Cooking Up A Winner Woman Survives Addiction, Becomes Cook At Detox Center

The woman in blue pajamas shook. Her stomach cramped. Her body, bloated to 196 pounds, craved sugar, alcohol, something, anything to make the shaking stop. She piled food on her plate in the detox center cafeteria, but when she sat down, she couldn’t touch it.

The smell made her sick.

Detox cook Pamela MacArthur knows that for recovering addicts, eventually, food will start to taste better. Someday, the smell of roasting meat and simmering soups will trigger real hunger. Food will become a joy again, a way to socialize and relax, a safe venue in a new sober life.

MacArthur knows because two years ago, she was the woman in blue pajamas.

Tonight, she’ll stand with Spokane’s finest chefs to raise money for the Spokane Food Bank.

Her chicken potpie, created in the basement kitchen of Spokane Care Services downtown, was an improvised masterpiece of donated food, poultry seasoning and a little Southern magic.

It beat out entries from eight other non-profit agencies to win $1,000 and a serving slot at the food bank’s annual fund-raiser.

But victory for MacArthur is ongoing.

The award-winning cook, 50 pounds lighter and fit, had her first meal at the detox center 21 months ago - as a client.

She’d been in Spokane less than a day, having arrived from Chicago by train. Leaving her boyfriend and home behind, she’d been drinking Budweiser and Jack Daniels since 7 a.m. By afternoon, the friends she was visiting called police. When she woke up in detox on Aug. 12, 1994, she thought she’d been committed.

“I had hit bottom 15 years earlier,” she said. “I just crawled around it for a while.”

MacArthur had been drinking off and on since her first blackout at 17, and her drink of choice was anything short of Sterno.

At 48, the San Antonio native shudders at her alcohol consumption.

But she got through five days at detox sober, and then 28, then 60 and then 90. She began helping in the kitchen before taking over as full-time cook last July. She’d never run a kitchen before.

Preparing meals for 50 people, she knows to keep microwave soups on hand for queasy stomachs and how to coax badly needed vegetables into malnourished bodies.

Relying on that old Southern sweetener - sugar - she gets clients to eat brussels sprouts and beans that taste fresh out of the garden. She puts a little sugar in brewing iced tea, so very little is needed at the table. Sugar is limited in her kitchen, along with salt and caffeine.

Such planning cut sugar consumption by more than half at the center, and her careful shopping and use of donations cut the kitchen budget by 40 percent.

“Her creativity is astounding,” said business manager Kaye Hendren.

Tonight’s “Taking a Bite Out of Hunger” is the food bank’s annual attempt to raise $35,000. Spokane Care is one of 70 agencies that receive food through the food bank, which serves about 30,000 people monthly.

After MacArthur won the cook-off contest, she told organizer Ann Price, “Food is something you see as well as eat. You’re feeding people’s souls as well as their stomachs.”

“She has a real spirit about her,” Price said.

MacArthur walks three miles a day to and from work and has filled her new apartment with furniture - all paid for. She cooks a full-course meal for herself and a friend every night. Food represents stability.

She has bad days. Monday, walking to the serving window at lunch time, her heel caught and she dumped an entire pot of tomato soup.

“The soup du jour is now the soup du floor,” she said with a Brett Butler drawl.

“Sometimes I wake up and wonder, ‘Is this a dream? Is this all going to vanish, and I’m going to wake up in a motel room?”’

When that happens, she gets up and calls her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. Then she goes to work, more than 40 hours a week.

On good days, a client sticks his head into the kitchen and says:

“Just like mom used to make.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: A TASTE OF CHARITY “Taking a Bite Out of Hunger,” a food- and beverage-tasting benefit for the Spokane Food Bank, will be tonight at the Spokane Arena from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Twenty local restaurants and caterers are participating. Tickets cost $35 each or $60 per pair. For information, call 534-6678.