The Nashville Food Project’s Blog
An Update from the Growing Together Farmers: "Believing in Tomorrow"
So many doors, businesses, and communities are closed and we are all feeling the impact and the collective suffering. And yet. We at the Nashville Food Project and within the Growing Together community have no choice but to use this as an opportunity to imagine, envision, and create new doors, new opportunities, and new pathways forward. We will continue on with our vision of community food security, where everyone has access to the food they want and need.
by Sally Rausch, Growing Together Market Manager
This is a scary and challenging time for so many in our community. The global pandemic is showing us the reality of things—that while we are much more connected and interdependent than we could have ever thought, the brokenness of our global systems is amplified in times of crises and therefore the impact is widespread. What is affecting us here in Nashville is affecting communities across the country and around the world. We are seeing this in our healthcare system and our economy, and it is and will continue to disproportionately exclude and exploit the most vulnerable among us, especially communities of color.
Still, it is spring, and the farmers in The Nashville Food Project’s Growing Together program are charting a path forward. These farmers, like so many farmers in our community and beyond, are continuing to plant seeds and transplants, tending the land with hope for what’s to come. These farmers are not exempt from the fallout of these times. Many of the farmers are elders in their communities and rely on support from their adult children—whose jobs are on hold or terminated altogether. Many have expressed concern and fear around the possibility of targeted racial violence—such as has been reported here and here. And, as many of us can relate, the farmers have loved ones who are more susceptible to the virus or are vulnerable themselves.
One of our values at The Nashville Food Project is interdependence, and we talk frequently about how healing happens in relationship. We know the path of healing from the impacts of this pandemic will be a long one, but we are committed as ever to working towards healing through relationship-building and connection, even if this looks different than ever before.
There are so many ways to rally around and support one another in this time—one way you can make a tangible impact within our community is by supporting local farmers like those in the Growing Together community. These farmers are facing income loss due to the closure of restaurants and farmers markets, but there are many ways to support Growing Together in this time. The first is by making an account on Growing Together’s newly updated online marketplace! Each week, Growing Together will send you an email with the fresh produce available that week. You can place an order based on exactly what items you and your family want and then pickup your order Saturday mornings from 9am – 12pm at The Nashville Food Project. You don’t have to worry about anything being out of stock or braving the grocery store, and everything will be bagged and ready for an easy pickup on Saturday morning. And of course, purchasing local produce means that it has traveled fewer miles and passed through fewer people, making it healthier for the planet and for your family.
Another way you can support Growing Together is by purchasing a Growing Together CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share. While the Spring CSA is sold out, we still have several Fall season CSA shares available! CSA customers invest in a farmer by purchasing a “share” in their farm production at the beginning of the season and then receive a weekly share of vegetables throughout the CSA season. This model guarantees income for the farmers, provides an infusion of cash upfront, ensures a market for their produce, and cultivates relationships between customers and the local farmer. During this time of social distancing and isolation, the CSA model is a safe way to access high quality, locally grown vegetables every week. Even if you decide the Growing Together CSA isn’t the right fit for you, we urge you to consider checking out this list of CSAs available from our farmer friends in the Middle Tennessee area.
So many doors, businesses, and communities are closed and we are all feeling the impact and the collective suffering. And yet. We at the Nashville Food Project and within the Growing Together community have no choice but to use this as an opportunity to imagine, envision, and create new opportunities and new pathways forward. We will press on towards our vision of community food security, where everyone has access to the food they want and need. We are so grateful for your support.
To sign up for Growing Together’s online marketplace, click here.
Learning New Ways to Share
We talk a lot about the sharing at The Nashville Food Project. Many times that looks like fresh produce or local proteins generously shared by farmers or grocers that our team transforms into nourishing meals to be shared with our community. Other times sharing is the donated labor of our beloved volunteers who give us their time and talents to help us prep ingredients and cook meals. But in a recent turn of events in these unprecedented times, sharing also has involved wheels.
We talk a lot about the sharing at The Nashville Food Project. Many times that looks like fresh produce or local proteins generously shared by farmers or grocers that our team transforms into nourishing meals to be shared with our community. Other times sharing is the donated labor of our beloved volunteers who give us their time and talents to help us prep ingredients and cook meals. But in a recent turn of events in these unprecedented times, sharing also has involved wheels.
