SCE Helps Give the Gift of Sweet Potato Pies
SCE Helps Give the Gift of Sweet Potato Pies
Cherie Beasley’s recipe for sweet potato pies is easy — first you start with 400 pounds of fresh yams. That’s how much she needed to make pies for 84 homeless families for Christmas this year.
To make all those pies — dozens of 9-inch pies and hundreds of tartlets — Beasley needed a big kitchen. That’s where Southern California Edison stepped in.
Normally the center’s kitchen is used for demonstrations of the latest energy-efficient cooking equipment and for chefs and the food industry to test recipes. But at this time of year, the staff makes time in the schedule for nonprofits like Beasley’s Kitchen Food Ventures to use it.
“It’s part of SCE’s customer service effort to give back to our communities,” said Saldivar.
Beasley has been using the center’s kitchen for about seven years, making hundreds of her signature sweet potato pies and tartlets for needy families at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
She prepares and freezes the custard sweet potato filling in her own kitchen in Long Beach. On her first day at the Foodservice Technology Center, she makes and bakes the hundreds of pie and tartlet shells.
Two volunteers, Karen Grimes and Dennis Brandow, join her the next day, filling and baking the pies while occasionally singing along with the Christmas music playing in the background.
“It’s all about being thankful to be blessed to be able to give back this blessing,” Beasley said.