Featured Recipe from Produce Rx: Butternut Squash with Black Beans

Featured Recipe from Produce Rx

A Program of The Nashville Food Project

Food can do more than fill a plate. It can support healing, strengthen community, and help people care for their bodies in ways that feel sustainable and dignified.

Through our Produce Rx pilot, we are working alongside community partners to support better health outcomes through access to fresh, nourishing food. In partnership with Wayspring, we provide fresh produce for patients while care teams help coordinate access and provide ongoing support.

Together, we are building a model that strengthens dignity, connection, and well-being through food.

One way we support this work is by sharing simple, nourishing recipes that make fresh ingredients approachable in everyday kitchens. This month’s featured recipe brings together two ingredients that are both accessible and deeply nourishing: butternut squash and black beans.

The natural sweetness of squash pairs beautifully with the earthy richness of black beans, creating a dish that is hearty, flavorful, and full of fiber and plant-based protein. Meals like this remind us that good food does not have to be complicated. With a few ingredients and a little care, it is possible to create something both nourishing and satisfying.

Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2¾ cups butternut squash, cubed (about 1 small squash, roughly 1 pound)

• 1 small onion, chopped

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil (or cooking oil of choice)

• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder

• ¼ cup red wine vinegar

• ¼ cup water

• 2 cans (15.5 ounces each) low-sodium black beans, rinsed and drained

• ½ teaspoon oregano

Instructions

1. Wash hands with soap and water.

2. Heat the squash in the microwave on high heat for 1–2 minutes. This softens the skin and makes it easier to peel.

3. Carefully peel the squash with a vegetable peeler or small knife, then cut into ½-inch cubes.

4. Peel and chop the onion.

5. In a large pan, heat the oil. Add the onion, garlic powder, and squash. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes.

6. Add the vinegar and water. Reduce heat and cook on low until the squash becomes tender, about 10 minutes.

7. Add the beans and oregano. Cook until the beans are heated through.

Recipes like this are a reminder that nourishing food can begin with simple ingredients and shared knowledge. Through Produce Rx and partnerships across Nashville, we continue working toward a future where access to healthy food supports not only nutrition, but long-term health and well-being.

Together, we are growing a food system where care and nourishment move hand in hand.

Recipe from the United States Department of Agriculture. You can find more recipes at https://snaped.fns.usda.gov/resources/recipes-and-menus

Anatomy of a Meal

Have you ever wondered what it takes to place a hot, nourishing meal in a neighbor’s hands? For us, a meal does not begin in the kitchen. It begins much earlier.

What follows is a careful, collective process shaped by stewardship, skill, and care. It is the work of turning surplus into nourishment, and nourishment into connection.

Recovery

The first step is recovery. Across Nashville, food that is still fresh and abundant is often left without a destination. We work alongside grocers, farmers, markets, restaurants, and individuals to recover food that would otherwise go to waste. This is not about scraps or leftovers. It is about recognizing the value of food that has already been grown, harvested, and prepared with care.

Recovering food is an act of responsibility. It acknowledges that hunger and waste exist side by side, and that abundance can be redirected toward justice when we choose to act.

Prep and Cook

Once recovered, food moves into our kitchens. Here, volunteers, cooks, and staff prepare meals from scratch, guided by skill and intention. Vegetables are washed and chopped. Recipes are tested and refined. Meals are prepared with the understanding that the people who will receive them deserve food that is nourishing, thoughtful, and well made.

Cooking is where transformation becomes visible. Ingredients become meals. Surplus becomes sustenance. And strangers become neighbors through shared effort.

Delivery

Meals do not remain in our kitchens. They travel outward, carried by partnerships and logistics that make access possible. Through coordination with nonprofit partners across the city, meals are delivered to places where they can be shared with care and dignity.

Delivery is not simply about transportation. It is about trust. It depends on relationships built over time and a shared commitment to meeting people where they are.

Shared with Care

The final step happens around tables, in community spaces, and through organizations doing vital work across Nashville. Meals are served alongside programs that support children, seniors, immigrants, and unhoused neighbors. In these moments, food becomes more than nutrition. It becomes an expression of hospitality and belonging.

A meal shared with care communicates something essential. You matter. You are welcome. You are not alone.

Impact

Every meal tells a larger story. It is a story of hunger addressed and waste reduced. It is a story of volunteers showing up, partners collaborating, and systems working together in service of the common good.

This work fights hunger by increasing access to consistent nourishment. It reduces waste by honoring the value of food already grown. And it builds community by creating spaces where people come together around a shared table.

Be Part of the Journey

The anatomy of a meal is a collective effort. It relies on people who believe that good food should not be wasted and that neighbors deserve to be nourished with dignity.

If you want to be part of this transformation, there are many ways to get involved. Whether through volunteering, donating food, or offering financial support, your participation helps keep this cycle of care moving forward.

Together, we turn what might be thrown away into meals that strengthen our community, one plate at a time.

Looking Back at Nourish 2025

On July 17, 2025, we gathered for our 15th annual Nourish, presented by Kroger—and what a night it was. We're humbled and incredibly proud to share that Nourish 2025 brought together more than 300 guests and raised nearly $250,000 to support our mission of bringing people together to grow, cook, and share nourishing food.

But beyond the numbers, Nourish was once again a beautiful celebration of community, collaboration, and connection—a night where the table became a place for generosity, shared purpose, and joy.

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An Unforgettable Meal

This year’s all-star chef lineup included teams from:

• Bad Idea

• Curry Boys BBQ

• S.S. Gai

• Tantísimo

• Turkey and the Wolf Icehouse

• Saap Saap BBQ (unable to attend due to a family emergency)

Each chef brought a distinctive voice and vision to the meal, creating a multi-course experience that reflected diverse cultures, techniques, and a shared love for food. One of the evening’s most inspiring moments was witnessing these chefs collaborate in real time—helping one another plate, prep, and bring each dish to life with care and camaraderie.

We also premiered a behind-the-scenes chef video, highlighting their visit to the Growing Together Farm—and what fuels their passion for food and community.

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Honoring Our Volunteer Hero: Theresa McCurdy

One of the evening’s most heartfelt moments was the presentation of the Thomas Williams Golden Skillet Award, which honors an outstanding volunteer who embodies the spirit of our work. This year, we were thrilled to present the award to Theresa McCurdy, who has quietly and faithfully given over 440 volunteer hours since 2022.

Theresa’s steady presence, compassion, and commitment have made her an integral part of our kitchen community. Her story is a powerful reminder that it’s not just meals we’re making—it’s community, built one kind gesture at a time.

The Thomas Williams Golden Skillet Award, established in 2017, recognizes a volunteer who has shown deep dedication to the work of The Nashville Food Project. Its namesake Thomas Williams is the founder of Nourish.

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Raising Paddles, Raising Hope

This year’s Night of Giving was especially impactful thanks to a $20,000 matching gift, which helped double the power of every contribution made that evening. From $5,000 pledges to $100 gifts, the generosity in the room was overwhelming and deeply inspiring.

Thanks to the support of individual donors and corporate partners, we’ll be able to share tens of thousands more nourishing meals with our neighbors in the months ahead.

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With Gratitude to Our Sponsors

Nourish 2025 would not have been possible without our generous sponsors. We are deeply grateful to the following partners:

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Looking Ahead

Nourish isn’t just an annual event—it’s a reflection of our ongoing work and the community that makes it possible. Whether you were with us in person or supporting from afar, thank you for helping us grow this movement.

