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Buy a bowl, feed the hungry
Soup-sampling event benefits food bank
By Linda A. Thompson-Odum food@hippopress.com
Fill a bowl to help fill the empty bowls of others. New Horizons will host their annual Empty Bowls event on Sunday, Sept. 28, at Brookside Congregational Church in Manchester to raise funds for their hunger relief efforts. It is part of the national Empty Bowls project started with the goal that there should be no empty bowls in the world.
Members of the NH Potters’ Guild will make one-of-a-kind handcrafted bowls for the event. Each person who attends will get to chose their favorite bowl and then fill it with soups from 16 area restaurants — all you can eat. “Then you take the bowl home to remind you that there are empty bowls in the world,” New Horizons development director Susan Howland said. “All of the bowls are very colorful and beautiful, and each one is different. Because they are handcrafted, even if they are similar, they are different. I get a couple of the bowls as Christmas presents for family members who are hard to buy for.”
The restaurant participants include 99 Restaurant, Airport Diner, Bertucci’s, Cactus Jacks, Cotton, Fratello’s Ristorante Italiano, Jerome’s Deli, Nathan Baldwin, Piccola Italia Ristorante, Puritan Backroom, Red Arrow Diner, Richard’s Bistro, SNHU Culinary Arts School, Tinkers Seafood, Uno Chicago Grill, and Z Food and Drink. Each one will donate five gallons of a signature soup.
“We have a lot of volunteers who start heating the soup at around six in the morning,” Howland said.
The proceeds go to the New Horizons food pantry and soup kitchen. Howland said the need for help in the area has increased in the past year. In August 2007 the food pantry helped 784 households. This August, the number was 830, which was an increase from the 805 households they served just the month before. “What is really hard to see is the increase in the number of children in those households that we help,” she said. “Last August we helped 763 children. This August it was 852.”
The food pantry is for people who have apartments or homes and need extra help due to financial difficulty. Each household is given a box of food to cook at home. The soup kitchen is for adults only. On most days it serves 200 meals. Howland said the potters’ guild will provide hundreds of bowls. They expect around 200 people to attend. “Manchester is a generous community and they always come help out,” she said.
The Empty Bowls event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The cost is $20 per bowl, and guests can try all the soups they want.
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