A soup-erb Sunday: Community gathers for annual Soup and Bowl Benefit

Sunday, Feb. 22, was a sunny, windy, and brisk day. It was simply the perfect winter day for a nice cup of homemade soup. Or perhaps eight of them.

Fonta Flora’s Whippoorwill Farm was the venue for the Meeting Place Mission’s annual Soup and Bowl Benefit. The Morganton organization’s mission is to end the cycle of homelessness through shelter, transition, and recovery.

The yearly fundraiser allows cooks to showcase their finest soups and lets the public serve as taste-testers. For the price of a ticket, attendees could taste soup samples, vote for their favorites, and take home a beautiful pottery bowl.

About a dozen soup makers carried crock pots brimming with their finest soup creations into the old stone Milking Parlor on the farm’s bucolic grounds.

A volunteer carefully placed hand-made pottery bowls on a table near the entrance of the building and prepared to oversee the collection as each ticketholder chose a vessel to take home.

The soup-tasting line formed quickly as the noon start time approached. The event was a sellout, and lucky ticketholders could hardly wait to sample the soups.

Finally, the line began to move. Each “taster” received eight paper tokens, tickets for tasting particular soups. Tasters also received two wooden popsicle sticks, with which they would cast votes for their favorite stews, gumbos, or chowders.

The choices seemed endless. How could someone choose just eight samples? Creamy ham and potato soup. A smoky roasted corn chowder. Steaming broths, chock-full of fresh carrots, celery, and cabbage, and teeming with chunks of tender white chicken meat. A vivid green concoction containing spinach and curry, topped with dried shallots.

It was almost enough to make you weak in the knees.

As my husband, Marty, and I moved through the line, we selected our bowls, one a compact beauty crafted by the Mackays of West Union Art Studios, and the other, a wide-rimmed, shallow vessel, created on the wheel of local potter Matt Hallyburton.

As we entered the Milking Parlor, we encountered a spectacular mixture of delicious smells, collected small flat cardboard trays in which to carry our soup samples, and used tongs to collect thick slices of homemade bread.

I am not going to lie. Both Marty and I took more than eight samples of soups. We chatted with each cook, every one of whom was so proud of their creations, how could we pass one by?

After we made our rounds, we found a nearby table and settled down to sample the goods. As we savored the goodness in those little cups, we shared opinions and compared our soup choices. Then we returned to the Milking Parlor to cast our votes for our favorites.

In the end, we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon at Whippoorwill Farm, loved chatting with the cooks, and delighted in sampling many delicious soups. It was also a pleasure to help our community by contributing to a worthy cause.

If you missed this year’s Soup and Bowl Benefit, be sure to keep your eyes open for next year’s event. In the meantime, there’s an upcoming opportunity to support The Meeting Place Mission, when the organization hosts a Skeet Shoot and Bourbon Tasting, scheduled for Saturday, March 8, at the City of Morganton Municipal Auditorium (CoMMA).

Tickets are available at commaonline.org and on The Meeting Place Mission’s Facebook page.