Together, we’re building a more food-secure, connected, and resilient Nashville. One meal. One garden. One relationship at a time.

Fueling Potential: How Summer Meals Support Youth at the Boys & Girls Club

At the Boys & Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee’s Andrew Jackson Clubhouse, every day is filled with opportunities for youth to learn, grow, and connect. And thanks to Sweet Peas Summer Eats for Kids—sponsored by Jackson National Life Insurance Company® (Jackson®)—those days are also fueled by healthy, made-from-scratch meals from The Nashville Food Project.

We handle the food so BGCMT can stay focused on its mission: to help all young people—especially those who need us most—reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.

“When school is out, many children and teens lose access to regular meals,” says Denise Carothers with BGCMT. “The Nashville Food Project’s summer meals ensure that youth have access to healthy food even when school is out. These meals do more than fill plates—they strengthen support systems, create safe spaces, and help children and teens thrive.”

Each week this summer, the Andrew Jackson Clubhouse receives hundreds of meals packed with local produce and kid-friendly favorites like veggie pasta and chicken tacos. And they’re just one of many partners receiving meals through Sweet Peas this summer. With Jackson’s incredible support—now in its sixth consecutive year—we’ll serve more than 100,000 meals this summer to children across the city.

This partnership is part of our Community Meals program, which provides nutritious, made-from-scratch meals to organizations already gathering people in meaningful ways. Our meals help reduce barriers to food access by showing up where people already are—programs like BGCMT that offer stability, community, and a sense of belonging.

This work is only possible because of corporate partners like Jackson, who share our belief that good food is a powerful way to build stronger, healthier communities—one meal at a time.

Volunteer Appreciation Week: Community in the Kitchen

It’s National Volunteer Appreciation Week, and we’re celebrating the incredible folks who show up daily to chop veggies, shovel compost, mix dressings, and even sharpen knives! These simple, sometimes un-glamorous tasks are the backbone of the Food Project — but the community members that lend their hands to this work each day are the heart.

In the kitchen, volunteers keep us afloat. The hundreds of unique volunteer hours given each month make it possible for our team to produce 6,500 meals each week — in fact, every single meal that comes out of our kitchen includes some contribution from volunteers, be it colorful assembled salads, diced roasted potatoes, or a chicken pasta bake that volunteers took the time to shred.

The best thing about our volunteers, though, is the community they cultivate by bringing their generosity, creativity, and positivity to our space. If you walk through the headquarters kitchen during a prep session, you’ll see strangers becoming friends as they blend smoothies, or a corporate volunteer group dancing along to the music as they work through a container of strawberries at their cutting boards.

Our friend Madison is an incredible example of community during the time she frequently gives us at evening prep sessions, which she brings energy and life to despite having worked a full day at her job. She’s been volunteering with us since 2021 and we feel lucky to count her among our regulars!

“Madison is exactly who you want to be partnered with when volunteering in the kitchen,” explains Hannah, a former staff member who still shows up often to volunteer. “She's so funny and fun to talk to, she's fast and efficient at any prep task, and she knows how to find anything you need in the kitchen. We're so grateful to Madison for her dedication to The Nashville Food Project over the years and the energy she brings to any prep!”

Hannah and Madison volunteering at Meat Conference earlier this year, where The Nashville Food Project recovered over 16,000 pounds of food for our meals program.

Check out this Q&A with Madison:

How do you see your role in this work of building a just and sustainable food system?

I see my role as a TNFP volunteer as a critical piece of TNFP's offering to the community. The TNFP kitchen staff is an amazing team that is enabled by TNFP volunteers to serve even more meals to the community.

It might be hard to see the impact of a 2 hour shift when you're surrounded by stacks of veggies to chop, but at the end of a volunteer shift, when everything is prepped and ready to be used, you can really see the magnitude of the team’s work.

I also see TNFP as a learning experience for myself as I have become more aware of food waste and up-cycling at home and in my personal grocery shopping.

What excites you about the vision of a world with a just and sustainable food system?

I've learned a lot about TNFP's vision in my time volunteering here. Some of which, I had not thought about much before — i.e., the need for nutritious meals in food insecure communities beyond just providing a meal. Most importantly, I've experienced the power of community and sharing goals, tasks, and meals together as such. I've learned the most from the sheer magnitude of the meals we prepare and have gained a lot of perspective through the simple tasks of chopping and portioning.

What about this work brings you hope?

I am motivated by the teamwork and community that TNFP creates. From the staff to the other volunteers, I have met so many people across different backgrounds, all while preparing meals for different groups across the city. It's very common for me to get stuck in my friend group or within my work industry, so meeting people outside of that really has shown me the power of community, and there's something really exciting to me about preparing meals as a community that are going out to even more communities across our city.

Denise and Amy: Sisters from Another Mister

By Arianna Nimocks, Volunteer Engagement Manager

“I HATE possums, which Amy knows very well. She gleefully had her husband and sons leave a very-much alive possum in a bucket on my front porch. When I screamed, slammed the door and locked it, her family mocked me further by letting the nasty creature swing by its tail from their finger outside my living room window!”

(Direct quote from Denise Sesler.)

Amy Lee and Denise Sesler go together like… peas in a pod. Sisters from another mister. As Amy puts it, “Denise is an extrovert who will talk to anyone. I’m pretty much the opposite. She makes friends wherever we go; I make jokes.”

Amy and Denise have been friends since their kids started kindergarten. They didn’t realize they had lived on the same street until then. They clicked, and for the past 20 years have been pretty much inseparable friends. They go on family vacations together, go to concerts, plays, and author events (Michelle Obama twice!), and volunteer together at St. Luke’s Kitchen as a Cook Team on a regular basis. Denise says, “we have survived fighting like sisters, because that’s what we are. Deranged, high-maintenance sisters.” (Correction, from Amy: “one deranged, high maintenance person and one normal functioning person.”)

Over the months I’ve worked with Amy and Denise, I have learned so much (is there a thing as too much?) from their hilarious back-and-forth.

One of Amy’s favorite stories to tell about Denise is this one: “I broke my finger and asked her to take me to the ER. She had to finish drying her hair and applying makeup and didn’t pick me up for almost an hour. Then the nurse asked if she was my mom so there was karma.” Amy adds: “Denise says this an exaggeration, [but] Denise’s husband is on my side.”

Denise responds with, “Amy’s broken finger time frame is a complete exaggeration and I want an attorney!” and “Sadly, the nurse thinking I was Amy’s mom is not an exaggeration, and she has often called me ‘Mom’ ever since.”

Most importantly, I’ve learned about friendship through them and their joint support for the mission of The Nashville Food Project.

Denise began volunteering soon after her friend Tallu Quinn started the organization, and she “has been an enthusiastic supporter ever since.” Denise recruited Amy and they have both been volunteering together for 10 years.

Amy says that her favorite part of volunteering with The Nashville Food Project has been “the camaraderie over the years at St Lukes.” She notes that, “while the staff and volunteers have changed some, the general atmosphere has been a constant. It has always been a group that is working hard, all while having fun, laughing, and enjoying the fellowship of each other. It's good people, doing good work, for a great cause.”

