Chef's recipes fill bellies, as well as needs

Lois Altman volunteers at Harvest Soup Kitchen once a week, and has written a guide for other soup kitchen cooks.

MUNCIE -- As a graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, Lois Altman can match spatulas with the best chefs in the country.

Fridays, however, she cooks for hungry folks who need a free dinner.

"We have really nice meals," said the professor and director of Ball State University's Hospitality Food Management Program, who heads a cooking crew at Harvest Soup Kitchen one day a week.

To help others offer similar food to the hungry, Altman has recently published Harvest Handbook, both in print and on a compact disc. It can also be accessed online at harvest.iweb.bsu.edu.

"It's for folks who cook in soup kitchens," she said, noting every recipe is intended to feed 50. "It offers ideas about meals that maximize your resources. ... It's trying to be creative with what we find at soup kitchens."

For example, the recipes might offer tips on tweaking a donated item like Tater Tots.

"There's nothing gourmet about this stuff," said Altman.

Still, a quick flip through its pages will soon send a reader's salivary glands into overdrive, with dishes like Harvest Asparagus Salad (chop up more than five quarts of asparagus spears) or Salmon with Lemon Tarragon Sauce (13 pounds of salmon fillets).

Altman is at the soup kitchen every Friday by 7 a.m., meeting with a crew that includes a retired teacher, a retired automaker and a former engineer, to answer two questions: "What have we got, and what are we going to put together?"

Last week, she recalled, dessert choices were a special crust-less pumpkin pie, or fried pears with a crisp topping.

Another memorable offering was sautéed chicken breasts with mushrooms and alfredo sauce on rice.

"That chicken last week was so cool," she said.

A BSU professor since 1991, Altman began cooking after her father died when she was just 11 years old.

"Mom said when you cooked, you didn't have to do dishes," she recalled. "I never did dishes."

Ironically, it was her mother's death in 2006 that spurred her latest cooking venture. She decided to spend the time at Harvest Soup Kitchen that she had once spent visiting her mom.

The soup kitchen's clients get their lunch at the facility, plus a take-away bag with an evening meal. Since Altman has volunteered there, the number of clients has grown dramatically.

"It was about 75," she said. "Now we're routinely getting close to 150."

Her work, she added, is done by 9:30 a.m. When they unlock the doors then, people are lined up, waiting to get inside.

Besides cooking, Altman rounds up supplies such as homegrown produce.

"I'm always out there in the community, grubbing for stuff," she said.

That her clients appreciate her efforts was proven one day when she mistakenly left a couple of valuable pans on the kitchen's free table, where items are considered available for the taking. Diverted by a request to grab somebody some more salad dressing, she returned to find a client had walked off with her pans.

"I was hotter than the Dickens," she said, laughing, noting how she ran after the bus on which she thought he'd left.

He wasn't on it.

Mindful of the fact that she used those pans to bring food from her home to the kitchen, however, a couple other clients tracked the fellow down and got her pans back.

Between the clients and her fellow volunteers, she added, her time at the soup kitchen has given her a lot of joy. It's also given exceptionally tasty dinners to the folks who eat there, and pride to the folks who cook for them.

"We go, wow!" Altman said. "This is the best food in Muncie."

John Carlson profiles good neighbors, community activists and other Difference Makers weekly in The Star Press. To suggest a subject for a Difference Makers article, contact John at jcarlson@muncie.gannett.com or 213-5824.