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when he performed at the Flynn in the mid-1990s. Earle baked three cookies shaped like penguins for Lovett, in recognition of his song “Penguins,” and left them on a plate in his dressing room. As she recalled, Lovett came to her before the show with a penguin cookie cupped in his hand and asked, “Did you make this for me?” Yes, she told him. “That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done,” he replied. That night, from the Flynn stage, the singer dedicated “Penguins” to her, Earle said. The next year, when Lovett performed at Bolton Valley ski area, Earle baked 100 penguin cookies for the crew, with a special gift box of a dozen cookies for the singer. For Tomlin’s show at the Flynn, Earle prepared homemade ravioli and salad in the green room. Earle’s daughter Cathy, then 11, was with her that evening. Tomlin asked if the two of them would join her for the meal, so the three ate together. “That was cool,” Earle said. Patton was on the St. Pierre crew in August 2004 when the caterers worked the packed, muddy Phish concerts in Coventry. “It was mud like crazy,” he recalled. “I don’t know how those hippies did it, but they had a good time. And we fed ’em.” By then, Earle was working for Sodexo — first at the University of Vermont, then at Champlain — and running her catering business on weekends, during school vacations and in her offhours. She closed that business a decade ago, a few years after her divorce from Roy. Since then, Earle has remarried and earned her bachelor’s degree from Champlain. Now Earle is starting work on a second cookbook in her 30-Year Love Affair series. This one will feature 100 recipes from Vermont chefs — appetizers to desserts — each using a local ingredient. Proceeds of that book will benefit the culinary education program at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. “I fell in love with Vermont,” Earle said. “I got totally integrated into the culture.” The cookbooks are a way to give back, she said. m
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Contact: sally@sevendaysvt.com
INFO My 30-Year Love Affair With Food in Vermont: Queen City Brewery Edition by Sandi Earle, IngramSpark, 106 pages. $25. sandiearlesfoodmatters.com
FOOD 49
expect and what to look forward to,” she said.) They lived on Archibald Street, trading a big house in western New York that they had rented for $75 a month for a tiny apartment that cost $450 a month. Settling into her new home, Earle found herself “pregnant, barefoot and buying bagels at the co-op,” she recalled. “I loved that place,” she said of the original Onion River Co-op. “I loved the squeaky floor. It smelled like herbs and fresh-baked bread and beeswax.” Earle met Milizia, now 88, at Cake Top, a neighborhood baking-supply store the latter owned. The two struck up a friendship, and, with guidance and inspiration from Milizia, Earle began to make candies and other confections in her apartment. As demand for her sweets grew, she named the fledgling business Sandi’s Candies. Earle supplemented her small business with work in area restaurants. “You just got to get in there and do what needs to be done: empty the grease traps, clean the fryolator,” she said. And cook. But restaurant work — days, nights, weekends — became less tenable with three small children, and Earle’s focus shifted to her own baking and cooking business. By 1994, she and Roy had moved to South Burlington and started a catering company called St. Pierre Catering. They initially ran it out of their home, where Earle baked in an oven above her range. Later, St. Pierre Catering moved to Pines Senior Living Community, also in South Burlington, where the couple had use of the kitchen and a storage area in exchange for cooking five meals a week for the residents. Carl Patton, a manager at Chicken Charlie’s in South Burlington, was an employee of St. Pierre Catering. Now 61, he has worked in Burlington-area kitchens since he was 13. “Sandi was the Martha Stewart of baking, and I learned so much from her,” Patton said. “She taught me very explicitly.” The catering gigs came to include concert work, cooking for bands that performed in Burlington. The members of Widespread Panic were the first rockers St. Pierre Catering fed. The job, as Earle recalled, involved not so much cooking as shopping at Costco to meet the demands of the band’s 12page rider — a document that listed four cases of green Gatorade, among other requirements. “We never want to do this again!” Earle remembered thinking. But more music jobs followed, including catering for Lyle Lovett
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