A tight community at St. Luke’s is the “magic sauce,” as one of our evening volunteers, Andrea Pruijssers, put it, of why growing, cooking and sharing is so inextricably woven together with relationships. Volunteers don’t just prepare food together, they become friends and build bridges together.

Denise’s dedication to the Food Project’s mission is profound. She says, “When we share a meal, we share love and community. When we have access to a warm meal, we are strengthened to meet the hardships that come our way. When we prevent food waste where possible, we lessen the growth of landfills and toxins that are released into our air, and we facilitate growth of more food for those in need. When we volunteer with others to bring these things about, we are blessed beyond measure. Good things happen around the table and in the breaking of bread. The Food Project proves that every day.”

Here’s to seeing if Amy and Denise will ever record themselves during one of our prep sessions and create a podcast out of it…! Oh, and, next time you see them, ask them about how they “run” the Nashville marathon. You won’t be disappointed.

Recent Favorites from the Kitchen

Lately in our kitchen, we’ve been getting creative with the gifts of food we steward! Here are a few of our favorite meals to come out of the kitchen as of late:

Julia’s Monte Cristo Bake

In January, we gratefully received a huge donation of hams from Aldi. We relied on a few classic ways to incorporate it into meals — carbonara, pineapple glazed ham, pork fried rice — but 1,800 pounds is a lot of ham! Luckily, our meals director Julia is always thinking creatively about how make the best use of our resources and dreamt up this Monte Cristo bake.

A Monte Cristo is a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in egg and fried up like french toast. Julia deconstructed this beloved sandwich into a casserole and topped it with homemade strawberry sauce and powdered sugar! To round out the breakfast-for-dinner theme, it was delivered alongside roasted breakfast potatoes and fresh fruit smoothies. A nourishing new favorite!

Mary’s Muffulettas

Ever had a New Orleans muffuletta? They're made by layering traditional Sicilian sesame bread with olive salad, salami, ham, mortadella, provolone and swiss cheese. Mary Elizabeth leaned on her Cajun roots and prepared a bunch of these delicious sandwiches to help our partners celebrate Mardi Gras, which fell on the very next day!

She made the best use of what we had on hand and put the Food Project spin on this sandwich, down to an olive salad that mixed traditional ingredients like olives, carrots, celery, red wine vinegar, and oil with some flavorful additions like hearts of palm, artichoke hearts, and banana peppers. It was a tasty lunch right in line with those hearty, rich Mardi Gras flavors!

Six-Layer Thanksgiving Casserole

Who says we have to wait until Thanksgiving to make — and enjoy — dressing? A massive turkey donation and some lingering cans of cranberry put us in the mood for some classic Thanksgiving food this Presidents’ Day, so we decided to combine all of our favorite flavors into one dish.

We started with turkey, pulled by the hands of faithful volunteers, and then topped it with cranberry sauce, mixing it up so that every bite of turkey included that bright, tart cranberry marinade. Then we added green beans, fresh veggies, scratch-made gravy and dressing with all the fixins and baked it into a casserole! It was like the classic Thanksgiving “perfect bite” over and over again.

Anatomy of a Meal

We often say that many hearts and hands go into this work. But what exactly do we mean by that? Follow us while we make a beef lasagna to find out!

Food Donations and Recovery

When most people cook, they decide on a recipe and then go grocery shopping for the ingredients. But for us, it’s the other way around. At any time, our walk-in refrigerator, freezer and dry storage may have thousands of servings of meat, pasta, beans, assorted veggies and more — and most often, it came from generous donors or was diverted on its way to the landfill. In fact, about 65 percent of the food we prepare in our kitchens comes from donations or recovery efforts. When it comes time to plan our menu for the week, we begin by taking stock of what we have and leaving room for any fresh ingredients that may be coming later in the week. This week, our first step is evaluating our protein supply…

Every Tuesday, a few of the fine folks from Porter Road Butcher pull up at the freezer behind our headquarters to drop off a weekly meat donation: usually some combination of ground beef, bacon, sausage and steaks. Always, they’re donating in quantities of hundreds of pounds at a time. If we’re cooking with meat, this is often where our meal begins. This time, we’re using ground beef!

Then comes produce! For something like a beef lasagna, the vegetables we need are fairly basic — mostly tomatoes for the homemade marinara sauce. Besides, all meal recipients will get a veggie side; in this case, it’s a roasted veggie medley. During the summer and fall months especially, we often receive gracious donations from local farms with a bumper crop. These particular tomatoes came from Cul2vate and Bells Bend Farms, with a few cans of recovered Costco tomatoes thrown in to thicken up the sauce a bit.

We round it out with cheese recovered from Whole Foods and lasagna noodles donated by a recent local food drive. From there, we’re ready to start cooking!

Food Preparation and Assembly

A huge branch of our volunteer program is processing donations. Usually, that means getting the bulk food that has been donated or recovered into manageable pieces for our kitchens to cook with. Whether a team of volunteers is chopping veggies or shredding chicken, there are always extra hands around here.

A few days before it was time to put together this meal, volunteers cut up huge chunks of cheese into easily meltable blocks. This ahead-of-time preparation makes it easy for our meals staff to get to work making cheese sauce! Meals Coordinator Bryan cooks off the beef and blends up the marinara sauce. At this point, everything is prepped and ready for assembly.

Food assembly is a little more detail-oriented and labor-intensive than processing, so the volunteer group that helps us put together our lasagna is one that has been around a while. Led by our friend Ann, this group of women comes in a few Thursdays a month to help us cook — a task almost always reserved for Food Project veterans. They do an amazing job!

Food Distribution and Delivery

We always prepare meals at least a day in advance. After this one is baked, it spends the night in our walk-in refrigerator and is reheated the following morning before our share team loads the vans and leaves for their meal distribution routes! Our food access partners include after-school programs, immigrant communities, homeless outreach organizations and so many others in Nashville.

We share this beef lasagna with the veggie roast and a portion of homemade applesauce with friends at Dismas House, Community Care Fellowship, FiftyForward, Project Transformation, Preston Taylor Ministries, the Martha O’Bryan Center, YWCA, Project Return and seven different after-school sites in partnership with the YMCA.

Once it gets to the sites, many more hands are involved in serving, eating and cleaning up after the meal. But that’s a story for another time…

Tips from the Kitchen: Butternut Squash

It’s okay to admit a love-hate relationship with butternut squash. Yes, it can be hard to cut — but, wow, it also can be versatile and delicious! We love that this plentiful fall squash keeps so well in cold storage, and we are grateful to have generous sources who gift us butternut squash such as Cul2vate Farms and Bells Bend Farms.  

Meals Coordinator Sarah Farrell shares a quick and easy(ish) way to cut these hardy, resilient vegetables below, and we include a few favorite recipes too! 

Recipes:
Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

Skillet Chicken Pot Pie with Butternut Squash

Mushroom, Butternut Squash and Gruyere Tart

Butternut Pumpkin Pie

Butternut squash in cold storage. Thank you, farmers!!

Kale Yeah!

Last week, we posted on social media about a glorious donation of 150 pounds of kale from Harpeth Moon Farm. That’s a mountain of greens! 

But we always love the challenge in stewarding gifts like this by using every part of the vegetable to pack as much tasty nutrition into our meals as possible. It often includes brainstorming by the meals team to think of many ways to use a product—such as whirling greens into juices, folding them into stir-frys or pastas, roasting, braising, pickling, and making stocks with the stems. 

