It’s 6 a.m. and everyone is up. Four women live here – Mary, Peggy, Patty and Kelly – and the conversation sounds just as it would in any happy family home.
Mary Miller, 52, fills the role of house mother, offering reminders of the time and of sticking to the schedule. The routine is the same every morning: coffee, chores, cigarettes, chatter. And within two hours, everyone must be gone.
Such is life at Adrienne’s House, a walk-in homeless shelter for women. Beds are deflated, the house is cleaned and the women take turns bathing in a single small sink. Then they pack their belongings in plastic tubs, which wait for the women to return that night.
At 8 a.m., the women must go somewhere – to school, to part-time jobs or to somewhere else to simply while away the hours. But most venture next door to the New Life Church kitchen, where they participate in the A Simple Path program, a reverse soup kitchen. The program, established by Kim Jagoe, teaches culinary skills, nutrition and sanitation to homeless women so they can prepare and serve meals and possibly land jobs in the food industry.
The public is invited for Friday lunch, and the diners’ donations support A Simple Path and Adrienne’s House. The organic menu is entirely homemade, with ingredients that are either donated or grown in the shelter’s garden. The focus is on healthy eating and teaching the women new skills. The dishes are sophisticated: hummus with sea salt pita chips, sweet potato soup with a dollop of Greek yogurt topped with pumpkin seeds, tabouli salad with roasted organic pumpkin, Mary’s famed homemade rosemary bread toasted with smoked Gouda, apple and avocado, and vanilla bean olive oil shortbread cake with a chocolate drizzle.
Mary came to the shelter after a life of addiction and after suffering a breakdown. Every Wednesday and Friday, she loads a trolley with ingredients and heads to the kitchen to make her bread. She has become a kitchen leader and dreams of selling her popular bread to the public.
She credits A Simple Path and Adrienne’s House with saving her life.
“I think will always love cooking,” Mary says. “When I had my breakdown, I couldn’t remember anything. But because of this program and this house . . . I survived.”
