Community Corner
The Soup's On at Empty Bowls Dinner
Annual event raises money for Greater Sayville Food Pantry.
The aroma of freshly made soups wafted through the cafeteria on Oct. 21 for the fourth-annual dinner.
The Sayville High School Art Club volunteers stood behind the dozens of crockpots filled with an array of delicious soup choices. The art club and the Sayville School Employees Charitable Foundation hold the dinner in October, which is recognized as National Hunger Awareness Month.
Coordinated for the first year by John Verschure, art teacher at the high school, along with the help of Debbie Urso and Evan Hammer, the event was expecting to draw in close to 200 attendees. All proceeds of the dinner are donated to the Greater Sayville Food Pantry.
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For the $10 admission price, attendees get to select from 260 handmade ceramic bowls made by the art students from the advanced ceramics and introduction to ceramics classes especially for the event. The bowls – made of reclaimed clay – are all microwave and dishwasher safe and come in an array of shapes, colors and sizes. This year, there were even bowls molded of old vinyl records up for grabs.
“We have 260 bowls up for grabs this year,” Verschure said. “But I hope we don’t have that many people because I don’t think we would have enough soup to feed them all,” he joked.
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A highlight of the event is the various homemade soups available to fill those bowls. Student volunteers were dishing out chicken noodle, beef barley, butternut squash, pumpkin, clam chowder, cream of mushroom, cream of potato, Hammer’s hot chili and more. Breads and rolls were
available for dunking.
There were also plenty of donations from the local community. , O’Reilly’s Restaurant, (pumpkin), , (seafood bisque), Tom’s Deli (clam chowder), and Idle Hour Deli who supported the event with soups and baked goods.
Donations were also made by teachers and friends of the school. Some of the chefs included: Ron Hoffer, Greg Von Brook, George Chero, Don Flemming, Doug Shaw, Geri Sullivan Keck and Joan Verschure.
For more information about the Empty Bowls program, visit www.emptybowls.net.
