About Us

Mission

Our mission is to connect people with one another and the land through a rich and healthy relationship with food. We do this through amazing fresh lunches, sustainable, scrumptious and healthy catering, and by our series of classes that teach cooking skills in the context of the modern food system.

We believe that food can be good for you, good for the earth, mightily delicious, and we love lunch. We also believe that local and organic foods should be in the financial reach of all, and that convenience does not mean that taste and ethics should be wasted. Human health and the health of the environment are completely connected, and we hope to make this connection easy for you and good for Ottawa’s food system.

About Jacqueline Jolliffe

Jacqueline is the owner of Stone Soup Foodworks and has been an avid foodie and environmentalist since she was young. She interrupted her passion to be a sensible high school teacher for years before realizing that really, the only truly sensible career path was to open a solar powered soup truck and teach some of the lost skills of chopping, cooking and preserving while working with real food, real soil and real people. She developed her cooking skills at the Red Apron and the Dharma Center of Canada and her knowledge of the food system through Ryerson and St. Lawrence College.

The Stone Soup Story

It was a time of great hunger when the lone peddler entered the village. The people of the village were closed in behind their doors and windows, afraid to speak with their neighbours in case they felt compelled to share their meager hoards of food.

The peddler knocked on the doors, but no one answered as he searched for a warm fire and somewhere to rest his head. He walked thoughtfully to the village square, where he started a small fire, and labouriously drew water from the central well. He set his mended pot on the fire, and, seeing faces peering out from the windows around the courtyard, dramatically polished a stone he unwrapped from a beautiful but tattered cloth. He placed the stone in the pot, and as it came to a boil, he tasted the broth, smacking his lips in great delight.

It wasn’t long before a boy emerged from the door of his home and came over to ask what the peddler was doing.

“Why, making stone soup, of course,” the peddler replied. “It’s quite tasty, but would be even better with a bit of onion.”

The boy looked thoughtful, and then scampered back to his dark home. As he was returning, he saw another child approach the peddler, and overheard the words “stones are really most delicious with some cabbage.”

The peddler put the onion into the pot, and more of the villagers came out to see the soup from a stone. Many of them returned with a bit of salted meat, a withered carrot, a turnip, a handful of barley or a pinch of salt. Their food went into the pot, and the peddler told stories and had many of the villagers laughing as the pot of stone soup simmered away.

The peddler tasted the soup and declared it ready, and the villagers ate together enjoying each other’s company and a meal like they hadn’t since the harvest stores had ended the month before. As the meal ended, the little boy asked to learn the magic of the stone, and how it had made such delicious soups. The peddler looked him in the eye, and told him the magic was in each of them.