Last night I had the enormous pleasure of donating and serving up a pot of homemade Chickpea Lentil stew for “Soup and Bread“, a free weekly soup dinner organized by Martha Bayne at the Hideout in Chicago. Both soup and bread are free, but donations are collected to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository and other local food pantries.
From the Soup and Bread website, here’s the basic gist of the event:
“Each week we round up a handful of Hideout staff and regulars, plus local musicians, writers, artists, and — yes — professional cooks to donate pots of homemade soup. We heat them up in crock pots and serve them in the finest thrift-store china, along with fresh bread and the occasional muffins, pie, or cookies baked by enterprising participants. All are welcome, and we serve till the soup runs out or the late-night jazz guys kick us out. It was designed to be an easy, low-key way to get folks out of the house and socializing in the dead of darkest winter — because, seriously, have you been to Chicago in January? Not to mention, when we started this up in 2009 our friends were losing their jobs left and right. At times this past year it’s seemed the entire city could use a nice hot bowl of soup.”
Last night our soup spread garnered record-setting donations for the Lakeview Pantry. If you live in the neighborhood, Soup and Bread will continue to run every Wednesday from 5:30pm-8pm through March 31st 2010. Kids are welcome! If you’re not local, be sure to check out the official Soup and Bread Cookbook here. It’s a sweet, and very useful, collection of 52 soup recipes and 8 bread and baked good recipes from the 2009 run of Soup and Bread at the Hideout.
Below, here we are serving up our hot soup last night. Such a great time! From left to right…Tamiz Haiderali, chef/owner of the fantastic restaurant Treat at North & Kedzie (where I’ve eaten the most amazing curried gnocchi on earth), Chicagoist Food and Drink Editor Chuck Sudo, Lost in the Supermarket’s Allison Stout, the multi-talented Luke Joyner, and myself.
photo by Sofia Marcovici
[...] writing for Chicagoist had plenty of rewards. One prime example being the opportunity to cook for Soup and Bread and the Hideout, alongside the chef of one of my favorite Chicago restaurants, Treat. That was truly a highlight of [...]