Today Our Food
2023-ongoing
A recurring mixed-media cooking project that explores cultural exchange in classrooms, a clay studio, and at a local food pantry’s kitchen + warehouse.
Today Our Food is an ongoing collaboration between Carlisle Arts Learning Center (CALC), the Employment Skills Center, and Project SHARE, begun in 2023. It occurs each Spring during Carlisle’s annual Empty Bowls community dinner, which is hosted by Carlisle Arts Learning Center at Project SHARE’s warehouse. Each year, teachers in the Employment Skills Center ESL program identify a student or group of students to invite to contribute a soup recipe from their country of origin. CALC ArtWorks teens create visual storytelling around this recipe, and they help cook the soup at SHARE’s kitchen under the guidance of the soup recipe contributor.
Bowls for the event are created by craftspeople and artists, and each guest may take home a handmade bowl. ESL students visit CALC’s clay studio to paint bowls as part of English-practice experiences outside of their classroom, which are then made available at the dinner.
During the event, hundreds come out to support Project SHARE’s mission of reducing food insecurity in Carlisle, and Today Our Food offers an opportunity for each to taste a recipe from one (or more) of the area’s many vibrant immigrant communities. This soup is one of several options available at the dinner — the rest are generously donated by local business and restaurants, which are often accompanied by stories themselves.
2025 Recipe Contributors:
Hùng Kwang and Family (Vietnamese Pho)2024 Recipe Contributors:
Nina Oliveria and Tania Bianca Smith (Brazilian Caldo Verde)2023 Recipe Contributors:
Henriette Evans (Lebanese Split Pea Soup), Krystyna Huliako, Natalia Skubii, Halyna Murovana, Lyudmyla Dubchak, Viktoria Firman (Ukranian Borscht), Mohammed Lamkiysse, Hasnaa Salih-eddine (Morroccan Harira), Fatima Rasouli (Afghan Chicken Soup)