Immediately following the tornadoes on March 3rd, our community experienced an increased need for hot meals, and we needed more vehicles than we currently have in our fleet to add routes and deliver food support to affected Nashville neighborhoods. Our friends at a local Nissan dealership heard the call and acted quickly to donate two catering-style vans for temporary use to provide this emergency food support. We quickly outfitted each vehicle with cambros so we could safely transport meals at temp.
Two weeks and more than 10,000 tornado-relief meals later, our work abruptly took another detour when we had to suspend all volunteer activities due to COVID-19. Rather than host 375 volunteers each month, we would need to prepare meals with only our small but mighty staff. And yet, we wanted to remain committed to our goals of nourishing our community as best we can.
Similarly our partners at St. Luke’s Community House aimed to keep serving their clients -- homebound or food-insecure seniors in the Nations neighborhood -- also without the help of their volunteers drivers to support home deliveries. So we worked with St. Luke’s to pivot and hatch a plan that provided a workaround to the myriad challenges facing us all in this time of shelter in place. We developed a plan to deliver a five-day supply of meals, prepared fresh and then frozen, to nearly 50 homes one day a week, helping minimize contact with at-risk seniors while also reducing the number of routes to a manageable number for staff to execute alone. Furthermore, Nissan allowed us to share their vehicles to St. Luke’s staff--a crucial resource for effectively getting these meals out into the community!
Thank you, Nissan. And thank you to our partners at St. Luke’s Community House. It’s a privilege to be in community with you -- each of us sharing in every way we can.
#CommunityCooking: The Nashville Food Project Recipe Series
In an effort to help make social distancing less lonely, we’ve been sharing our favorite recipes and a bit about ourselves to help keep us cooking and connected as a community. We will continue adding to this list as recipe are posted.
In an effort to help make social distancing less lonely, we’ve been sharing our favorite recipes and a bit about ourselves to help keep us cooking and connected as a community.
We will continue adding to this list as recipe are posted. We’d love to see your favorites too! Please tag us @thenashvillefoodproject and #communitycooking!
From Chef Director Bianca Morton: “Every holiday my grandfather brought fresh-baked, melt-in-your-mouth yeast rolls. He brought some for dinner and packaged some in gallon-sized Ziplock bags for each family to take home...After he died I kept trying to get the recipe right. This last Christmas, 18 years since he passed away, my family was like, ‘I think you got it.’” .
Bianca's Yeast Rolls
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/2 ounce dry yeast (fast-rising)
1/3 cup butter (melted, plus more for brushing)
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs
4 1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
Warm 1/3 milk and water. Mix in yeast and let sit until bubbly. Combine remaining milk/water mixture with butter, sugar and salt. Add eggs one at a time. Start adding flour 1 cup at a time to form dough mixture. Gently knead. Oil bowl and place dough inside it to rise and double in size. Punch down and allow it to rise again. Roll out dough and cut rounds. Fold over and pinch like a turnover. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown, brush with melted butter and sugar.
From Kitchen Manager Brent Peadro: “Every kitchen I’ve worked in has had some sort of collard green component, and this recipe is a culmination of all of them. For me, it’s about that balance of smokiness, sweetness, saltiness, spiciness and acidity. There’s something very comforting about a bowl of delicious collard greens. Eating these collards reminds me of all of the wonderful people I’ve worked with over the years. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do and possibly have it bring you some peace and joy during these tough times.”
Brent Peadro’s Collard Greens
4 tbsp bacon fat
2 onions, julienned
1/2 pound raw bacon, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 tbsp salt
1 tbsp chili flake
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tbsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
4 tbsp brown sugar
4 tbsp of honey
2 pounds collard greens, chopped
Heat bacon fat on medium-high heat. Add onion and bacon to pan and sweat until tender and a fond has developed. Add garlic and dry spices and cook for a minute stirring. Add cider vinegar and deglaze pan scraping up brown bits with a wooden spoon. Add brown sugar and honey.
