- [Jolene] Tonight on WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories.

Top tips for our senior population for both family and seniors themselves.

And Johnny Spezzano of the Border joins forces with Stephen Fuller of South Lewis High School to create fire grilled southwest zucchini boats.

Also, Canadian filmmaker, Mitch Beatti, shows you the Thousand Islands from a completely different angle.

Your stories, your region, coming up right now on WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

(upbeat intense music) - [Narrator] WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, Carthage savings, the J.M.

McDonald Foundation, and the Dr. Susan Badenhausen Legacy Fund of the Northern New York Community Foundation.

Additional funding from the New York State Education Department.

- Good Tuesday evening everyone, and welcome to this edition of WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories, I'm Jolene DesRosiers.

Senior isolation and depression can be avoided if we, as a community, step up and take action.

As part of WPBS's Aging Together in America Project, we offer tips tonight on how to ease senior isolation and depression.

Take a look.

With the hustle and bustle of life moving so quickly around us, we can lose track of time.

There's dinners and kids and after school games.

There's work and stress and unexpected events.

And then there's your neighbor, someone you rarely see.

Someone who could use your company if even for an hour.

- Visit shut-ins.

If you have a neighbor or a relative that you know doesn't get out very often, go play a game of cards, work on a puzzle, read to them.

I have gone actually to places where all I did was sit and read to the person.

It helps them and it also helps keep their mind sharper.

- [Jolene] Senior isolation is very real.

As the old saying goes, people need people.

So when it comes to your aunt, your mother, your neighbor, or your father, there are things you can do to help make their days a little brighter.

And while Linda works primarily with hospice patients, her tips hold true for all of our seniors.

- Number one, allow them to have conversations with someone outside of the family.

Sometimes there are things that they don't want to say to the family because they feel like it might upset them or hurt them, that they can say to somebody else.

I have had patients say what they would like after they pass.

One particular patient said that she wanted her family to have the same kind of Christmases that they had always had, where everyone gathered together in one space.

Number two, family members should spend time with the patient.

Don't be afraid that you are going to upset them, that it's going to be hard to spend time with them and see them at the end of life.

They love having family around them.

They want to feel the closeness.

They want to be able to talk about old times or share funny moments or remind you of things that they felt were important.

Number three, if they have pets, don't isolate the pet away from them.

Let them be in the same space.

It brings them great comfort.

And if they don't have pets, but always enjoyed animals, bring your dog over, bring your cat over.

Let them spend time with the animal.

It's very soothing for them.

I've also seen the robo-pets like a Furreal kitty, but it brings them great comfort and they tend to calm right down when they're holding a Furreal pet and they can feel the movement or hear the purring.

It's very soothing to them.

Number four, if you're able-bodied volunteer, find something that you've enjoyed doing throughout your life.

You can, there's so many opportunities to volunteer.

I volunteer at hospice because I enjoy the work.

You can be a volunteer driver.

You can work at Salvation Army.

There just so many opportunities to do things that will give you pleasure and it keeps you active and it keeps your mind active.

And that's important as we age.

Number five, be as active as you can be.

We all have different levels that we can manage.

If you can walk, get out and walk.

There's just such pleasure in being outdoors and enjoying nature.

If you aren't able to get out and walk, find other ways.

Exercise in your home.

If you have a walker, there are plenty of places where you can do short distances and then sit down, the park, for instance.

It's all flat surface.

You can push your walker and then sit in a bench and listen to the birds.

There's just many opportunities for things that you could enjoy doing.

Exercise for me, keeps my mind clear, it keeps it active.

It keeps me engaged with what's going on around me.

It helps me to socialize with other people.

It releases feel good endorphins.

So that if you're feeling down that day and you go and do some kind of exercise, I think you'll find you feel better, your mood lifts, and you may end up with more energy than you thought.

- So take the time, take a tray of cookies, take a deck of cards or a puzzle, and give our seniors the gift of your presence.

It can make all the difference for WPBS Weekly, I'm Jolene DeRosier.

This story is part of WPBS TV's Aging Together in New York Project, and is produced in association with the New York State Office For the Aging.

For more interviews and stories like this, please visit wpbstv.org.

Once a month, we take you into the kitchen of Johnny Spezzano of the Border Radio station in Watertown.

