“We’re a soup kitchen,” says Capitol Hill Community Services cook Shelly Occhipinti. “Although we never serve soup.”
Occhipinti, who’s been with the nonprofit for more than nine years, prefers to prepare other kinds of comfort foods. Stews. Burritos. Or, on one recent morning, sausage-patty sandwiches — two patties per bun.
“Stir that!” Occhipinti barks at a kitchen volunteer who’s standing by a massive pan of macaroni and cheese, one of three side dishes that will accompany the sandwiches. “And taste it for salt.” She returns to her cutting board, where she’s peeling and seeding a crate of cantaloupe for a fruit salad. “Fresh fruit and vegetables are important,” she muses. “But it’s not always easy to get them.”
Occhipinti rarely follows a recipe. She cooks by instinct and intuition — partly because she never knows exactly what ingredients she’ll have (supplies from various food banks, vendors and local producers are unpredictable), but partly because, she says, keeping an open mind gets better results. “If you don’t follow a recipe, then it never comes out wrong.”
Capitol Hill Community Services, which celebrates its 26th year of operations this year, is one of a number of local agencies applying for funds from this year’s Season to Share campaign. Its mission, according to executive director John Love, is simple. “We serve food. That’s all we do.”
And how. Occhipinti, a former client, cooks the 52,000 meals the group serves every year — primarily at Trinity United Methodist Church downtown, but also at other area facilities. “When I started, 85 clients was a big day,” she says. “Now, we do 180, 200. It depends. We’ll get more later in the month when the checks dry up.”
The key to making 1,000 meals a week, she says, is teamwork. Planning. Persistence. “We had a request for pork chops,” she says. “It took a year of me bugging our suppliers, but we got ’em.”
With the holidays looming, Occhipinti’s been planning for months. “If we want Thanksgiving trimmings like pumpkin and sweet potato, we have to plan way in advance. If you wait until November, you’ll never get them. I think trimmings are important.”
But Occhipinti rarely knows in advance just what she’ll have to work with. “It’s always a surprise. We’ve had venison. Elk. Yak. Once, a supplier sent up a bunch of rattlesnake from Louisiana.”
Rattlesnake? “Yes, rattlesnake. I ground it up and put it in a meatloaf,” Occhipinti says. “It turned out good.”
Before Occhipinti can share her recipe for rattlesnake loaf, she’s interrupted by another volunteer who’s been prepping buns for the sandwiches. “I have 200 done,” he says.
“Not enough! I want every bun in this building split!”
Lunch service starts at 11:45 a.m. By noon, nearly all 160 seats in the dining room are full, and the line for seconds is 20 people deep. Dwight Henson, a longtime regular, pulls a bottle of hot sauce out of his jacket and shakes it over a side dish of peas tossed with tomatoes and Thousand Island dressing. “She’s good at salads,” he says. “I’m a vegetable eater. Not a vegetarian, but I like vegetables. And this, this is good.”
Henson, bearded and clad in a Colorado Rockies jersey, cites Love, Occhipinti, and the Capitol Hill Community Services crew as the reason this soup kitchen stands apart. “They are very welcoming here, and not overbearing. It makes a difference.” He quickly turns the conversation to politics. “I’ll be running for mayor next year,” he says. “I want to bring the casinos to Denver. Why would we send all that money to the mountains? Then we could eliminate the property tax.”
Love, who lunches with the clients every day, smiles. “Don’t get him started on politics.”
Occhipinti, clearly a skilled cook and an able manager, loves her job. Not for the hectic pace or the long hours but for deeper reasons. “Years ago, I was in their position. When you’re there, you don’t understand why. But then it comes full circle, you’re here in this kitchen, and you understand why.”
Tucker Shaw: tshaw@denverpost.com
Capitol Hill Community Services
Address: 1420 Ogden St., Denver
In operation since: 1984
Number served last year: 52,000 meals
Staff: 1 full time, 3 part time, fluctuating number of volunteers
Yearly budget: $230,000
Percentage of funds directly to clients/services: 92 percent