Bring to simmer and then start adding greens in batches, covering to steam and then adding more as they cook down. Simmer, stirring every 30 minutes until tender and full of flavor.
A big welcome to the newest member of our team, Johnisha Levi, who joined The Nashville Food Project as Development Manager in the midst of tornado emergency response. A native of Washington, D.C., she also managed a community nutrition education program in Boston with a culturally competent curriculum to motivate at-risk populations to eat healthier. As for her chili recipe below, she says “it's a recipe that I have adapted over the years that includes my two favorite things— chocolate and spice!"
Johnisha’s Chipotle Chili ⠀
Serves 6 to 8⠀
1 large yellow onion, diced⠀
1 cup diced yellow, orange or red pepper⠀
2 cloves minced garlic⠀
2 pounds ground turkey or beef⠀
1 tbsp brown sugar (optional)⠀
2 tbsp ancho chili powder⠀
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder⠀
1 tsp cumin⠀
1/2 tsp pepper (or to taste)⠀
1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)⠀
2 tbsp tomato paste⠀
2, 15-ounce cans of beans (I usually use all black beans or half black beans, half pinto)⠀
28 ounces crushed tomatoes (or diced)⠀
1/2 to 3/4 quarts of chicken broth⠀
2 canned chipotles, minced⠀
2 ounces bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate⠀
Suggested toppings: chips, sour cream, green onions⠀
Heat a dutch oven over medium high heat with 2 tbsp of oil. Saute the onion, bell pepper, garlic and meat until the meat is browned and onions are soft, about 8 minutes.
Add the dry ingredients (sugar through salt) and saute for 3 to 4 minutes until incorporated and aromatic.
Add the tomato paste and saute 2 to 3 minutes. ⠀
Add the beans through chipotle; stir and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes uncovered until slightly thickened.
Add in the chocolate in small pieces and stir until melted. Serve with desired toppings.
The next recipe in our #communitycooking series comes from three housemates and staffers at The Nashville Food Project: Sally Rausch (Growing Together Market Manager), Hannah Duiven (Prep Coordinator, St. Luke’s Kitchen) and Katie Duiven (Catering & Events Manager).
Their “Clean Out the Fridge Pizza” is part of their home cooking repertoire. "We just look in our fridge, see what cheeses, toppings and sauces we have or could make do, and try to come up with something delicious," says Sally.
Sauce suggestions: red sauce, pesto, olive oil. Cheeses: mozzarella, goat cheese, parmesan, or a blend. Fridge toppings: peppers, mushrooms, arugula, any roasted veggies. Pantry toppings: olives, sun-dried tomatoes, nuts, quick caramelized onions, roasted garlic.
For the dough, they recommend this quick and easy version: https://www.food.com/…/pizza-dough-for-thin-crust-pizza-701….
These pizzas give us a tasty way to make creative use of what’s on hand!
Stay tuned for more favorite recipes from staff posted here!
The Nashville Food Project Care Package for Uncertain Times (Part 1)
We collected our inspirations, recommendations, motivations—all salve for the loneliness and fears this virus and social distancing can produce. These recommendations aren’t necessarily heavy or directly related to the pandemic or our work. Rather it's a collection intended to nourish and accompany our community as we all stay home together.
Cultivating community lies at the heart of our mission at The Nashville Food Project, but at this time of social distancing, we’re learning how community means much more than physical proximity.
We’re seeing inspiration for community everywhere — from living room concerts and “cloud clubbing” (for the ravers among us) to movie discussion groups and online home cooking forums. In David Byrne’s magazine “Reason to be Cheerful,” Nick Green, creator of the Social Distancing Festival, says this:.
“As long as we are sharing a space in which we can be present, provoke, inspire, promote kindness and compassion, and share ideas, then we are all together in one space, even if it’s in different places at different times.”
Along those lines, we recently found encouragement from On Being’s Care Package for Uncertain Times, a collection of interviews and poetry on topics ranging from grief to hope. It inspired us to make our own version for our friends and for each other. We collected our inspirations, recommendations, motivations—all salve for the loneliness and fears this virus and social distancing can produce. These recommendations aren’t necessarily heavy or directly related to the pandemic or our work. Rather it's a collection intended to nourish and accompany our community as we all stay home together.