Tonight he teams up with Stephen Fuller, the food service director at South Lewis High School to create delicious Southwest zucchini boats.

This farm to school concept has students and staff alike swooning over his tasty healthful dishes.

(chattering) - Hey, come on.

(rock music) - Well, hello everyone, welcome.

This is Johnny on Fire.

I'm Johnny Spezzano and we are gonna make another great recipe and talk to somebody amazing.

I'm with Steven Fuller, he is the food service director at South Lewis Central School.

We're gonna take one of his recipes and we're gonna cook it with fire.

Welcome.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- Bro, my favorite subject at school, lunch, so I'm glad to have you here.

- Everyone's favorite subject is lunch, yes.

- All right, let me set this up.

I follow your posts on Facebook and I get to see some of the lunches that you are making for students daily at South Lewis Central School.

Gimme a couple of examples of some things you've made recently.

- Recently we've done Thai Buddha balls, so we've done that.

I'd make sushi, all kinds of odd things.

We do, chicken riggies is another one.

- You guys are going above and beyond at South Lewis School.

You like to call it farm to school, am I right?

- Correct, correct, we have a very... - So you're using fresh local products?

- Yep, we use fresh local products a lot in our cooking and we do have some of the other things that you normally would see at school.

But we like to offer the fresh items as well.

We do a lot of local stuff.

- Well, let's, I think we should get started.

So again, these are called... - [Steven] These are called Southwestern stuffed zucchini boats.

Our ingredients, we have the zucchini boats, and then we're gonna stuff them with the onion, burger, corn, black beans, and tomato.

We'll top that with cheese and then make a cilantro lime sauce with fresh cilantro, locally made Greek yogurt, jalapenos, and lime.

- Okay, so where do we start?

- We start out with just prepping the zucchini boats.

So we're just gonna cut the ends off from these.

- All right, so you're gonna cut off... - Just a little bit off.

And we're gonna just slice these right in half.

- [Johnny] Okay, right down the middle.

- Right down the middle and then we just very carefully take the stuffing or the innards out.

- Look how he's doing this, I love it.

All right, let me get over.

- [Steven] You just kina take the edge of the spoon, go along the outside there.

And then just kind of loosen it up.

And then you can just scoop it right out and it scoops out.

- [Johnny] Okay, you've done this before.

I wanna try this again.

- [Steven] I've done it once or twice before.

- A little around the edge.

So how many students do you guys feed at South Lewis School?

- So we have a little over a thousand students.

I think it's like 1,050 students that are in school.

And we currently, we run about 85% of the students that eat at the district.

- That's a lot of zucchini boats.

- Yes.

(Laughing) - [Johnny] No wonder you're getting good at it, I'm just gonna let you do it.

- Oh yeah, it's just, all right.

- So these look amazing.

- I've been doing this for 35 years, so I mean, I've been doing stuff like this, so you get used to.

- And you said local product.

Are you actually growing some of this stuff at the school?

- We are, so currently we're growing stuff right now too, 'cause we have growing towers.

We have a greenhouse, I think we have about six growing towers right now.

I just filled out a grant application for some more growing towers.

I'd like to get 'em scattered around the school.

- This is the way it should be.

I love this.

We're gonna start by preparing the boats and pre-cooking 'em a little bit, right Steven?

- Yep, we're gonna start off with getting the boats in the oven here first.

And we're going to pre-cook them.

- We have to count how many staff are with us today?

So we cook enough.

- We'll make sure we cook enough.

(laughing) - We're gonna all do this.

We're gonna do all of this in the wood fired oven.

- Yes.

- [Johnny] All right, so I'll tell you what we're gonna do.

We're gonna take what we've got here, as far as zucchini boats go, and we are going to put them in, do we want to dose some, douse it with any olive oil?

- Yep, so we're just gonna take a little bit of olive oil.

And we're just gonna drizzle that over.

- Oh, this is looking great.

- No, I don't use salt and pepper in school, but for today I think we can get away with.

Well I should say I don't use salt in school.

- [Johnny] Yeah, we're gonna talk about that later.

I know, you have to meet certain... That is the loudest pepper grinder.

