Hoosier Hills Food Bank Soup Bowl benefit sells out, feeds 650 guests

Beth and Chris Florini and their two kids tried as many kinds of soup as they could put into their bowls at Hoosier Hills Food Bank’s 17th Annual Soup Bowl Benefit on Sunday.

“We’ve come every year for several years,” Beth said. “It’s a great way to support
the food bank.”

Attendees paid $25 to gain admission, take a free bowl crafted and donated by local potters and sample soups, bread, desserts, beer and wine provided by local restaurants.

Restaurants provided meat, vegetarian and vegan soups. Soups ranged from tomato basil from Malibu Grill to gumbo from Dats to roasted turnip with coriander from The
Limestone Grill.

Hoosier Hills Food Bank sold 650 tickets for the event and ran out of tickets before the doors opened Sunday.

“It is the biggest fundraiser that we have all year,” Hoosier Hills Food Bank Executive Director Julio Alonso said. “We expect to raise over $82,000.”

Alonso said this was the third or fourth year the event has sold out before its opening.

Members of the Sisters of the Flying Fountain Pen, a Bloomington girls’ writing group, showed their support for Hoosier Hills by running an arts and crafts table and asking
for donations.

The Sisters of the Flying Foutain Pen group members started volunteering at the event three years ago by reading their own poems about poetry while attendees sampled a variety of foods.

They liked the event so much that they decided to make it an annual volunteering tradition.

“They were really into it,” said Michelle Henderson, executive director of Writing Unlimited, the group that sponsors the Sisters of the Flying Fountain Pen. “This is one of their favorite things to do all year.”

The girls encouraged people to take a “What soup are you?” quiz, tell attendees’ soup fortunes and watch their soup puppet show.

Beth sampled her third bowl of soup as her friend teased her about how many bowls of soup she had eaten.

“This is the tomato basil and I tried some carrot soup and some roasted vegetable,”
Beth said.

A blue, green and brown handmade bowl with a fish scale design sat at Beth’s place. She chose to eat from compostable bamboo bowls to avoid dirtying her new, artful possession.

“Can I try your gumbo again?” Beth said to her husband, Chris, as they passed their bowls of soup to each other for taste testing.

Beth’s four-year-old daughter Ava had a bowl of tomato basil soup in front of her.

“They love soup,” Beth said of her kids. “This is her third bowl.”