Soup Kitchen to host Thanksgiving on Nov. 24 at new location

The location is new, the day is new, even the menu is new, but the caring behind the Soup Kitchen's annual free Thanksgiving Dinner is still the same.

This year's Soup Kitchen Thanksgiving will be held from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 24 at the John C. Harris Community Center in Fulton.

In the past, the Soup Kitchen group has offered up its free holiday meal on Thanksgiving Day at Mom's Restaurant and then Finally Tammy's. When Finally Tammy's closed last winter, Soup Kitchen Director Anne Erbschloe didn't want to wait until the last minute to make arrangements, so she decided to reserve the community center. Unfortunately, the hall already was reserved by a large local family for the holiday, so Erbschloe had to resort to Plan B.

"We decided we would have it the following Saturday and it would work fine," she said. "We'll do the same as we always did, we'll deliver meals to the sheriff's office, to people working (and the homebound) and serve meals at the community center."

She also decided to change up the menu a bit, switching from the usual turkey and all the trimmings to ham with trimmings and desserts.

"I think people get turkeyed out, to tell you the truth," Erbschloe said. "So many places have turkey, and you have it so many times you get kind of tired of it, plus we thought it would be something different and much easier for us to deal with. We can prepare it all right here instead of having to go to the senior center and bake them ahead of time and then drag everything down to where we're serving.

"It's much easier all the way around, and you get good ham - we're not sacrificing anything as far as the quality of the meal goes, it's just different."

As usual, Erbschloe said the Soup Kitchen Thanksgiving is open up to "anyone at all."

"People who are by themselves over the holidays are welcome to join us for a meal, people who are working, service people like the police department and the hospital - we're happy to deliver meals to them," she said. "We deliver to anyone who wants to get a meal."

To help the tornado-stricken people of Dumas and surroundings, donations can be made to the Delta Area Disaster Relief Fund, care of the Delta Area Community Foundation, P.O. Box 894, Dumas, AR, 71639, or through the Arkansas Community Foundation, 700 S. Rock St., Little Rock, AR, 72202.