- That's the loudest pepper grinder I've ever... (laughing) - You have certain restrictions that you have to follow to keep people within nutritional guidelines and stuff.

Yep, we definitely have guidelines that we have to follow, you know, so sodium content in the food is definitely one of the things we watch out for.

- Yeah, I love it.

But you know what, how much better is farm to table cooking anyway?

And of course, if this is farm to school, which we know Lewis County is the home of amazing agriculture.

Agribusiness men and women.

So this is right up your school's alley and I love to see this.

All right, so we've got our last boat and we're getting ready to put it in the oven.

While he's finishing that up, I'm gonna make way to put our pan in the oven.

We're gonna move the flames over to the side like this 'cause we're cooking with fire.

(metal scraping) All right, I think we're ready.

- I think we're ready to go.

So again, our zucchini boats are gonna go in.

How long are we going to, if we are doing this in our oven at home, how long would we cook.

'em for?

Typically 10 minutes in the oven, about 400 degrees.

So we'll see how this goes.

- Well, our oven is probably about 500 degrees right now, so we'll cook it for.. - A little char on there never hurt anything.

- We'll cook it for about eight minutes.

- All right, sounds good.

- So while the zucchini boats are softening in the wood fire oven, let's go over the ingredients of the stuffing.

- Certainly.

- All right, what do we got?

So we've got our onion here.

What we're gonna do first is we're gonna take the onion and the beef and cook it in the pan.

While that's cooking, we've also have our black beans and our corn.

We're gonna chop up the tomatoes and get that ready to go.

And those are gonna be the ingredients to the stuffing.

- This is gonna be good.

- We have some other ingredients here.

We're gonna make a little sauce.

It's gonna be a cilantro, lime sauce that we're gonna put over top afterwards.

And that's gonna be out of our locally made Greek yogurt, cilantro, lime, and jalapeno peppers.

- Locally made Greek yogurt?

- Locally made Greek yogurt.

All right, we'll talk about that in a minute.

Let's get started.

Let's add our beef and our onion to the pan with a little olive oil.

- Certainly, we'll just put a little bit of olive oil in here.

- Ooh, I can smell the zucchini boat softening up in there.

They smell good.

- Put our onions in there.

- Someday they're gonna invent television that has smell-a-vision.

- Oh, I know.

- Smell-a-vision.

That's what we need.

All right, so we're gonna put these in and let 'em saute up with the smoky wood flame.

Our zucchini boats are about done.

Let's get this meat browned up.

(upbeat music) All right, let's take the ground beef out.

It's looking nice and brown and the onions.

And we're gonna add the rest of our stuffing ingredients.

What do we got Steve?

- [Steven] We got tomatoes.

- [Johnny] Tomatoes, yum.

- [Steven] Corn.

- [Johnny] Corn, ooh.

- [Steven] Our black beans.

Got a little bit of our taco seasoning.

- [Johnny] All right a little taco seasoning.

Yeah, everybody's got that around the house.

A little tomato.

- [Steven] Little tomatoes.

- Look at this.

- Stir that up.

- This is gonna be great inside those zucchini boats.

Now again, do this at at home on your stove top.

We're doing it in the woodfired oven to give it that smokiness.

- [Steven] We got it mixed up and we'll put it right back in.

- Ah smells, so good.

All right, back in we go.

(upbeat music) Oh my goodness, our mixture is ready.

We're gonna take it outta the oven right now.

Look at the colors on this.

This just looks so appetizing to the eye.

Some lucky students at South Lewis.

So we're gonna stuff the boats.

- Now we're gonna stuff the boats.

So we're gonna take our stuffing and we're just going to lay it into our boat.

Just like so.

- [Johnny] Again, some ground beef.

Again, you guys use local ground beef when you can.

- Yep, we get our ground beef from Red Barn Meats.

Red Barn Meats in Croghan.

- And we've got corn, beans, some taco seasoning, and a little bit of tomato sauce.

All mixed up here with the onion.

And it's going in the boats.

You know this is gonna be good.

I hope you're enjoying this at home.

And I hope you get a chance to try this recipe.

Of course, you can go to the WPBS TV website to get this recipe.

So make sure you go check it out.

All right, what's left?

What are we gonna do next?

Now we're just gonna take our cheese and we're gonna tap over top of this.

