Not your average soup kitchen.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that gives every employee 40 hours paid time per year to volunteer. You can take it all at once (perhaps spending a week to build houses) or in bits and pieces (taking a few hours a week to mentor kids). You know me -- put a pile of vegetables and a sharp knife in front of me, and I'm a happy girl (even when I'm crying from chopping onions). So ever since moving to DC, I've been looking for community volunteer opportunities that involve food prep and cooking. There are plenty of soup kitchens and places that need volunteers to serve guests and work in shelters, but I hadn't found one that needed hands-on prep until recently.

Miriam's Kitchen is a fabulous organization that provides much more than just food for the homeless: their vision is to end chronic homelessness in DC. To reach that goal, Miriam's Kitchen takes a holistic approach to helping their guests, employing social workers and connecting individuals with legal services and basic health care. They also offer life skills classes, art therapy, poetry workshops, yoga sessions, and job hunt assistance.

But it's called "Miriam's Kitchen" for a reason: on staff is a professional chef who makes incredible and nutritious meals out of donations from local grocery stores and farmers' markets. Here's a snapshot of the menu we prepared today:

• Focaccia bread pizza
• Roasted winter squash
• Green salad
• Homemade apple sauce

Perhaps I spent the whole time washing and tearing greens, but by the smells in the kitchen, I'd be willing to bet Miriam's Kitchen's regulars eat better than some of us who pay far more in a restaurant.