A warm bowl of soup can feel like a warm hug and with about 200 people at Harcourt United Memorial church on Tuesday evening it was definitely warm.
Harvest Bowls is an annual fundraising event put on by Chalmers Community Service Centre (CCSC). This was the first time it has held the event since the pandemic.
“It's just so nice to have music and food and people talking you know at the table together. It just feels really kind of back to normal although we never will be. But it feels good to do it for one night anyway,” said Merrill Pierce, Chalmers volunteer and one of the event organizers.
About 200 to 250 pottery bowls were donated by potters, said Rhondda Lymburner, volunteer. Some were saved from previous events, she said.
Laurel Peleschak was surrounded by family at her table. “This is my third time doing it I think over the years,” she said. Her aunt has been volunteering with CCSC for about 10 years.
There were 12 kinds of soup for people to try and they were donated by local restaurants.
“We’re planning on trying all of them,” Peleschak said.
“I’m really happy to be here. Happy to do this again. I love having all the pottery because we get to go into our cupboard and the four of us live together and we have one bowl for each so now I think we have 12 handmade bowls and get to open up look at all of them. Remember it for the rest of the year,” she said.
Soup tureens, spoons, glasses were rented and tablecloths were purchased to be used again in following years, said Pierce.
The overhead costs for the event were low and it should be mostly profit which we need because of the food situation and food insecurity in Guelph, she said.
"And we're at Chalmers we keep getting new people every week,” Pierce said.
“And we're gonna take leftover soups I think to Royal City Mission so that they can have some to give their guests too,” she said.
Wilfried Rauser and Donna Little were sitting next to each other eating their second bowl of soup.
“The first one was red pepper curry soup. So I'm here for a taste as well. I'm very impressed by the effort to make this available to us,” said Rauser.
“From the moment we heard we wanted to come. Also I think it's so beautiful that so many people are giving soups that they've made,” said Little.
