By Jay Sorgi • Posted July 17, 2025

Meals bring people together. Families bond around a dinner table. Friends connect to dine at a favorite restaurant. The Eucharist itself was instituted at supper shared between Jesus and the Apostles.

Martha’s Choice Marketplace and Community Farm — Montgomery County’s largest food pantry and an arm of Catholic Charities of Philadelphia — has launched a new initiative that engages guests, and fosters community.

Through the new program, guests share their own recipes using ingredients provided by the pantry, including fresh food grown at Martha’s Choice farm in Audobon.

“We’re trying to get connected to the people we serve on another level,” says Community Development Coordinator Ameika Malcolm, referring to the Martha’s Community Kitchen program.

“We started going into the pantry (to gather food)and invited some guests to join us. There’s one guest, Layla, who likes to cook a huge amount. So, we said, ‘Hey, let’s do a community (cooking day)!’ She showed up and told me what she wanted to make. I was able to get all those ingredients from the pantry, and that started our cooking journey.”

Martha’s Choice leadership encouraged Malcolm’s efforts to build stonger relationships with those they serve, working to break down barriers that often exist between charitable organizations and their guests.

“Food is this unique way that people can come together, that you can learn about people without invading their privacy or exploiting their situation. It’s just a way to get to know people, and we’re in the business of food, so to speak,” said Director of Operations Eli Wenger.

“What if we could go and meet with the different folks we serve and learn about the foods that they cook? Through that lens, we could learn about them and the uniqueness of each person and family that we serve. You can get into their cultural backgrounds, where they were born and raised, their family — so many different aspects just by entering through this lens of something that we all share together and love.”

Malcolm explained that after expanding the kitchen’s capabilities, they were able to open opportunities for those they serve to reveal a part of themselves and what they love to do.

“There is a guest that comes in, Mary Ellen, who loves social media. She had never been on social media until she got involved with us. One of her dreams is to cook and share with other people in our community,” said Malcolm.

“One day I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to cook this thing — Would you be interested in joining?’ It was a Caprese salad, and she said ‘Yes, I want to do that!’”

“We filmed a whole video. She put the salad together, chopped everything, and you could just sense the joy as she was doing it. Just being a part of this thing that she now kind of embraces her own.”

Shortly after, Mary Ellen then suggested a favorite family Christmas recipe: chocolate-covered pretzels.

“We got the ingredients and just spent the afternoon making chocolate covered pretzels. She was sharing her story of how this was a part of her family upbringing, and it was just good to do it with somebody else and show off her version of it,” Malcolm recalled.

She said the camaraderie at the cooking sessions lifts the clients’ spirits.

“You hear about their struggles, how they’re working to overcome that, and just being in this (supportive) space to share. Volunteers around the building will come in and try the food and give feedback and a lot of time., That is a part of that uplifting spirit for them.”

According to Wenger, Martha’s Choice is working to grow the kitchen and create partnerships to curate the recipes into a community cookbook or other method of sharing these culinary delights.

“That’s another way that the program can also benefit families — by making certain ingredients that might seem unmanageable on some kind of level, all of a sudden familiar and accessible in a way that you can use it to feed your family,” said Wenger.

Malcolm added that the kitchen can provide both one-on-one cooking opportunities for guests, and larger community meals, depending on the availability of specific ingredients.- The overarching goal  isto help people express who they are through food.

Malcolm reflected that Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s encyclical, offers a powerful model for building inclusive and compassionate spaces. If more people embraced that mindset, she said, it would lead to communities where individuals feel safe, loved, and at home.She added that their work at Martha’s Choice is about nurturing those kinds of environments.

 “We’re just creating those spaces where we can create confidence and inspire people to do better or feel better about themselves. Creating a safe space for people to just be.”

To volunteer with Martha’s Community Kitchen, email amalcolm@chs-adphila.org.

Click here for more information and to support Martha’s Choice Marketplace and Community Farm.