For part of this batch, Contract Meals Coordinator Jake Martin had the idea to make a kale pesto, which could be used in several different applications. We spread it onto French bread for a pizza base, added it to cream sauce for pesto pasta, and transformed it into green goddess for drizzling over veggie grain bowls. 

 Jake came to The Nashville Food Project earlier this year after working with his father Chef Michael Martin of South Fork Catering Co. During the height of the pandemic, the Martin father-son duo supported our meals program by using their time and skills to help us process vegetables when we had no extra hands (a.k.a. volunteers) to help us and as South Fork had fewer events to cater. Creativity comes in many forms—finding smart ways to use vegetables and creative ways to work together too!

Kale Pesto 

2 to 3 cloves garlic
3 cups packed kale (about 1 small bunch)
¾ cup  toasted walnuts 
2 tablespoons lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
Red pepper flakes, optional (if you want to add some kick)
¼  extra-virgin olive oil (more if desired)
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and whirl until smooth! 

Recipes That Tell Our Stories: Meg's Overnight French Toast

Senior Meals Coordinator Meg Doster cooked up a special treat for the St. Luke’s Community House Pre-K children recently — her family’s favorite French Toast Bake. Today on the blog, she shares the recipe and a bit about its backstory with us. It’s another example of how food tells our stories like the Dirty Pages recipe storytelling exhibit that hangs on the walls in our Community Dining at The Nashville Food Project headquarters. 

My mom has a million cookbooks. The beautiful cacophony of books and loose-leaf paper are jam-packed like sardines in a skinny cabinet in my parents’ kitchen. She has recipes saved from her mother and her great-aunts scribbled on notecards; recipes printed from Pinterest from women in her bible study; recipes saved from my father’s mother as her memory wanes. The ones that we love have food stains and notes in the margins. Each one represents moments in her life and the people that have shaped and held her, like she shapes and holds our growing family. 

In “The Pot Thickens: Solving Mysteries in the Kitchen,” compiled in the mid-1980s by my hometown junior women's league, you will find our Overnight French Toast. My mom has taken this recipe and elevated it over the years. It is one of those special dishes that we only serve once a year, and it never tastes the same way as when she makes it (I have tried! I don’t have the touch!). She often makes it after our Christmas Eve festivities, which don’t end until well past midnight. I don’t know why we never make it before our Christmas Eve party, but it’s not helpful to ask these questions to your mother when it is 1am and you just hosted 30 people. Nonetheless, this dish is perfect. Years of tweaking to the recipe has yielded one of the principal dishes in our family’s holiday repertoire. It does not feel like Christmas without our ritual of pulling the blender down from the cabinet (probably the only time out of the year we use the blender), cracking the eggs, and doctoring up a maple syrup on the stove. It consists of typical french toast ingredients (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) with the added twist of letting the french toast sit overnight to absorb the liquid. After it bakes, I recommend dusting it with powdered sugar for serving. It also makes for a lovely leftover, warmed in the microwave or eaten cold out of the tupperware.

Goodbye (and Thank You), Winter: A Reflection on Finding Beauty Even in the Toughest Seasons

by Julia Baynor, Meals Manager

Ah, the seasons. 

Even in our pandemic year, summer at The Nashville Food Project still managed to show how we receive so much abundance, with piles and piles of vegetables coming through our doors. 

Through donations and sourcing from local farms, we were up to our ears in tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash. The Tennessee summers are long, and bountiful produce filled our walk-ins until what seemed like October. We look forward to that time again. 

Then summer slipped away and a beautiful fall descended upon us until the constant flux of donations started to dwindle. I found myself calling over to our headquarters kitchen from my office a few blocks away at St. Luke’s Community House, looking to source extra produce for our meals. “We’ve got nothing,” became the common refrain. Winter had started to set in.

Fresh produce is one of the things I love most about my job at TNFP. I will never stop marveling at the natural rainbow housed in our bins: the crimson tipped lettuces, the blushing pinks of crunchy radishes, and the deep, dark violet of beets fill me with inspiration. Turning beautiful produce into delicious meals and sending them out to nourish our community is what I live for, but in the winter, things get a little harder. Produce becomes more scarce, and the items we do get aren’t always the easiest to work with. Butternut squash have tough skins and seeds that must be scraped out. Winter turnips come in with gnarled skin and stringy roots that must be peeled away. Working with winter produce can be arduous and slow, much like working through winter itself.

Around the same time the winter season descended upon us, I started contemplating winter myself. In the book “Wintering,” author Katherine May explores the many characteristics of physical winter but also recognizes the difficulties we as humans experience in our personal winters as well. As I read May’s perspectives about the cyclical nature of our lives and of the seasons, I found myself reflecting on the changes the previous year had wrought at The Nashville Food Project.

The meals team has been harboring a winter of its own. In addition to the psychic hardships and exhaustion of working on the front lines of a pandemic, many meals team members suffered the loss of loved ones over the course of the past year. This winter penetrated the fabric of our team as well as we saw several treasured veterans move on to other endeavors. As last days came and went, so did uncomfortable feelings about what to do next as a team. In a lot of ways it has felt like starting over, building our program from the ground up.

There were days that felt scary and discouraging. A meals team without several foundational members felt like staring into the darkness of winter. I kept going back to lines in “Wintering” which assured me, eventually, things would look up. 

“Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet we still refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.”

I realized I had been looking at winter with the wrong perspective. With May’s musings on my mind, I felt my resistance to winter begin to thaw. We hired new team members who came with fresh energies like spring, and I began to feel hope again. With new people come new perspectives, and I look forward to the growth of our program that will come with their ideas. 

I also began to welcome that hardy winter produce into the kitchen with less trepidation by focusing on the potential these scrappy vegetables held to become something delicious. This winter, we received upwards of 600 pounds of butternut squash from a local independent farmer, hundreds of pounds of root vegetables from Bells Bend farm, and, after a little winter storm made their delivery routes impossible, Imperfect Foods filled every shelf of our walk-in with boxes brimming with so-called “ugly” produce. In the darkness and cold of winter we were still able to make trays of colorful root vegetables, slowly roasted in our ovens until the peppery bite faded into sweetness. We made silky, garlicky turnip purees, creamy butternut squash pasta sauces, and peeled away the rough exteriors of “ugly” carrots to use in mirepoix for comforting winter soups. Winter vegetables are the perfect example of taking what is seemingly “nothing” and turning it into so much goodness.

On their way to becoming garlic-mashed turnips to serve alongside Meyer lemon-rosemary chicken.

Winter presents a set of circumstances none of us can control. But it also gives an opportunity to embrace the action of letting go. Winter holds space for all of us to deal with the hard truths of the year that has just passed. And through the sharp lens of winter’s harsh reality, it gives us something else too: the prospect of new beginnings, and with it, the arrival of spring.

As I sit outside with the sun on my face for the first time in what feels like months, I can feel it approaching.

“Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” -Katherine May

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Radish Tart in an Almond Flour Crust

Adapted from Martha Stewart and Dishing up the Dirt.

