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MANVILLE: Fun food facts for festival

By Mary Ellen Day, Special Writer
The Sacred Heart Summer Festival is done and over, but here are some fun food fact totals that have just been tallied.
It was the 46th year of the festival, but the first one under the new Christ the Redeemer parish. One never realizes just how much food is made and consumed during such a large event as it is at this longtime festival.
The festival was held recently on the church grounds on Filak Street and is known for its Polish food. It usually draws a crowd of more than 10,000 people each year from all over.
Maribeth Thomaszfski, organizer and chairwoman of the festival, said, "The carnival went well. We had great weather. It wasn’t hot and humid, and it didn’t rain. We had good crowds for most of the whole week. Everything went pretty much very well."
Ms. Thomaszfski said they get the kielbasa and sausage from a parishioner who owns a store, and everyone raved about it and came back for more.
The food is always the main thing that draws people in. Volunteers worked for months, making pieorgis, which totaled 1,820 dozen or 21,840 individual pierogis.
There were 144 pounds of butter used, 1,050 gallons of cooking oil used, 525 pounds of homemade noodles, 200 pounds of sausage, 1,010 pounds of kielbasa, 250 pounds of chicken fingers, 600 pounds of French fries, 5,750 pounds of potatoes, 2,750 pounds of onions, 900 pounds of cabbage, 814 pounds of ground beef for stuffed cabbage, 100 gallons of sauerkraut, 240 dozen eggs, 400 pounds of flour and 50 gallons of pickles.
Approximately 62 dozen hard rolls were used, and 6,000 stuffed cabbage, 30,000 potato pancakes, 2,420 individual pizza fritz, 400 hamburgers and 40 pounds of hot dogs were served. The stuffed cabbage was done ahead of time, but the potato pancakes were done on a made-to-order basis.
Everything was cooked daily on site down in the church basement kitchen and the outdoor kitchen.
A Polish band was there on the Wednesday night of the festival. Organizers said the people liked the music, which was a break from the nightly DJ. Ms. Thomaszfski said she it was the best night.
"We did the most food and money ,"she said.
Saturday night, there was a live local band, which a lot of people also seemed to like, according to Ms. Thomaszfski.
"Everyone likes live music," she said. "We are going to do that again next year as well."
She added, "We have a great crew of people that run the kitchen downstairs and cook all the food, (including) the people outside that do the (potato) pancakes, the pizza fritz; they all sold old every night. We had a good crew of people that run the certain stands. Everything went really went well."