Riverdale Neighborhood House turns garden tomatoes into sauce at community event

Posted Friday, August 28, 2026 10:08 am

Longtime Riverdale resident Meg Rosenberg, left, regularly partakes in Riverdale Neighborhood House classes and events. She admired the intergenerational aspect of the harvest party, as children picked tomatoes from the garden alongside adults.

Olivia Young photos

The first step of creating the sauce is harvesting. Attendees strolled the garden, picking tomatoes from cherry to Roma to beefsteak. Kazansky said the group sorted the tomatoes based on variety and ripeness, rinsed everything off with a hose and got to work.

After collecting an abundance of tomatoes, attendees went on to chopping. Riverdale resident Matt Gordon, not pictured, believes the best way to cut a tomato is to remove the stem and cut a small hole where the indent is, then to cleanly chop the rest. Gordon attended the harvest party with his 15-year-old son, Liam Gordon, and said it was a fun community activity to do with friends and family.

Aside from the tomatoes, Riverdale Neighborhood House’s garden is home to zucchini, cucumber, okra, picnic peppers, celery root, beets, scallions, eggplants, carrots, tomatillos, chili peppers and herbs. It also houses “The Three Sisters” — corn, beans and squash, all growing together. This is an ancient style of companion planting originating with Indigenous peoples who found the three plants protect and nourish each other as they grow, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

After chopping, attendees poured bowls of tomato pieces into large pots for the first round of cooking the tomatoes down, ensuring the vegetables were softened enough for the next step.

One young attendee used the neighborhood house’s hose to make sure a fresh batch of tomatoes were well rinsed.

Attendees put the softened tomatoes in a strainer, also known as a food mill, which separates the skin and seeds from the pulp. Then, tomatoes went back to the big pot to cook down until they created a sauce.

The end result was a sauce similar to passata, Kazansky said, or an uncooked and strained tomato base that attendees can take home and flavor to their liking. Attendees also had the option to stick around for Community Cafe, a recurring series where the neighborhood house’s Food and Farms Interns prepare a home-cooked meal. Later in the day, Kazansky helped serve caprese salad with tomatoes from the garden, and bowls of pasta topped with the fresh tomato sauce.

by Olivia Young

Dozens passed through Riverdale Neighborhood House at 5521 Mosholu Ave. Aug. 23 for the nonprofit’s Tomato Harvest Party — an afternoon of picking, chopping and straining fresh tomatoes to create a smooth, red sauce. Attendees either took their sauce home, or stayed and prepared tomato-based dishes with neighbors.

At the helm of the harvest party was Ari Kazansky, the nonprofit’s garden and environmental program manager. The neighborhood house makes an effort to incorporate its produce into events and activities, Kazansky said. Previously, the neighborhood house has used its produce in garden-to-table cooking classes, apothecary workshops with garden herbs and food served at its summer Music in the Garden series. Garden ingredients are also sometimes used in the recurring Community Cook Day, where volunteers prepare a meal for the Neighborhood Fridge.

“The intention behind today was just to create a space where all ages could get together and enjoy the garden and kind of the processes that derive from the garden — such as making sauce all together,” Kazansky said.

Kazansky noted an increase in support for the garden in light of recent produce recalls announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The most well known of these instances is the cyclospora outbreak and subsequent removal of iceberg lettuce last month. Other recent recalls include certain blueberries, jalapeños and eggs.

“It’s unfortunate that this is what it takes to get people to support local farms and gardens,” Kazansky said.

While others worked on prepping the sauce, an aspiring business was making its debut, tabling in the courtyard. Riverdale resident Denise Conejo is co-founder of Librodale, a pop-up book shop offering adult and children’s books in Spanish and English.

Conejo — the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica — said Librodale aims to address what she feels is a lack of community spaces that serve both Riverdale and Kingsbridge residents. Somewhere that neighbors can bring their kids, read and mingle would be beneficial, she said.

Librodale is just starting out, and Conejo said she hopes to attend more neighborhood events for feedback on what the community is looking for, and go from there.

For young attendees without an interest in tomatoes, the neighborhood house had a kids’ corner by the playground, led by community fellow Rebecca Hametz-Berner. A handful of participants placed leaves and flowers atop cyanotype paper, coated in chemicals that turn it blue in the sun, leaving behind light imprints of the objects.

Keywords

Riverdale Neighborhood House, Tomato Harvest Party, Riverdale, community garden, Ari Kazansky, garden-to-table, local food, community event, Librodale, Denise Conejo, Spanish-language books, Riverdale community, Kingsbridge, cyanotype, Rebecca Hametz-Berner