- Hey, that's not enough, cheese more!

(laughing) More cheese.

- All right, well I guess we're not serving the students today so we can add a little bit more cheese to it.

- All right, a little more on that one.

A little more on that.

Now we're gonna put it in the oven.

And if you were baking this at home, how long?

Not long?

- Not very long.

- Like five minutes, five, ten minutes.

We're just gonna melt and brown the cheese.

(upbeat music) - They're ready to come out.

Let's take 'em out, they smell great.

Zucchini boats stuffed with some Southwest goodness.

Get a load of these, wow.

- [Steven] They turned out great.

- So some incredibly lucky students at South Lewis Central School enjoying, again, farm to school.

So how have the students responded to this?

- Oh, really good.

You know, we started off, you know, maybe the kids were down here and what they took and it's gradually worked its way up and in these type of meals.

- So you're getting kids to switch over from, let's say, all chicken nuggets to enjoying flavorful meals like this?

- Correct, I mean we still do the same types of things other school districts do.

But we add in choices, more choices for them.

And fresh cooked farm to school choices.

- Are other schools adopting this same sort of philosophy where you're growing stuff in your community and you're using it to cook food in your school?

Certainly, certainly, I mean, they probably don't get it out there as much as I do.

I'm very much in PR and I like to let the public know what we're doing.

But I do know that districts are out there, you know, in small steps working towards this.

- So how did you get involved in this kind of cooking for your students?

- So my background is restaurant.

So I've been in a restaurant business my whole life.

I had a restaurant for about 13 years.

I also had a meat market.

So I was involved in food a lot.

And we're in an agricultural community.

So I got involved in the community and started going to meetings, farm to school, farm to table meetings, and just kind of got involved in that way.

And I've just talked to a lot of the different growers and producers in our area.

- And the kids are very receptive of this.

Oh, certainly.

- And you said you have a garden at school?

- Certainly, we have our own garden at school.

- What are you growing?

- We grow corn, zucchini, different squashes, tomatoes, cucumbers.

A lot of fresh herbs we do, 'cause I use fresh herbs like here, we've got some cilantro that I'm gonna be using for our sauce.

So I like, that's how I do a lot of the seasoning.

- To me, they used to throw some cinnamon in the apple sauce and that was about as complex as the lunches got.

So some real lucky students.

All right, so let's top what we've got.

Now, by the way you mentioned, is this a local product?

- [Steven] This is a local product.

- [Johnny] What is that?

- Well, this is a low, this is a fat-free Greek yogurt.

A friend of mine owns Black River Valley Naturals.

That's right in our backyard.

And they're a processor.

So they process this yogurt for us.

- All right, so this is Greek yogurt made locally, local cows and everything.

- Local cows and everything.

- All Right, we're gonna blend up the what ingredients?

- Jalapenos.

- So we got jalapenos.

So we add a little sweet and spice, a little sweet and sassy there.

- [Johnny] Is that brown sugar.

- [Steven] That's brown sugar.

Our freshly grown cilantro.

And I take a little lime.

I use a lot of limes and lemons in my cooking.

- [Johnny] Give it some zing - [Steven] For some zing.

And then we're gonna take our Greek yogurt here and we'll get that in there.

Our fat-free drink yogurt.

And then we take a little bit of our fat-free milk and add that in there.

And we're just gonna blend this up.

- Okay, this is going right over the top of these.

(blender whizzing) - All right, and we're just going to wanna spoon that over top of it.

- Man everybody working the cameras here is getting excited 'cause they get to taste this.

Again, makes you wanna go back to school, doesn't it?

- [Steven] And just layering the flavors.

That's what I taught my staff all the time.

- Ooh, all right, now time for a taste.

- All right.

- Do the honors for me.

- [Steven] All righty, there you.

- [Johnny] Oh my goodness.

- I always say if food looks good, it tastes good.

- Right, you eat with your eyes first.

- Eat with your eyes first.

- So we're with food service director Steven Fuller from South Lewis Central School and I'm about to have school lunch.

I'm very excited to take a taste.

And this you need to make at home right away.

Whoa, really good.

- Here let me just grab a fork, Johnny, so I can try this.

- Yeah, try it out, see how it came out.

