For the past six years, Olson, sales director for The Pampered Chef, has been doing her part to alleviate hunger by partnering with America's Second Harvest (A2H), which feeds more than 23 million hungry Americans every year.

With her own creative skills and Pampered Chef's kitchen tools and gadgets, Olson has cooked her way into collecting money for America's Second Harvest's 12th annual "Round-Up from the Heart" campaign, which runs through Feb. 28, 2003.

Olson helps the campaign by cooking meals in her customers' homes and encouraging her customers to round off to the nearest dollar or more while purchasing items from the Pampered Chef catalog. The extra funds are then sent to the A2H's food banks in the region.

Customers are also invited to purchase a special collector's cookie mold. This year's "Peace on Earth" heart-cookie mold features two doves holding olive branches. For each cookie mold purchased, the Pampered Chef donates $1 to America's Second Harvest.

"When I tell my customers that $1 feeds 40 people, they want to buy a mold," Olson says. "More than 148,000 molds were sold during last year's campaign."

There are more than 64,000 kitchen consultants nationwide who participate in the campaign, but Olson's contribution is enhanced by her special touches and added effort.

Olson and other Pampered Chef consultants operate by visiting people's homes, on their invitation, and cook for them and their guests. Her "loyal customers" have invited her several times into their homes for demonstrations, she says. Olson can customize the meal according to her customers' requests, cooking low fat or vegetarian or creating special holiday themes, such as for Halloween and Thanksgiving.

"It's really neat to go into homes and meet new people," Olson says. "They buy all the groceries; I go in, cook a few things and then clean up after they eat."

People have an opportunity to look through and purchase items from the catalog during and after the cooking demonstration, she says.

"This is a great cause," said Jan Berner, one of Olson's customers. "And there's no one who can do this better than Alyssa."

Olson says she combines her love for cooking and her creative instincts to come up with special items that she knows her guests will enjoy.

"I know what people are going to like," she says. "Pampered Chef gives us really, really neat recipes, but I do my own research and find recipes that people can't get."

Every year Olson holds an open house in her own home to thank her customers.

"Every year I do something different," she says. "This year I decided on a Thanksgiving theme."

The heavy rains and cold wind on Nov. 7 did not stop the more than 40 people who attended Olson's open house. Despite the 12-hour power outage the previous night due to the winter storm, Olson cooked up a storm of her own in her home. Her Thanksgiving spread included butternut squash soup, apple/walnut salad with cranberry vinaigrette, sweet potatoes with cranberry sauce, tomato-glazed green beans, caramel cashew bars, soft pumpkin cookies, spiced pumpkin tartlets and "champagne blush" punch.

"She knows everything," said Cindy Voreyer, a customer of Olson's, at the open house. "And she does this so well."

Olson says her open house gave her a chance to invite her customers to her home and feed them a meal. It also enabled her to inform them about the anti-hunger campaign, she said.

Besides meeting her customers face to face, Olson adds that she does a lot of business via email.

Olson is just one link in the A2H campaign. Many others have done their part as well over the years.

"Last year the campaign raised $1 million for Second Harvest," says Maurice Weaver, spokesman for the organization. "Since 1991, $6 million has been raised."

With the goal of ending hunger in the United States, Weaver says, the organization distributes more than a billion pounds of food to needy Americans every year. The Round-Up from the Heart campaign helps raise money for more than 200 food banks and food rescue affiliates across the country and raises awareness that hunger exists in every community in the country, he says.

For more information about the Round-Up from the Heart campaign, email Olson at lovecooking@aol.com.