Food Less Travelled Supports Ukraine with Scuffles

Mar 09, 2022

Kim Perry, who owns and runs Food Less Traveled in Verona, has always had a community spirited impulse.

When COVID hit, she started up some community pantries at the store and at the Perry family farm in the Harrowmith/Yarker area.

So last week, she decided she wanted to do something for Ukrainians. She heard that there is a fund set up, at St. Lawrence College, for Ukrainian students attending the college.

“Since we are a local food store and we do a lot of cooking and baking, using local ingredients as much as possible, we typically look to support our community through food. I wanted to make something that fit into our routine at the store so I looked up recipes for Ukrainian dishes.”

In recent months, Food Less Traveled has been expanding its food horizons with soups that are popular around the world, in addition to more traditional Canadian flavours. They have started making Mulligatawny soup, Coconut curry squash and West African peanut soup, and Kim Perry thought maybe making some green Borscht would be a good idea, since it is a Ukrainian specialty.

“I have always wanted to make a borscht,” she said, but it is hard to develop a soup recipe quickly, so I thought this recipe for yeasted cookies, called Scuffles, might be something we could do. And it has worked out.”

The staff started making scuffles to put out at the front of the store for customers to take for free, alongside a donation jar for the St. Lawrence College fund. The scuffles, and the jar, went up on Saturday morning (March 4). Also on Friday morning, CKWS TV responded to a Facebook post that Perry put up, and called the store wanting to do a spot for the Friday night news.

Perry called Barb McLaren, (Barb’s Pierogis) a friend and a supplier, to come out to the store when CKWS was there.

Barb McLaren said “I’m not Ukrainian, I’m 100% Polish, but I have been a volunteer with the Ukrainian Canadian Committee in Kingston for 22 years. People are devastated by what is going on, of course.”

On Friday night, Perry had her baking staff stay late to put up more dough for scuffles, which was a good idea, because Saturday was busy in the store, and everyone wanted a scuffle, or more accurately, they wanted to make a donation to the cause, and try a scuffle at the same time.

“We did not want to put a price on the scuffles,” said Perry, “we wanted to tell people to take one or two and try them, and to make a donation if they wanted to. We did not want it to be a purchase or anything like that.”

The scuffles ran out on Saturday, but the donations kept coming, up to $500 by the end of the day. Food Less Traveled is closed on Sundays, but starting on Monday mornings, the Scuffles, and the jar, are available again.

“We’ll keep this going as long as there is a response. And the bakers in the store have really figured out how to make them” Kim Perry said. “They are not really cookies. They are more like small, sweet but not too sweet, buns. Perfect for breakfast or to eat with tea in the afternoon.

People are really affected by the war in the Ukraine, and they want to do something, even if it is just eating a scuffle and making a donation.”