CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. – On a cold day in Sloan, warm crock pots were a welcome sight in the village fire hall. Hundreds of people lined up to taste dozens of kinds of soup.
Soup on Sunday is a yearly fundraiser in the village that helps Sloan pay for it’s annual family picnic.
“It’s a group effort, none of us get paid extra to do this,” said Village Clerk Debra Smith, “It really is a community event. The firemen help us out, residents, and our relatives help us. It really comes together every year.”
This year was the 7th year of the event, and for $7, people could taste all the soup they could eat.
Planning starts early, with the Clerk and her deputy grocery shopping earlier in the week. Then a team of 15 to 20 volunteers start the prep work of chopping all the ingredients on Friday. On Saturday, cooking is a whole day affair, with the volunteers stirring up the pots of soup for 14 hours straight.
There’s always a wide variety of flavors, this year there were 43 to choose from. “Every year we try to do four or five new soups, and some that didn’t go so well the year before will drop off. So there’s always a few new ones,” Smith said. One of the new additions this year was a jalapeno popper soup. People could also taste the reuben and beef on weck varieties. But, according to Smith, there is one crowd favorite, “I do the chicken wing soup, and no matter how much I make it’s gone in the first half an hour.”
The event started at 12:30 pm, and plenty of people made sure to get there early. “It normally runs about two hours until the soup is gone,” Smith said. “This year it seems like we don’t even have enough seats, there’s probably about 300 people here.”
The village family picnic this event was raising funds for, will be held in August.
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