For the main course, there will be gyros, spanakopita, moussaka, pastitsio, Greek salad, oven-roasted lamb and more. There will also be iced Greek frappe coffee, beer and wine, including varieties imported from Greece.

The event takes place with free admission on the grounds of St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, 77 Montauk Highway, Blue Point. For more information call 631-363-6450 or email bluepointgreekfest@gmail.com.