Filling a need: Potters, restaurants, grocers team up for Empty Bowls food benefit
Oct. 23—There is no handmade bowl so colorful or skillfully created that it can't be made better by filling it with cream of green chile chicken or Cuban black bean soup.
That's the thought at the heart of Albuquerque Empty Bowls, a fundraiser in which potters team up with restaurants and grocers to benefit Storehouse New Mexico, a nonprofit food pantry that provides free groceries to people in need.
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at St. John's United Methodist Church, 2626 Arizona NE, people may purchase a handmade bowl of their choice along with soup, bread and cookies. Tickets are $35. Plastic bowls of soup are available for children younger than 12 for $5.
Albuquerque potter Cirrelda Snider-Bryan, a member of Albuquerque Empty Bowl's steering committee, said vegan, gluten-free and vegetarian options will be available on the food line.
She said that after purchasing a bowl, people will take it to the food line, where they may either request that the bowl be washed and filled with a soup of their choice or ask that their soup be put in a plastic bowl.
The Empty Bowls program was initiated in Michigan in 1990-1991 as a grassroots effort by artists and crafts people across the country to feed the hungry in their communities. Snider-Bryan said there was an Empty Bowls program in Albuquerque from the late 1990s until 2014. Saturday's event relaunches the program here.
The plan was to have 300 bowls donated for Albuquerque Empty Bowls, but Snider-Bryan said they received 613. She said 155 potters from Albuquerque and other New Mexico locations, including a Rio Grande High ceramics class, and one potter from Ohio contributed bowls to the effort.
Food on Saturday's menu includes picadillo and Cuban black bean soup from Hotel Chaco, cream of green chile soup from Christy Mae's, green lentil winter squash with harissa spices from Farina Pizzeria Downtown, New England clam chowder from St. John's United Methodist Church, tortilla soup with shredded cheese and tortilla strips from O'Niell's and turkey soup with Spanish rice and green chile from La Salita.
Also, there will be bread and rolls from Great Harvest Bread Co., cookies and banana bread from Burque Bakehouse, cookies from Flying Star, desserts from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and apples picked from local orchards courtesy of Food is Free Albuquerque.
Snider-Bryan said the goal is to raise at least $10,000 for Storehouse New Mexico, which had been combating hunger in Albuquerque since the late 1970s.
