Mieshia Jackson & Corrie Lingenfelter
Sometimes, Chef Mieshia Jackson serves her guests baked tilapia. It’s a big hit.
They also like the whole chicken, so moist that it falls apart with a fork.
“They love that chicken,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s guests are the diners at Downtown Daily Bread, Harrisburg’s 41-year-old shelter and kitchen for the homeless and hungry. Chef Mieshia and DDB Executive Director Corrie Lingenfelter, also an experienced chef, have created a culinary culture that dispels old stereotypes of soup-kitchen gruel. By elevating the quality of food from their kitchen, they are elevating the quality of life of their guests.
Consistency & Love
Everyone’s stomach starts rumbling around noon, but those who are homeless are six times more likely to experience food insecurity than the general population. They are also more prone to health conditions aggravated by poor nutrition—diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol.
Food agencies don’t want to serve salty, sugary processed foods, say researchers, but they often lack the grocery store budget or the chilled storage for keeping perishables fresh.
Downtown Daily Bread is methodically applying community partnerships and the staff’s culinary skills to change the flavors and nutrition values of 150 meals served daily.
It began around 2018. Lingenfelter, a culinary management graduate and former chef for celebrities and three-star restaurants, joined DDB as social media and office manager. When the chef resigned, she stepped back into the kitchen. Her first meal of chicken Alfredo made from scratch—the only way she knew how to cook—caught the attention of the diners.
“You would have thought they had this five-star meal because that was not what they were used to,” Lingenfelter said.
As she took on the culinary director’s role, Lingenfelter made it her mission to destigmatize and professionalize soup-kitchen food. Better equipment. Food safe-certified kitchen staff with culinary backgrounds.
“There is no reason in life you should not be afforded a good, restaurant, professional, chef-quality meal,” she said.
In the meantime, her friend and colleague, Mieshia Jackson, was a working mother with a culinary degree, volunteering to teach children’s cooking classes. Her passion for service dates to childhood, when she and her grandmother served food in Harrisburg shelters.
When Lingenfelter was promoted to director in 2022, she reached out to Jackson to sustain DDB’s culinary culture. It was only natural to say yes, Jackson said.
“I felt like this can’t be real,” she said. “I’m going to get a paycheck for doing something I’ve been doing for free for so many years.”
There was a learning curve. Pre-made things like chicken patties were new to her, but she came equipped with the one thing that can’t be taught—empathy. With each meal, Jackson serves “consistency and love,” Lingenfelter said.
“What if someone’s not having a good day, and mental health plays a part?” she said. “Are you going to snap off, too, or are you going to de-escalate?”
If someone isn’t being nice, well, she has bad days, too. She doesn’t put herself in their shoes because it’s impossible to imagine sleeping outside or not having someone to call for help.
“If my meal in their day could make them feel like someone cares, someone loves them, someone took care of them, then I would like for them to leave feeling that way,” she said.
Early in her tenure, Jackson thought about the celebratory meals that her guests were probably missing. For the Fourth of July, she staged an all-American barbecue, complete with ribs, tuna mac and cheese, pasta salad, “the things I don’t think they’re getting because they don’t have their family.”
“They don’t have those holiday meals,” she said. “We just think it’s Fourth of July, and we have a barbecue to go to. It’s those details I took very personally when I started here.”
The DDB culinary team is “pro-seasoning,” going light on the salt that can aggravate chronic health conditions, said Lingenfelter. Dishes are enlivened by her chef’s training in layering seasonings into each ingredient. Jackson brings the flavors with choices like jerk chicken and jerk lamb chops.
Barbecue ribs get a house-made dry rub. What’s the secret ingredient?
“We can’t tell you that,” Lingenfelter said.
Important Partners
Charitable food networks have “really evolved from expired food and dented cans,” said Tara Davis, chief programs officer at the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. Today, half of the food bank’s distribution is fresh or frozen.
Downtown Daily Bread, with its strictly organized pantry, refrigerators and freezers, is an “all-star partner” in this transformation.
“They are constantly keeping that neighbor in mind,” Davis said. “How can we continue to elevate that customer service experience that you would have at any other restaurant? It should belong within the food service and food pantry services, too.”
DDB focuses meal planning on nutrition, said Davis, which is “incredibly important” for people more vulnerable to illness. Lingenfelter’s participation with a food bank project mapping food insecurity in Dauphin County will provide data that DDB can use to target resources toward unmet needs.
“They’re a really important partner,” Davis said. “They’ve been a staple in the community and Harrisburg.”
Since 2021, DDB guests have enjoyed a steady supply of fresh greens, tomatoes and protein-rich fish through a partnership with HU Aquaponics.
“You can have tomatoes in the middle of December that look like summer tomatoes,” Lingenfelter said.
After a Giant Company donation launched the partnership, DDB staff toured the aquaponics facility and “were enamored,” said Rachel Fogle, Harrisburg University associate professor and program lead of environmental sciences. “They have been fantastic ever since.”
Freshness matters, Fogle added.
“Providing your body with the balanced nutrients it needs shouldn’t be a limiting factor just because you’re at a bad spot in life,” she said.
In eight-week cycles, DDB receives about 215 pounds of fresh tilapia—the entire HU Aquaponics supply.
Farmed in meticulously clean tanks, the fish don’t taste fishy. They taste like “whatever you prepare them in,” Fogle said. “That was one of the feedbacks they gave us, that the fish tasted really good.”
Relying on donations and partners means that, unlike restaurant chefs, Jackson can’t make a grocery run for supplies. But like chefs everywhere, she delights in turning interesting finds into culinary creations. When food partners list new meats or fish, she snaps them up.
As a result, DDB guests are dining on chili and spaghetti made with food-bank bison. When the ribs they crave are available, Jackson immediately puts in her order.
“That way, the guests can say, ‘Okay, at least she’s not giving us chicken every day,’” she said.
Makes a Difference
Under Lingenfelter’s mentorship, Jackson has learned to think beyond old limitations. When her children’s cooking class lost its space, she let it go until Lingenfelter took up the cause and prodded her to start anew.
Jackson now sees new avenues, “especially when it comes to helping the community.”
“I have an actual boss who cares about that,” Jackson said. “Just allowing someone to help me in that type of situation would probably be the biggest lesson.”
Children’s education is among the DDB culinary ventures that are tackling the broader goal of ending food insecurity. Elevating the food quality helps tear down the walls that isolate homelessness agencies and their clients from the community, Lingenfelter said.
As for the paycheck that Jackson mentioned, she and Lingenfelter agreed that it hardly compares to what they could be earning in restaurants, but maybe that’s the point. DDB is setting an example of customer and community service for their fellow chefs and other social service agencies.
“People don’t realize the impact food could have on people because we’re so spoiled,” Lingenfelter said. “I guess that’s not their story. That’s our intent, to continue to make these meals from scratch, homemade and with love because it makes a difference.”
Downtown Daily Bread is located at 234 South St., Harrisburg. For more information and to make a donation, visit www.downtowndailybread.org.
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