We’ll be sharing our care package in small digestible bites—five staffer reflections at a time. Please find Part 1 below with Part 2 coming soon!
Meg Schmalandt, Sous Coordinator - California Kitchen
Book: Tattoos on the Heart by Fr. Greg Boyle. It’s kind of related to our work but also very related to being a human, trauma, healing, and spirituality.
Podcast: Dolly Parton's America. I'm. Obsessed. With. Her
Movie: JoJo Rabbit. It'll make you laugh and make you cry. A lot about what it means to grow up and joy as a state of being.
Article: TIME magazine’s 100 Women of the Year
TV: Honestly, Cheer on Netflix was so good.
Ways I'm Coping with COVID-19: Dance parties with my roommates, funny movies, going on walks, working out, and cooking soups + stews. Dreaming about the spring. Planning my wedding flowers :)
Sally Rausch, Growing Together Market Manager
Podcast: This American Life's episode called The Show of Delights made me chuckle out loud so many times, exactly what I've needed the past few weeks-to be reminded that we can find delight in the simplest things and also that someone else sharing their delight can in and of itself be delightful!
Book: Part of that podcast episode highlights poet Ross Gay and his recent book of "essayettes" about finding delight. It's called The Book of Delights: Essays. I've been trying to read one or two before bed instead of scrolling. He is so real and talks about real issues—racism, being black in America, grief—not escapist but about finding delight in our lives as they are. I'm finding it nourishing in the most grounded way.
Bianca Morton, Chef Director
Music: 90’s R&B. It takes me back to a simpler time—high school years when the biggest problem was schoolwork, graduation and fitting in. On Tuesday I let loose some steam and danced to Whitney Houston's Greatest Hits. I danced, sang and cooked. And just for a moment didn't have a care in the world. Just joy!
Tallahassee May, Growing Together Education Manager
Books: I am currently re-reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. Both seem so fitting and are perfect escape-reads in the age of quarantine.
Audio Book: Anne Patchett's The Dutch House. First, you are supporting a local author and small business heroine. And second, you’re supporting a coronavirus survivor, Tom Hanks, who reads it on audio and does an amazing job.
Podcast: Poetry Unbound, an offshoot of On Being with short poetry readings by Padraig O' Tuama.
Music: Nothing beats Beyonce's Homecoming, Live at Coachella! Amazing live music, festival vibe (for when you need to remember what it was like to share intimate space with thousands of people) complete with the best HBCU Marching Band! And when you are feeling quiet and introspective (and alone), Keith Jarrett's solo piano concert masterpiece The Kohl Concert.
Movie: The new movie adaption of Emma was recently released and since its time in theaters was cut short, it is now available for streaming! It’s a fun, gorgeous adaptation. The director, Autumn DeWilde, and I were hippy kids together on The Farm commune in L.A. in the early 70s, and I have loved watching her career blossom and evolve over the years.
Teri Sloan, Development Director
Podcast: I'm a big fan of the Armchair Expert Podcast with actor Dax Shepard and his friend Monica Padman. They do at least two episodes each week having long, deep-dive conversations with different folks from the entertainment industry as well as "experts" like writers, scientists, psychologists, etc. No matter who is being interviewed it always turns out some interesting conversations that make you laugh and make you think about something a little differently.
Article: Not that there's anyone in our city who hasn't read it yet, but Margaret Renkl's "What it Means to be #NashvilleStrong" article moved me to tears recently.
TV: I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu. It's Reese Witherspoon's and Kerry Washington's television adaptation of Celeste Ng's popular book of the same name. The first three episodes dropped last week, and I'm already hooked. I've also been taking the time at home to start binging some of the TV shows everyone else has been talking about over the years that I never watched: Schitt's Creek, The Wire, etc.
Other ways of coping through COVID-19: I've been cooking, and I've got a batch of homemade limoncello steeping in the cabinet. My next big idea is teaching myself the longtime TNFP pastime of knitting. Anyone got any good YouTube videos to check out?
When the Helpers Need our Help
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 helping raise thousands to fund our twin goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our beloved city 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.