Yields 1 x 9 inch tart 

 Almond Flour Crust
2 cups almond flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1/3 cup olive oil 
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp water 

Tart Filling
4 oz goat cheese, room temperature 
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
8 oz radishes (watermelon radishes are beautiful!), scrubbed, trimmed and thinly sliced.
2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

 Instructions: 

1. Place a rack or sheet pan large enough to hold your tart pan in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease a 9 inch tart pan with oil. In a large bowl, whisk together the almond flour, garlic, parley, salt and pepper. Stir in the oil and water and mix until well combined. Press the dough into your greased tart pan, making sure the dough goes at least 1 1/4 inches up the sides. Bake until the crust is lightly golden and firm to the touch, about 18 minutes. Let the crust cool to room temp and reduce heat to 375F. 

 2. In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, whisk or blend together the goat cheese, cream cheese, thyme and egg. 

3. Using a a spatula, spread the filling evenly over the crust. 

4. Toss the thinly sliced radishes with salt, pepper and olive oil until evenly coated, then layer them over the filling. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and bake in the oven until the radishes begin to shrivel and the filling is bubbling around the edges, 35-40 minutes. If you notice the crust getting too brown, cover the edges with tin foil. 

5. Let the tart cool for about 15 minutes before slicing and serving. Top with more fresh thyme, or even some balsamic glaze! Enjoy! 

Apple Season Keeps Kitchen Buzzing

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” - Carl Sagan

We love apple season. And we’re especially blessed to have a source who keeps us in apples throughout the fall. 

As some of you know, Joe “Apple Joe” Hodgson started planting apples four years ago. He now has about 575 trees. “When I retired, we thought growing apples would be a good second occupation,” he said. 

Mostly, though, he gives the apples away to us for our meals program, and we are so grateful! 

Here are 3,200 Gala apples headed for our kitchens! 

Other times, we happily receive Yellow Delicious, Pink Lady or Fujis.  

We share many of Joe’s apples with meals as whole fruit, which means Joe often picks and culls them by asking himself this question: “If I were a 4th grader, would I want to bite into this apple?” 

But even the imperfect ones get put to the highest, best use. The kitchen team often makes apple sauce— sometimes tossing in other fruits such as berries from the weekly Whole Foods donations or pears from a recent food drive. Fruits like plums even give it a pink hue. 

We try to make our applesauce as low sugar as possible (or no sugar when using the sweetest varieties like Fuji). See recipe below. 

Other times, though, apples give us reason for little something extra— like a cobbler for our friends at The Ark, apple cider or caramel apples. 

Thank you for sharing your harvest with us, Joe! 

Easy, Adaptable Applesauce (No Sugar Added)

Makes 8 servings

4 medium Fuji or Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, and chopped in bite-size pieces (or a mix of apples with other fruits such as berries, peaches, plums or pears)

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (more to taste)

2 teaspoon lemon juice (for preserving and keeping fresh longer)

In a medium saucepan combine apples and cinnamon. Cover and cook over medium heat until it simmers, then reduce heat to low, medium-low and continue cooking until the apples are tender and very slightly caramelized — about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Once cooked, add lemon juice and stir. Then use an immersion blender or the back of your spoon or a potato masher to mash into a loose sauce. 

Serve fresh (warm or cooled) as a healthy side or spoon over ice cream, pancakes, yogurt or granola. Store leftovers, cooled, in the refrigerator up to 4-5 days, or in the freezer up to 1 month. 

Recipe adapted from minimalistbaker.com.

When the Helpers Need our Help

Just five days after devastating storms swept through Nashville, our staff was feeling overwhelmed and verging on burnout. We had been in constant motion to add extra meal prep sessions, organize new distribution routes and increase production to share thousands of emergency meals over and above our typical run of partner meals.  

But we knew we had to keep going in order to meet the needs of the marginalized neighbors across our city. We needed clutch help. And as they always have, the chefs and restaurateurs stepped up. 

The first Sunday after the storm, a team of 14 professionals had assembled in our kitchen—sleeves rolled up, aprons tied on, ready to work. Some of their restaurants were still without power while others had worked busy shifts all week or been a part of enormous volunteer efforts around town. None of us knew at the time that just days later, they would be shutting their doors indefinitely and helplessly sending staff home amid COVID-19. 

Our restaurant friends have shown up for us in extraordinary ways over the years with their skilled hands, big hearts, expert knowledge, creativity and efficient work. They’ve taught us through action about service and heaped generosity upon us at Simmer and Nourish dinners and donated packages to our silent and live auctions that help us raise thousands of dollars to fund our twin goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our beloved city of Nashville. 

They’ve had our backs—and thus, the backs of so many across this city. They’ve shown us all hospitality and provided space for building community at their welcome tables. And now our restaurant friends need us. 

So how can we help? We can take part in the innovative measures they’ve had to put into place. We can order take-out, gift cards and merch. We can contribute to GoFundMe accounts for workers, many of whom were already living close to the margins. But we also can make our voices heard. A coalition of chefs and restaurant owners mobilized quickly this week to form Tennessee Action for Hospitality. We invite you to visit their site, read their requests and take action.

As we reflect on the past couple weeks, we’d also like to offer specific thanks.

Chef Lisa Marie White of Biscuit Love helped us quickly pull together that all-star team for Sunday prep including Pastry Chef Jaime Miller of Lockeland Table, Tandy Wilson of City House, Tandy’s wife Stephanie Melidis Wilson, Kate Redden of City House, as well as Biscuit Love staff and alums John and Emily Dyer and James Handy. Davis Reese from Sean Brock’s team joined us as well as longtime Dulce Dessert owner Juanita Lane, longtime chef Betsy Johnston and Scarlett Egan, and Chris DeJesus of M Street with his wife and Pastry Chef Brook Champagne and their soon Arlo. 

In just a three-hour session, here’s a glimpse at what they accomplished:

• 15 gallons of chicken stock

• 20 gallons of marinara 

• Muffin batter to use all week (with streusel topping)

• Scones, frozen on sheet pans with baking instructions 

• A 12-gallon Lexan pan of pasta salad

• 2 full Lexan pans of herbed croutons 

• 450 sack lunches with wrapped home-baked cookies 

• Several pans of banana bread, portioned and labeled

• Replenished mise en place and sliced deli turkey 

And then without us asking—they washed dishes and mopped the floor! 

Restaurant friends showed up in other important ways too. With the power still out at his Germantown restaurant Tailor, Vivek Surti joined a regular prep session as did Tom Eckert from Maneet Chauhan’s restaurants (Maneet and team also delivered emergency meals!). Arnold Myint came in to break down whole chickens, make soup and stock and fry tenders. Despite running several busy restaurants Karl and Sarah Worley, co-owners of Biscuit Love and ‘za, came in for prep—rolling chicken salad wraps—with their daughter Gertie.

Katie Struzick and Lucie Bardone of Lockeland Table organized, labeled and inventoried a refrigerated truck donated by US Foods to World Central Kitchen. Jaime Miller also from Lockeland Table spent two days organizing our walk-in cooler and pantry—critically helpful as we received hundreds of donations of perishable product from dozens of generous donors.  

Chef Julia Sullivan of Henrietta Red donated ingredients. Julia Jaksic of Cafe Roze helped deliver our meals on foot. Molly Martin of Juniper Green, Levon Wallace formerly of Strategic Hospitality, Trey Cioccia of The Farm House and Black Rabbit, and Tony and Caroline Galzin of Nicky’s Coal Fired also offered support. We could go on— and that’s in just two weeks time.

At The Nashville Food Project, we hold as a value the belief that every individual has the capacity to be both guest and host. In this time of need for Nashville’s hospitality community — and for so many Nashville neighbors — we hope for creativity and innovation in finding ways to help the helpers among us.