And again, cooking in the wood fire changes it all up 'cause it gives it that smokiness.

- Yes, definitely, I definitely have to talk to my district about getting a smoke fired stove.

- I feel like if I went to school and had lunches like this, I would never be absent, ever.

- Definitely.

- Un-real.

Oh my gosh, delicious.

Well, listen, check out the WPBS website for the recipe.

Look for all the Johnny On Fire episodes there.

You can check out my podcast, which is called Dinner at Johnny's, wherever you get your podcasts.

And let's keep growing as a community and let's eat local.

- Yes, definitely.

- Thank you, Steven.

Thank you.

- I'm gonna finish this off.

(laughing) - I love it, everything in here is so good.

And that sauce on top... - [Steven] I tell you what, that wood fire, excellent taste.

- [Johnny] Really good.

- Now that it's spring, our minds are moving toward warmer weather.

Here to tease those warm spring vibes is Canadian filmmaker Mitch Beattie.

He's known on social media as the Thousand Islands Wanderer and he's determined to show you the islands in a different light.

(car hooting) (upbeat music) - Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Thousand Islands Wanderer.

I am here with my wife today and we're gonna take out her bike.

And I've got a one wheel and we're gonna go out and ride along the trail that extends from Brockville all the way to Ganaroque.

(Slow light music) If you're looking for somewhere to go with a fantastic view.

And if you just wanna ride your bike, go for a walk, take out a one wheel scooter, skateboard, et cetera, you're just along the main parkway with all the cars going by, but you've got your own safe path.

As you drive along the parkway, you'll find some public areas that you can either park your car on the side of the road or there's some public parking lots.

Along the parkway, you'll be able to see a ton of the islands.

There's some marshlands, you'll potentially see some wildlife as you head down to the Parks Canada area in Mallory town.

And overall, it's just a good place to cruise around.

(upbeat music) We're gonna head down Birches Lane to Huck's Marine and Resort.

There's a cafe right on the water, so we're gonna go have a nice little lunch by the river.

We came in by car, but one of of the better ways, there's a couple slips over there.

I believe that you can bring your boat up and jump off the boat and grab some food and head back out onto the river.

(upbeat music) The end of the day, we are headed to the Thousand Islands Sky Deck, way up there.

- Hi folks, my name's John Ross and I'm the tour guide at the Thousand Islands Tower.

You are currently 130 meters above the St. Lawrence River and the Tower was completed in 1965.

- This is almost as high up as you can get in the Thousand Islands, but there's one other way that you can get a little bit higher than the tower.

And that's through a... (helicopter blades spinning) If you guys share this video, you'll be entered in to come take a helicopter ride with me through the Thousand Islands.

(upbeat music) All right guys, well thanks for joining on this episode of Thousand Islands Wanderer.

If you want more information about the Thousand Islands Parkway, there's both information on the Travel Thousand Islands website as well as on Wikipedia, some more historical information about it.

We will hopefully see you guys in the next episode when we get back out on the river, either in my boat or on one of the Gana Rockport cruises.

We'll see you then.

- [Jolene] That does it for us this Tuesday evening.

Next week tune into our annual WPBS auction, which begins May 1st and runs through May 7th.

Watch on air or online.

Bid at wpbstv.org/auction.

And we will be back in two weeks when WPBS Weekly returns with these stories.

Many seniors are often left alone and isolated.

We delve into the problem and how to address it with Greg Olson, director at the Office for the Aging in Albany.

And we visit Zenda Farms in Clayton to share community opportunities to celebrate open space and connect with the agricultural heritage of the region.

Also as Oswego County poet, Laura Donnelly visits the WPBS studios with her wit and words.

We'll see you again next time, goodnight everyone.

- [Narrator] WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories is brought to you by the Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, a free resource resource offering confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

Serving Jefferson Lewis and Oswego Counties since 1986.

Online@watertown.nypc.org.

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- Whoa, really good.

- Here, let me just grab a fork, Johnny, so I can try this.

- Yeah, try it out, see how it came out.

And again, cooking in the wood fire changes it all up 'cause it gives it that smokiness.

- Yes, definitely, I definitely have to talk to my district about getting a smoke fired stove.

- I feel like if I went to school and had lunches like this, I would never be absent.

(light piano music)