For Anthony Carroccio, a typical workday can start as early as 3 a.m. When you have a commercial kitchen to run that makes 1,400 bowls of soup per week, and hundreds of clients (and counting) to serve, you can never have too many hours in the day.
Carroccio is the executive director of the Organic Soup Kitchen in downtown Santa Barbara. Gloves on, and ladles in hand, Carroccio and the kitchen’s volunteers start stirring things up before the crack of dawn to ensure they’ll be able to meet the needs of their clients — cancer patients, people who are chronically ill, and low-income individuals and seniors — by the time their “Soup Meals” go out for delivery every Wednesday.
“The thing is, when you start getting sick with cancer, or chronic illness, the last thing you want to do is go to Lazy Acres, spend your last nickels and dimes, you know, for organic produce, and try to whip up something that you’re not used to making,” Carroccio said. “If you don’t have the proper nutrition, and you’ve got cancer, and you’re eating like a few crackers a day, you’re going to die of malnutrition, and many cancer patients die of malnutrition … but when you’re eating one of our meals, a few tablespoons is a full variety of nutrients.”