For those in the industry, please be in touch if you know folks with specific needs. You can reach out to me directly at jennifer@thenashvillefoodproject.org and I will take your confidential requests to our Leadership Team at The Nashville Food Project, and we will do our best to support you where you are.

Sharing Hope

The pictures above offer a glimpse of what our emergency food support looked like last week. And due to the disastrous pandemic in our midst and the necessary adjustments we are making to our mission delivery, the photos below are what our emergency support looks like this week. Our commitments to our twin goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger are unwavering, even in such an uncertain time.

We know your news feed has been flooded with heartbreak and hard knocks this week —school closures, small business shutdowns, Covid-19 stats, and a tumbling economy. We also know information is important, and we’re grateful our community is taking social distancing seriously. Indeed, we announced last Friday that we have suspended volunteer activities in our kitchens and gardens for the health and safety of all involved. 

The blows our Middle Tennessee neighbors have endured since the beginning of March have been enormous. Our local community is entering into the coronavirus pandemic already tired, afraid, economically strapped, and needing each other’s physical presence more than ever. The calls for social distancing are in direct conflict with our mission “to bring people together,” but our staff are soldiering on to nourish our community in these changing times with our actions, inaction, love, and prayers. Please keep them in your thoughts as they navigate ways to provide uninterrupted support to our partners and neighbors, while caring for their own families, and meeting what feels like urgent and growing need for the most basic of things - nutritious food.

As we all feel our way into what the coming weeks and months look like, we want to share some of the relief and recovery work we continue to support after Nashville’s recent storms devastated vibrant pockets of our city. 

As of today, The Nashville Food Project has prepared and shared a total of 15,636 nutritious meals since March 3rd, 2020. These meals were distributed to our regular partners who have remained open, and of that total number, 8,470 meals were emergency meals shared with recovery sites in North Nashville, Hermitage, Mt, Juliet, East Nashville, Donelson, American Red Cross' staging hub, and the NES substations around town. Check out this letter of love and thanks - that was delivered along with a generous cash donation - from a local NES crew. A member of the NES meter department came by the office to say, "Thank you all for making us feel seen and appreciated. It meant a lot to us. Thank you for all you do." Our Distribution Manager Elke, who received the card and donation said to us later, "He would've hugged me, but I got an elbow bump instead."

This week and weekend, our staff is preparing and sharing 125 daily, hot lunches to New Covenant Christian Church in North Nashville, a church who is serving as a resource distribution center in the neighborhood. We have also mobilized to prepare 50-100 weekly meals for Fifty Forward's Bordeaux location, 80 weekday meals to Martha O'Bryan Center serving the Cayce community, as well as 1,200 hot meals per weekend, for families each Saturday and Sunday in the coming month to support Gideon's Army's work in North Nashville, in conjunction with Hands on Nashville.

For so many of us - whether we are employees, volunteers, garden participants, or meal guests—the daily or weekly interactions we have at The Nashville Food Project are such an important part of the rhythm of our lives, a place to sow our hope, a place to belong. In the coming days and weeks let us know what you’re up to and reflecting on! Tag us as you wade through your pantry and freezers. Show us the seeds you are starting this Spring. Share your hope. 

With love and gratitude for every expression of community,

WAYS YOU CAN HELP:

While we continue to respond to the changing needs of our community, financial donations are The Nashville Food Project's greatest need. DONATE NOW.

Cultivate Community
Help us share encouragement during this time of isolation by sending postcards for elderly neighbors to our office at 5904 California Avenue, Nashville, TN 37209. We'll get them out to meal guests as we share meals with our senior-serving partners.

Support Local Restaurants
Support our restaurant and farmer friends who have supported us so generously. This includes buying gift cards, ordering take-out meals, enrolling for CSA shares, and reaching out to senators and representatives to request aid for these industries.  

Create a Little Food Pantry
In the vein of "Little Libraries" consider building or converting your own to a "Little Food Pantry" with non-perishable foods to share with neighbors who may have need. Invite folks to add any of their excess non-perishable foods, and spread the word through social media and the Nextdoor app.

Winter Is Coming

By David Frease, Procurement and Sustainability Manager

Now that the summer season is winding down, The Nashville Food Project is officially moving into its “slow” time of the year in terms of food donations. We have been so incredibly lucky this past spring and summer to have amazing produce flooding in on a weekly basis.  The local farm community has really rallied behind our cause this year, gifting us with an abundance of incredible items that our kitchens have turned into made-from-scratch meals to send back out into the community. 

However, the growing season will soon be coming to an end and that is where we begin to depend on the thoughtful donations made by supporters like you.  We oftentimes get approached by people wanting to organize holiday food drives for us and as it’s been a while since we mentioned our greatest needs, we thought it was time to provide an updated list of things our kitchens find most helpful.

Pantry Staples

Are you interested in holding a food drive for pantry staples?  It’s easier than you think!  I usually advise people to make them a week or two in length, so you don't have to store a bunch of items in your home/workplace/office over too long a period.  Let your coworkers know that you're doing a food drive with the intention of donating to The Nashville Food Project upon completion.  People seem to have a lot of success printing out this list of food items, posting it on a wall in their break room or other high traffic area (with your employer’s permission, of course), and arranging to have a large cardboard box for collection underneath it.  That way, your coworkers can drop things off as they please!  Whenever your drive is over, get in touch to arrange a drop-off or pickup by emailing davidf@thenashvillefoodproject.org

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil

• Canola Oil

• Canned Diced Tomatoes

• Unseasoned Canned Beans of Any Kind

• Unsweetened Applesauce

• Peanut/Almond/Cashew Butter

• Honey

• Jelly

• Dried Fruit of Any Kind (Especially Raisins & Cranberries)

• Rolled Oats

• Canned Pumpkin

• Graham Crackers

• Nuts/Seeds of Any Kind (Especially Walnuts, Pecans, Cashews, Almonds & Pumpkin Seeds)

• Chocolate Chips

• Cheerios

• Healthy Snack/Granola Bars

Fresh Fruit & Vegetables

Looking for other ways to help on a more individual basis?  We can always make use of donations of fresh fruits and vegetables on our menus! One of our many favorite donors is Joe Hodgson, or as we call him, “The Apple Guy.”  Every few weeks, Joe brings us 8 bushels of beautiful organic apples that we use in our fruit salads or as a healthy snack for our after-school meals partners.  Joe has kept it simple and chosen one item to make “his thing” and it is beyond helpful to know we can count on him and his apples to round out our meals.  What could you make “your thing?”

Protein

Meat is one of our most costly food budget items, and we rarely have it donated. We are always in need of fresh and frozen protein, especially in the fall and winter months. Ground beef, chicken breasts, breakfast sausage, nitrate free sliced turkey… all of these go a long way towards helping us reduce our budget and keep our menus packed with protein.

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Hopefully this has given you plenty of food for thought! If you have any other questions or would like to brainstorm some more outside-of-the-box donation ideas, please feel free to reach out to David Frease at davidf@thenashvillefoodproject.org

Senior Meals Make A Big Impact

By Grace Biggs, TNFP’s Impact Manager

Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s Community House

The barriers our community face can seem overwhelming. Today's seniors are more likely to have chronic diseases such as diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity than ever before, leading to increasing healthcare costs which further burden seniors living on a fixed income. 

