Humanity House founder Tracy Keagle learned a lot about cooking from her grandmother, Inez Brewington.
As a child, she spent many afternoons in her grandma’s kitchen in south Iola near Elm Creek and not far from the community garden which Keagle now tends. Her grandmother worked her own garden as a business, and taught a young Keagle how to grow food.
“She taught me how to bake pies,” Keagle said. “It was wintertime and I was driving her nuts. She said, ‘You want to learn how to make a pie crust?’ I made about a million pie crusts to learn how to make a good one. She taught me how to make fried chicken. And noodles. Gravy.”
Years later, as Keagle brainstormed a name for a new Humanity House effort to feed local residents, those cooking lessons came to mind.
It seemed only fitting to call her endeavor “Grandma’s Kitchen.”
“That’s where everyone goes,” Keagle said. “You know you’re always welcome at grandma’s house, and you’re going to get fed.
“Cooking is the easiest way I know to do something nice for someone.”
The premise of Grandma’s Kitchen is simple. On the first two Sundays of each month, between 5 and 6 p.m., anyone can come to Humanity House to pick up a free meal.
If that concept sounds familiar, it should.
The program works in tandem with First Presbyterian’s Sunday Soups, which offers a free meal the last two Sundays of the month.
Because of the pandemic, however, the church was forced to change from a sit-down meal to a meal pick-up service at Humanity House.
That means all Sunday meals are currently available at Humanity House.
At one point, Sunday Soups was every Sunday, but the effort became too much for the church and was reduced a couple of years ago. Humanity House’s Georgia Masterson has prepared the meals for a few years now.
“It’s important to keep it going, to make it a routine and a habit for people,” Keagle said.
A FEW minutes after 5 p.m. this past Sunday, Rita Martin waited outside Humanity House in 90-degree heat for four meals. It took just a few minutes before Malachi Keagle, Tracy Keagle’s grandson, handed her a bag filled with styrofoam containers and two bottles of water.
Martin said she and her husband are recovering addicts, and they participate in events at Humanity House as a way to hold themselves “socially accountable.”
