Soup & Bread : Delicious Fundraising

Last night I headed up to the northside of Chicago to attend an event I’ve had to put off for a while due to the polar vortex that passed through the midwest. While the outside temperatures are still fairly cold, the organizers of this event sent lots of people home with warm bellies.

Each Wednesday from January to April Soup & Bread of Chicago hosts a delicious fundraising event at Hideout Chicago. It attracts seventy-five to one hundred people for a communal dinner of, you guessed it, soup and bread that is put together by Martha Bayne and Sheila Sachs. The pair have been producing the event for eleven“seasons”.

The popular evening’s soup offerings are contributed and doled out by volunteers who are asked to produce two to three gallons to ladle out to the hungry public. Guests are tasked with contributing whatever they can monetarily. That’s right, there is no set entrance fee for attending. If you can contribute a dollar or want to write a check for $100: have some soup!

Of course, no one is turned away because this is about getting something to eat and raising money for local hunger relief organizations around the city. In the summertime, the event transitions into a veggie bingo night that raises money for community gardens in the city.

Martha Bayne has also published a book of recipes that make it easy to replicate bowls of soup at home. You can pick up the book along with other pieces of merchandise at the weekly gathering.

Thanks for reading!