AUBURN — Giant silver pots full of steaming buffalo chicken, creamy vegetable, hot and sour soups boiled on separate stoves in the kitchen of the First Universalist Church on Sunday.

Outside the kitchen, more than 100 hand-made bowls, mugs and plates of all shapes, sizes and colors were packed on folding tables.

Turns out, you can buy your bowl, and eat from it, too.

At the 15th annual Empty Bowls Supper hosted by Trinity Jubilee Center, hungry attendants bought bowls donated by 11 Maine-based potters and filled them with soup donated from eight local restaurants.

“The thought process was, we get a lot of donated pottery, we’re a day shelter and a soup kitchen, a place where people come to get something to eat, and we wanted to have a fundraising event that epitomizes that,” said Jubilee Trinity Chairman Sean Doyle.

Located in downtown Lewiston, the Trinity Jubilee Center’s soup kitchen serves about 100 meals per day. The center’s food pantry serves about 200 households a week. Trinity Jubilee also provides free medical clinics and helps more than 200 people a year find jobs.

According to Executive Director Erin Reed, the Empty Bowls Supper is the only major fundraising event for the center, but it is always accepting donations and volunteers.

“It’s our only fundraiser, and we draw a big crowd,” Reed said. “This is really important for our program. As soon as we help somebody find an apartment, or get a job, and they’re back on their feet, we have somebody coming in for the first time saying, ‘I’ve never needed to ask for help before,’” Reed said.

According to a brochure handed out at the event, buying one $25 bowl would pay for 25 meals and four bowls, for $100, would provide 100 meals and help fund day-to-day operations in the soup kitchen.

Carrie White is a potter from Auburn, a self described “hobbyist,” who makes bowls at the Mudroom Pottery studio in Auburn all year and stockpiles them for this supper. This year, she donated about 20 bowls.

“This is the only event every year that I donate my work to,” White said. “I feel it’s an amazing fundraiser. The money goes directly to the soup kitchen, and it stays local, which is really important to me. I’ve been donating for five years. It’s the only thing I think of every year to donate my wares to.”

The supper is a family affair for the Whites. Joshua White, an 18-year-old senior at Edward Little High School, has been playing traditional Irish and French Canadian tunes at the supper for as long as his mother has been donating her bowls.

A team of volunteers worked to ladle soup and chili in the kitchen. Megan Parks, a Trinity Jubilee board member and expert soup ladler has worked the kitchen for six years.

According to Parks, the same restaurants — DaVinci’s Eater, Gippers Sports Grill, Hurricane’s Cafe and Deli, Marco’s Italian Restaurant, Sedgley Place, Guthries, Tripp’s Farmhouse Cafe and Wei Li — donate soup every year.

Parks said her favorite part about the supper is watching all of the pieces come together.

“It all goes so smoothly, and then it’s done,” Parks said.

Pottery donations came from Edgecomb Potters, Georgetown Pottery, Meadow Muffin Pottery, Portland Pottery, The Potter’s House, Saltbox Pottery, and from students at the Main College of Art, St. Dominic Academy and Bates College.

 

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