By RED editor Amy Goldwasser, reporting from NYC on one-of-a-kind, handpainted gifts—cookies and cards—that help an awesome organization in her neighborhood after a brutal storm
There are few things in this world closer to my heart than cookies and the Lower Eastside Girls Club. To think of them together brings me great joy. To know that they were both compromised by Hurricane Sandy makes me want to help. And eat cookies.
Now, for the holidays, all these sweet things come together, in a couple of entirely special, entirely handcrafted, entirely girl-made items: a Holiday Cookie Tin ($30 includes shipping to anywhere in the U.S.) and a collection of Celebrating Women Greeting Cards ($20 for a collection of 12).
These are gifts that benefit everyone involved—with original art and baked goods, yes, but also with post-storm relief and life-changing cultural and job programs for an amazing group of New York City girls, age 8 to 18, whose neighborhood and homes were hit hard. And the organization’s Sweet Things Bake Shop on Avenue C was flooded, just when high-season was about to bring mother-daughter baking teams employment for the holidays, their ovens fired up to meet demand. But our dedicated pastry chefs persevere! From donated kitchens around town, they’re making their worth-waiting-for-every-year gingerbread brownstone cookies (and even something called a pfeffernüsse), as exquisite and delicious as ever.
Less edible, though equally beautiful and arguably more educational, are the greeting cards (printed on recycled paper with earth-friendly inks) that include women worth telling the world about, Eleanor Roosevelt to Rosa Parks to Comandante Ramona. No two revolutionaries—like no two hand-painted snowflake butter cookies—are alike, and every one will spread cheer to the lucky person who receives it and the lucky girls of the Lower Eastside Girls Club.