Video: Oxford’s Empty Bowls Event Helps Put Food on the Table

By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

Video by Josh Zaragosa (Interviews in order: Pat Allen, Mike Brownlee and Mary Haskell)

The annual Empty Bowls event has been helping put food on the plates of the less fortunate in Lafayette County by providing hot, homemade soup in hand-crafted ceramic bowls for the past 16 years.

This year’s Empty Bowls was held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the Oxford Conference Center.

About 20 restaurants and individuals are participating in this year’s event, providing soup that ranges from the traditional chicken soup to hearty gumbos.

Bowls are handcrafted by various groups and individuals including the Ole Miss Mud Daubers ceramics club.
Photo provided.

The soups will be served in bowls created by the Ole Miss Mud Daubers ceramics club and other area artists and pottery makers like Coontown Pottery.

For $20, a participant will receive the soup, a bowl of their choice, water and bread.

In past years, the event has raised up to $15,000 for The Pantry — a nonprofit organization that began in 1982 to provide food on a weekly basis to any resident of Oxford or Lafayette County in need of assistance.

Scott Caradone from Proud Larry’s is in charge of the kitchen crew.

The soup can be purchased and eaten at the church or taken “to go,” however, organizers encourage people to eat the soup from their handmade bowls in keeping with the event’s theme that someone’s bowl is always empty.

The funds from the event will help The Pantry purchase food to supplement what they receive from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Empty Bowls began in 1990 when a high school art teacher in Michigan conceived the idea as a way for his students to raise money for a food drive.