The Friendly Kitchen is opening its doors once again, after a six-month hiatus.
Formerly known as the soup kitchen and run out of the Lac La Biche Native Friendship Centre, the kitchen had to shut its doors late last spring due to a shortage of food and supplies.
“We’re going to start small with the Friendly Kitchen,” said Erin Thomas, the Family Support Program Coordinator at the centre. “We’re going to open once a week, and offer soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea, with a small fee to get in.”
Open to anyone on Tuesdays from noon until 1 p.m. the Friendly Kitchen costs $3 for lunch, with the funds going to underwrite food costs. While the soup kitchen used to be open four days a week, organizers simply were not getting enough donations—of food or funds—to keep the kitchen going on such a large scale.
Thomas wants everyone to rest assured however, that no one will be turned away for lack of funds—a Friendly Kitchen wouldn’t be very friendly if it turned away people without the money for lunch.
“If people come in and aren’t able to pay, they can sign up for a chore on the service list and contribute that way. Even if people have $3 in their pocket, but they’d rather keep it, they can still sign up for the service list instead,” she said.
Right now, Thomas herself is doing all the cooking, and the service list has a list of chores that Friendly Kitchen visitors can sign up to do in lieu of the $3 charge—things like sweeping, mopping, and helping with the dishes.
Thomas says that the Friendly Kitchen isn’t just about food, in fact, according to her, the food is often just an excuse for people to get together.
“The main purpose is getting people together, developing relationships. People from all walks of life come in and enjoy each other’s company. We’ve seen everybody from people on their lunch breaks, to single moms with kids, high school students, elders who stop by to have some lunch and visit with one another. There are other reasons why people come—some people are short on food—but the truth is, there are a lot of people who are short on relationships, who need a place to come to connect with people in the course of the day.”
Thomas has some great memories working at the kitchen—seeing mothers come in with their children, and watching their children help serve their elders, people talking and laughing over a hot bowl of soup. “There have been a lot of laughs over the years,” she said.
In the Friendly Kitchen, it appears that the old saying is true—man cannot live by bread alone.
