Drawing winners and The Empty Bowl

First, the winners of the 2 drawings!

The QuadraFire Pellet Stove sponsored drawing for the teeshirt and notebook was won by WaterWaves
The Apartments.com drawing was won by AubreyLaine.

The Amazing Turnip Girl picked both winners randomly from a bowl. Congratulations to you both, and thank you to everyone who entered.

Learn more about SocialSpark, the site that connects sponsors and bloggers for contests like that.

Yesterday was the Annual Empty Bowl event here. I didn't bring my camera because I was in a fair amount of pain and didn't want to fuss with it, but it was a blast.

Empty Bowl is an annual fundraiser for our local soup kitchen. Unlike a lot of fundraisers, this one is very casual, and it's immensely popular. Potters and clay artists from around Alaska at all sorts of skill levels donate handmade bowls, thousands of them actually. With your 25 dollar ticket, you get to choose 1 bowl, and have as much soup and cornbread as you can eat. My kids look forward to this event, as do my husband and I.

This year, because I was hurting so badly when I woke up, we wound going a little later than usual. So we worried that the bowls would be pretty well picked over, but they just keep putting out new ones until all the bowls are gone and there was a great selection. I had my eye on 2 different bowls, both used the same color glaze and it's a color I must like because when we got home we found out they "matched" several other bowls from previous events. I finally settled on a tapered deep bowl, part of me still wanting the other bowl. Then my husband picked his bowl, and wouldn't you know it? He picked the other bowl. We must have the same tastes after all these years. TG and William took a little longer to choose their bowls. William picked a bowl that had a very plain outside and almost looked like crystal slices on the bottom of the inside. He really loved how it looked so ordinary until you saw into the depths of it. TG of course picked a bowl that was TARDIS blue, or as close as she could find. It's actually a blue and cream bowl.

My husband and I went to get soup while TG and William were choosing bowls. Our local soup kitchen is named Bean's Cafe, and the soups served are always bean soups. They hold a yearly contest to choose the recipe for the soup and do one vegetarian soup and one meat soup. The meat soup had bacon and kale in it, and the vegetarian soup was a creamy, cheesy soup with potatoes and beans. Michael and I both got the meat soup first and found a place to sit. Then the rest of our family joined us. It was pretty good soup and everyone sitting our table was friendly. Of course, TG can find a fellow Whovian anywhere and she and another lady compared matching TARDIS keyrings.

After we finished our first bowls, TG and I were full, Michael and William both went back to try the vegetarian soup. I had a bite of Michael's and OH GOSH it was so good. After they finished, we headed back to the car and Michael and I talked about what we liked about the vegetarian soup and possible ways to incorporate some of those things into a soup recipe of our own. TG and I discussed the possibility of entering the soup contest next year. One of the things Bean's Cafe does with the winner's soup is create bean mixes with the recipe for the soup as a fund raising item which they sell throughout the year.

I love our bowl collection. Last year, I picked a bowl that would nest with the one William picked so he could start a bowl collection of his own. All those pretty bowls from Empty Bowl events get used throughout the year and make me smile. They don't match, except some of them in color. They are different shapes and sizes, and all made by local artists and every one of them a memory of a nice lunch with my family to support a cause we really believe in. We help Bean's Cafe throughout the year, with inkind donations as well monetary donations and this is our favorite annual charity event.

After that, we went to the hardware store to look at lumber options for my garden beds this year. That was good too.

And if you read this far, do any of you grow horseradish? I'd really appreciate tips. Or if you're feeling really generous, maybe a root to plant this year?