Family Kitchen will host a soup-off fundraiser on Sunday, May 21, and all of Central Oregon is invited. Local chefs will cook up soup with carefully crafted flavors, labor and love. Local potters Justin LeBart and Hunter Tieg will provide handmade ceramic bowls for attendees to pick out, eat soup out of and take home with them. Local musicians will bring live music and chill vibes to the celebration. It's a local fest and will benefit Family Kitchen meals.
Family Kitchen has been around since 1986 and provides a nutritious meal every day of the week (and two on Friday) in Bend. It also provides all meals to the Lighthouse Navigation Center and Stepping Stone Shelter. Nearly 3,000 fresh meals are shared with the community each week through Family Kitchen, according to its website.
"Anybody can come and have a meal with [Family Kitchen.] Nobody's asking any questions or making them prove the need or anything like that. We make sure the meals are tasty and well-balanced. Folks can have as much as they need or as little as they need. That's all very important to us," said Donna Burklo, Family Kitchen program director.
Chefs from J-Dub and Joolz will represent the two professional teams. The other two soups will be made by Family Kitchen volunteer teams who regularly cook soup during the week for Family Kitchen meals. The four soups will go head-to-head for the crowd favorite winner and blind-taste winner.
"I made sure that our volunteer teams weren't going to be using any ingredients that they wouldn't normally be able to use for a soup at Family Kitchen, because it needs to be what we serve," Burklo said. "We serve amazing soup. Ask any of our diners. So, they're just making what they would normally make for our diners, and then the restaurants are doing whatever they want."
Here's how the crowd favorite competition works: the crowd gets to taste soups from each pot, pick one, fill their bowl and first soup to run out, wins the crowd favorite. The blind-taste competition will feature local celebrities — Mayor Melanie Kebler, Morgan Gwynn of Central Oregon Daily, food critic Barb Gonzalez and others. The panel will decide on the blind-taste soup-off winner.
Local bands — Appaloosa, Canyon Creek Trio, Bobby Lindstrom and Friends and James Michael Miller — will provide tunes for the night. Tickets are available and can be purchased online or at the door.