More and more, research is showing the importance of nutrition to good health among older adults. According to this report on Tennessee seniors, about 1 in 6 older adults in our state is food insecure. This report also found that for every 100 seniors with independent living difficulty in Tennessee only 3.6 home-delivered meals are available: the lowest percentage available among all other US states.  

At The Nashville Food Project, we understand health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being -- not merely the absence of disease. And we know that good food alone is not a solution to these complex problems. That’s why we make sure our nutritious meals and snacks are supporting the vibrant, creative work of other anti-poverty and community-building organizations in our city. 

TNFP volunteer plating mobile meals at St. Luke’s Community House

Meals On Wheels and Mobile Meals programs are an essential service, supporting not only nutrition but also regular social contact and ‘safety checks’ for homebound seniors. Or as one mobile meal participant put it, “All the carriers make me feel that a friend dropped by.”

TNFP is on track to cook and share over 51,000 senior meals this year, thanks to deep partnerships with incredible local senior-serving partner organizations and significant support from West End Home Foundation, National Benevolent Association and Dandridge Trust.

Here’s a look at the many ways a few of TNFP’s senior-serving meal partners are supporting seniors in our community with home-delivered meals and community-building programs:

The Ark

The Ark, a senior-serving TNFP meals partner added in 2018, was founded to address severe gaps in social services and community resources in South Cheatham County, including Pegram and Kingston Springs. TNFP provides made-from-scratch meals for The Ark’s Meals On Wheels program 3 days a week, as well as a weekly community meal shared in their Resource Center.

“Our motto is very simple,” says Anne Carty, Program Director with the Ark. “We want to help people stay afloat when they have a time of need. Rather than leading the food prep and the decision-making of menus, we’re able to pick up the food from The Nashville Food Project, repackage it to send out for Meals On Wheels or serve it at our Wednesday lunch. Then we can really concentrate on the other services, especially for homebound seniors, like home repair and utility assistance.”

These meals wouldn’t be served without the hard work of committed Ark staff and volunteers. Butch Rogers and Melanie Smiley, who both work with Ark’s Meals On Wheels program, pick up the food from TNFP’s California Avenue kitchen 3 times a week. The following mornings, Melanie arrives at Pegram United Methodist Church to package the meals to be ready for volunteers to make the home deliveries. On Wednesdays, she also heats up the food for seniors coming to the resource center for a weekly community meal.

Photo courtesy of the Ark

“They love the companionship,” says Melanie. “They get to see each other each week and catch up on things that are going on. And there’s also a hot game of bingo after the meal. And nobody interferes with that hot game of bingo, let me tell you!”

“I think the food plays a big part of it, because they’re talking to people they haven’t talked to before, and they’re talking about the food -- ‘I haven’t had this before, I haven’t tried this before.’ You have to sell it because it’s not food they’re used to. I’m a big seller. Then they come back and say, ‘Oh Melanie, you were right, it was so good!’ And they’re cleaning their plates. That makes me feel really good when they clean their plates.”

Visit the Ark’s website to learn more about their work and what you can do to support.

Fifty Forward

FiftyForward has been in existence since 1956, and their home-delivered meals started in 1969. So for about 50 years, they prepared their own meals in-house with their own cook and an assistant cook. “The meals were what people would typically think of as a home-delivered meal,” shared Gretchen, Associate Executive Director at FiftyForward. “We did a great job, but then we looked up and saw their were community partners like The Nashville Food Project available. TNFP brings all that expertise of fresh, locally sourced food. And we can bring the senior service piece. So it’s been just beautiful.”

When FiftyForward first began considering a partnership with TNFP, Gretchen shared that some were unsure about the change and whether the older adults would be interested in the menus. “It’s a different variety of food than we’d had,” explained Gretchen. “So we did a two week pilot, and every day we had a nutrition student ask participants ask what they thought about the lunches. And on the very last day, I’m walking through the adult day service area one of our participants called me over, saying ‘Ms. Gretchen, Ms. Gretchen, come see what we’re eating!’ It was this beautiful, very fresh potato salad, and fresh green salad, and a barbeque sandwich. Then she said, ‘This is the best meal.’ And there you go! Right from the mouth of the person that we’re aiming to serve. From there, we expanded our partnership to cover all of our meals beginning in 2018, and it’s just been a wonderful partnership where we can share our expertise and really serve seniors well.”

Photo courtesy of Fifty Forward

The Nashville Food Project currently supports FiftyForward’s home delivered meal program, FiftyForward Fresh Meals On Wheels, and a daily lunch for their adult day service program for older adults who can’t remain home safely alone during the day -- a total of about 550 weekly meals. This summer we were also able to prepare extra meals for a senior’s summer singing program at FiftyForward’s KNOWLES center.

“We understand now that nutrition is so important to older adults as they age,” says Gretchen. “We used to work with older adults who thought, ‘I’m 85, I can eat Hershey’s Kisses, and that’s my daily food.’ And we’ve really worked with them to understand you could eat that now, but you’re going to feel a certain way if you do. Whereas nutrient dense food like the Food Project’s will give you the energy to live your best life at 85 and beyond.”

FiftyForward operates a network of seven centers and offers a wealth of resources for adults 50+ in Middle Tennessee. You can learn more on their website, including volunteer opportunities in support of their work.

St. Luke’s Community House

St. Luke's Community House, a United Way Family Resource Center, has been meeting the needs of families in The Nations community for more than 100 years through programs and services for children, youth, adults, seniors, and families as a whole. In 2016 we formed a unique partnership with St. Luke's Community House in West Nashville, operating a portion of our meals programming from their commercial kitchen and serving 1,330 meals each week for the St. Luke's preschool and mobile meals programs.

St. Luke’s senior services support seniors aged 60 and over and adults with disabilities who live in specific West Nashville areas. Mobile meals are delivered to each participant’s door by trusted and trained St. Luke’s volunteers. And their Friend Senior Club offers weekly social and recreational opportunities for West Nashville seniors of all ages, such as bingo parties, crafts, group fitness classes and more. 

Each weekday morning, TNFP volunteers help with plating St. Luke’s mobile meals lunches as part of morning meal prep. Most days, the lunch is shared with both the seniors receiving mobile meals and the preschoolers. At about 10:15 AM, St. Luke's mobile meals volunteers arrive to pack up the lunches and begin deliveries to seniors and adults with disabilities throughout the West Nashville community.

Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s Community House

Running the kitchen on site means we hear more stories of the impact of the meals shared in partnership with St. Luke’s firsthand. As one St. Luke’s mobile meals participant shared, “Before I wasn't eating, I was forgetting to eat. Now I'm eating more regularly. It's helping my health. I had a stroke about 3 and a half years ago, and the healing process is taking a lot of my energy. This is a convenience for me, because it's brought right to my door. And a lot of the time it has brain food. I don't have to cook a meal when I'm about to conk out. You have no idea how much of a help it is. It's just beautiful.”

St. Luke’s Community House offers lots of ways you can get involved in their mission to create a community where children, families, and seniors from different backgrounds can easily access the resources needed to live fulfilling lives.

Sweet Peas Recap & Bean Burrito Bowl Recipe

By Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

ONE side dish for one day’s summer meal deliveries ready to be loaded at our California Avenue kitchen.

Throughout this summer The Nashville Food Project dramatically increased the meals we shared through partner non-profits to an all time high of 7,500 meals weekly to support the summer nutrition needs of children’s programming in addition to our ongoing partnerships.

