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12/14/2016 07:30 AMEveryone thinks of food at the holiday season, but Shirley Rutan thinks about food all year long. She’s not dieting; she’s not counting calories, in fact, she’s not thinking about food for herself at all. She is thinking about food for other people. Shirley organizes the free hot dinner site for the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries at the Deep River Congregational Church every Thursday night. (The Soup Kitchen serves hot meals at eight different locations in the area every week.)
Shirley confesses she doesn’t like to use the words “soup kitchen.”
“This is dining,” she says.
Indeed, there are no paper plates or plastic forks and knives. Meals and coffee are served on crockery; utensils are metal, and iced tea and water come in glasses, not paper cups. And like all those who serve the diners, Shirley refers to the attendees as guests.
Shirley gets some of the food used to prepare meals from the Connecticut Food Bank, a resource for food kitchens and pantries statewide In addition, she purchases supplies with donated funds; sometimes she also spends her own money. She always buys personal grooming items with her own funds and distributes them every month to six weeks. She buys in bulk and stores or freezes food when she sees a bargain.
Teams of people from local community groups, usually five or six people, cook the dinners. Each team cooks four times a year, doing the setup and the cleanup as well as the meal preparation. Some teams use food from Shirley’s stockpile; others purchase their own food and plan their own menu. Shirley herself is at the meal site every Thursday, but seldom eating the dinner.
“I don’t have time. I end up serving, getting refills, pouring coffee,” she says.
On a recent evening, a team from Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester was preparing the dinner, Chicken Marbella, a recipe that is usually identified as the most popular dish in the best selling Silver Palate Cookbook. There were also mixed vegetables, rice, salad, and homemade cake for desert.
The tables already had baskets of bread and butter, and guests line up at a buffet to fill their plates. The vegetables, Shirley points out, are fresh, but that does not always make them the most popular offering. Guests can fill their plates from the buffet counter however they chose, but Shirley says she encourages everyone to take their vegetables.
She is adamant about a balanced menu.
“Our guests, they get a lot of starch [at home]; mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, pizza. They don’t get enough vegetables and they don’t get enough protein,” she says.
Among the protein offerings Shirley recalls preparing were 20 pounds of meatballs.
“The first 10 pounds were great, but by the end my hands we numb from rolling,” she says.
Now, Shirley adds, they buy ready-made frozen meatballs.
Shirley remembers the meal she prepared when she got fresh flounder from the Connecticut Food Bank, supplemented with some additional fish she bought. She also purchased crabmeat and made Newburg sauce to go with the fish.
“It was the most fabulous dinner ever,” she says.
If there are leftovers, Shirley will pack them up for guests to take home, but she waits until the end of serving time to do so.
“Some people come in at 5:45; it happens and we want to make sure we have food,” she says.
The meal site is open from 5 to 6 p.m.
Over the years, Shirley says, the numbers at the Deep River site have grown. There used to be 40 guests for dinner; now the site averages 50. There are no means tests for the diners and for some diners, the food is not the only attraction. There is also the opportunity for socialization.
“It’s like a church supper with an opportunity for fellowship,” Shirley says.
She has come to anticipate some unusual requests. One guest usually brings large plastic bottles to have them filled with water. Shirley assumes that wherever the guest lives, there is no potable water. She recalls another time when she realized that a couple that came to the dinners were living in their car. When she is aware that guests are struggling in other areas, she can refer them to local social services. She also worries about the people whom she never sees because frailty, illness, or lack of transportation prevents them from getting to meal sites.
Shirley first became involved with cooking meals more than 20 years ago. She was teaching a Sunday school class of 10 year-olds including her own son at the Deep River Congregational Church. She decided instead of talking about Christian ideals, the students would live them by starting a soup kitchen to feed the hungry.
“All the kids worked in the soup kitchen,” she says. “And some did it for several years.”
Since its inception, the dining program has met in different locations, but for the last decade it has been at the Deep River Congregational Church. Now some of the original Sunday school students come back to cook.
Since Shirley is a constant presence at the Deep River site, some people assume it is her job. In fact, she is a volunteer just like all the other workers. She is employed is at the L.C. Doane Company in Ivoryton, where she describes herself as a jack-of-all-trades.
Shirley, who grew up in Essex as Shirley Capuciati, likes to go to theater and concerts in her free time, locally at Ivoryton Playhouse as well as at other Connecticut locations like the Goodspeed and the Bushnell. She also loves kayaking, appreciating both the solitude and the chance to observe wildlife.
Recently, she returned from a six-week trip to Australia.
“I can’t explain it, but I’ve always wanted to go there,” she says.
She indulged her passion for theater by visiting the Sydney Opera House, where she had found tickets on the Internet to a performance of My Fair Lady, directed by the original star, Julie Andrews.
Last spring the Deep River Rotary named her Citizen of the Year for her work at the dinner program.
“I thought they had asked me to the meeting because they were going to give me a check [for the soup kitchen]. I was completely surprised; I thought they were kidding at first,” she says.
Though she has put in more than two decades as a volunteer, she has no plans to stop working at the meal site. She loves the chance to help people that the soup kitchen provides. And she knows that life is full of unexpected changes.
“There but for the grace of God go I, go any of us,” she says.
For more information on the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries, visit www.shorelinesoupkitchens.org.