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 blows our Middle Tennessee neighbors have endured since the beginning of March have been enormous. Our local community is entering into this 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.
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.
March 2020 Emergency Response
What a hard, sad, mixed-up time for our city. My heart breaks for so many in our community whose homes, neighborhoods, and favorite local places were devastated in the tornadoes this week. And yet... I swell with pride when I witness the ways neighbors are showing up for one another. Life often delivers both beauty and chaos together.
Dear Nashville,
What a hard, sad, mixed-up time for our city. My heart breaks for so many in our community whose homes, neighborhoods, and favorite local places were devastated in the tornadoes this week. And yet... I swell with pride when I witness the ways neighbors are showing up for one another. Life often delivers both beauty and chaos together. I do not understand why life unfolds this way, but stand in awe of the hope and love and connections that emerge when unexpected loss rips through our community.
As in other times when our city has found itself in the midst of an emergency (like the 2010 flood and the 2019 partial federal government shutdown), The Nashville Food Project is poised to respond. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today and yesterday sharing thousands of made-from-scratch meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North Nashville, East Nashville, and Donelson. We are listening to our partners and local emergency management services to coordinate and activate a sustained response effort that we expect to stretch long into the coming days and weeks. We will be keeping our social media and website up to date, so please check there for updates and specific ways to support and plug in. Scroll down for more.
As many of you know, a helpful, coordinated relief effort takes a bunch of layers of communication with many partners and key stakeholders, so thank you in advance for your patience and all your tremendous support.
With love,
If you know of a shelter or community hub in need of food support, let us know. We don’t have capacity to accommodate all requests, but we’re working with partners to fulfill as many as possible. This week we have routes serving the following locations:
Lunch:
New Covenant Christian Church, 3/16, 3/17
FiftyForward, 3/17
Lunch, Saturday/Sunday:
Now more than ever, financial contributions are needed to meet the needs of our city. We can put those to important use by helping us buy food and supplies, fuel our vehicles and run our kitchens to keep cooking high-quality meals. A donation of $5 buys food and supplies for five meals.
As we receive updates from our partners and learn more about how our partners, our volunteers and our team can get involved we will share that information here.
Additional resources we’re hearing about:
More resources collected by the Nashville Scene.
To volunteer your time, sign up with Hands on Nashville.
To donate everything EXCEPT clothing, stop by the Community Resource Center, located at 218 Omohundro Pl, Nashville, TN 37210.
Eater Nashville is collecting ways the hospitality industry is pulling together.
Partner sites and affected areas:
Update: 3/3/2020, 9 p.m:
In addition to restoring power at our headquarters, sharing food at emergency sites and working on a coordinated relief plan for the week, we were also committed to our largest food recovery project of the year tonight. We collected, sorted and packed 28,000 pounds of meat from the Meat Conference at Gaylord Opryland. It will help fuel our meals program going forward. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make this happen on an already very busy day. More updates on our plan moving forward tomorrow.
Update: 3/3/2020, 4 p.m.:
Thanks to the kindness of our friends at R.C. Mathews and Dodd Electric, we now have a generator running our kitchen at limited power. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today sharing cold meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North and East Nashville. Now that partial power has been restored, we are working on a full relief effort plan for the remainder of the week and weekend. This will include volunteer opportunities in our kitchens to support emergency meal service in our community. Updates will be posted here as available.
Previously Posted:
Thank you to the many folks in our community who have reached out to support recovery efforts after last night’s devastating storms. Currently at The Nashville Food Project, our power is out, and we are working quickly to restore it and reallocate any cold meals we currently have prepared. Many of our partners are closed today so we are actively working to reallocate all planned meals to emergency shelters and community centers in the areas most affected. Sites that should receive support in the form of prepared meals today include:
North Nashville:
Lee Chapel AME Church (lunch meal)
East Nashville:
East End UMC (lunch meal)
We are in close communication with our partners and with the Metro Emergency Services to determine how we can continue to support efforts this week. We do hope to increase our volume, and will keep this site updated on how you can pitch in. Besides getting meals out to shelters today, our highest priority is restoring power to ensure no food on hand is lost.