Carefully curated meals were prepared and delivered daily using gifted produce, recovered food, and the efforts of countless volunteers and their culinary creativity. Hefty servings of gumbo, chicken carbonara, veggie wraps, fruit and garden salads were delivered in gleaming pans.

Insulated food carriers used to deliver meals. All of these (plus more!) were cram-packed with freshly made, nutritious meals cooked in our two kitchens by TNFP staff, interns and volunteers.

Our partners are always serving to a range of palates. Naturally, some children are more adventurous while others try new dishes with a little more caution. We were thrilled when we received the following feedback from one of our summer programming partners:  

““The kids really loved the burrito bowls. That was a major hit. Actually, all the meals this week went over really well.””

— Northwest YMCA

Burrito bowls are perhaps the perfect food as they allow the incorporation of so many fresh ingredients while permitting a wide range of people to customize tastes and textures that hit the spot. Here is our Chef Director Bianca’s bean burrito bowl recipe that was all the rage this summer!

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Bianca’s Bean Burrito Bowls

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1 red onion diced

• 1 bell pepper diced

• 1 tbsp ground cumin

• 1 tsp salt and pepper

• 3 cloves of garlic chopped (or 3 tbsp garlic powder)

• 1 lb cooked beans (or 4 cans) - Black, Pinto or Kidney are our favorites!

• 1/2 c cilantro

• 1/4 cup of your favorite salsa

• 3 cups brown rice (cooked)

• 1 to 3 cup of cheese

• Plus any additional sautéed seasonal veggies if desired!

Directions

In the olive oil, sauté onions, peppers, spices and garlic until tender. Add cooked beans and cilantro. Mix in salsa. Scoop cooked rice in bowl. Top rice with the bean mixture and shredded cheese.

Feeling fancy? Garnish with salsa, avocado, cilantro, sour cream or green onions!

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Do you make burrito bowls at home? What are your favorite flavor combinations?

Crossroads Campus

“We don’t derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.”

— Brene’ Brown

By Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

At The Nashville Food Project, we are passionate about many things: a freshly pulled carrot making its way from our gardens to our kitchen, an especially generous produce or protein donation from a local farm, watching young volunteers make popcorn on the stove top for the first time, and seeing neatly stacked pans of incredible food being loaded into our vehicle, ready to make a trip to its final destination. But perhaps most of all, we are passionate about our meals being served in partnership with diverse, essential non-profits doing poverty interrupting work in our community.

When Katie Kuhl of Crossroads Campus approached The Nashville Food Project about providing a meal to be served alongside their Wednesday afternoon self-development and skills training activities, we knew that we wanted to leverage our efforts to support the work the Crossroads team is doing with young people and with animals in our city. Crossroads Campus is nestled in the center of Nashville on the edge of Germantown towards North Nashville. It boasts a multi-use space which includes a retail store for pet supplies, a full service grooming facility, kennels for small adoptable dogs and a cat room brimming with soft kittens ready for a place of their own. Four apartments also are wrapped into their expansive space, offering respite for young people who have experienced barriers to stable housing. Crossroads retail store, grooming services, humane education efforts, dog treat social enterprise and adoption mission all provide a job training environment for additional young Nashvillians termed interns who need both a soft place to land and a launching place from which to prepare for their next steps. These young folks, age 17 to early 20s, engage in paid internship experiences and become proficient in retail, pet grooming skills, and animal care with extra attention to humane education. Interns have access to weekly case management support and Wednesday afternoons are reserved for special activities which range from yoga and learning about taxes to button making and conflict resolution. TNFP recently began providing meals to accompany these essential times, from jerk chicken and island rice to chicken parmesan, always with hefty portions of fruit and seasonal salad.

The Nashville Food Project holds tight to this idea of interdependence, one of our key values. TNFP sees its work of growing, cooking, and sharing nourishing food in order to cultivate community food security as only possible and only valuable when we do it in relationship with others. When we see our food served alongside the deeply invested work of groups like Crossroad Campus, we see our mission realized in new and vibrant ways and are encouraged by organizations that see our meals as a resource to enhance the unique community that our partners foster. 

To see our list of other non-profit partners, check out our website.

Interested in exploring meal partnership? We will be opening up space for new inquiries at the beginning of July! Add your email here to receive a notice when we start to explore fall partnerships.

That Special Sauce

By TNFP’s Impact Manager, Grace Biggs

In the past year, The Nashville Food Project has cooked and shared over 204,000 made-from-scratch meals with 47 meal sites... which means rain or shine, we're loading up and delivering good food around our city. Last week, I shadowed our Distribution Manager, Emily Novak, for a behind the scenes look at what goes into these meal deliveries.

It’s a typical Tuesday morning, and Emily is pulling up the delivery van to load the first round of meals for today’s route. This Nissan van, fondly named ‘Biscuit’, is outfitted with food storage containers that keep food either hot or cold for hours. And good thing... because we’re about to deliver 520 hot and cold meals!

So where are these meals going? At TNFP, we know that food alone isn’t a solution to food insecurity. That’s why our meals support the poverty-disrupting and community-building programming of our Meal Distribution Partners, such as after school programs, ESL classes, senior programs, and emergency shelters. Today’s itinerary includes 12 partner sites, starting with Wedgewood Towers and ending with FiftyForward, with a stop in the middle to load up more meals from our second kitchen at St. Luke’s Community House. This is all detailed on a clipboard with notes for each site, including addresses, contact names and numbers, delivery window times, and instructions on where to drop off the food.

“I really enjoy the logistics. A lot goes into figuring out how to make it all work,” says Emily.

There are a lot of moving parts to our programs, and navigating the day-to-day operations takes both planning and improvisation. In particular, the collaborative nature of the meals program means we’re constantly navigating details GALORE. Our partners’ changing program schedules, what time they need the food to arrive and at what temp, vehicle capacity and route planning, our kitchens’ meal prep and cook times… everywhere you look, there are systems in place to help all of this come together.

But just as important as the logistics, are the relationships made along the way.

“The people I’ve gotten to know are definitely my favorite part of my job, without a doubt,” says Emily.

Our first interaction is with the kitchen volunteers and staff at TNFP’s headquarters. As Emily comes in to load the food, she’s stopped by hugs from meal prep volunteers while Mary, a volunteer cook, starts serving us up some chili to sample.

And the hugs don’t stop there... when we pull up at our first stop, there is already someone holding the door open for us as we step out of the van. “CL! Did you get new glasses?” Emily asks as he helps us unload, pausing for a big hug. In the lobby, she introduces me to a few more residents as residents begin to gather for the meal. “What you got for us today, Emily?” someone asks. There’s a warm, family feeling in the air.

All throughout our day, Emily greets everyone by name. As one of our co-workers once put it, Emily has a “special sauce” — something you can’t quite put your finger on, but it's an energy that immediately welcomes you in. She has a genuine curiosity about people and their stories.

“The people who work at the front desk of the schools, the custodians who help open the doors for me, the attendant at the gas station… wherever I go, I’m building relationships,” Emily shares.

At TNFP, we believe that sharing food is about sharing nourishment — as much for spirit and soul as for the body. For Emily, that means taking time for relationships, even in the midst of a jam-packed day of meal deliveries.

How are you taking time for relationships in your day-to-day life? Let us know in the comments!