The Nashville Food Project’s Blog
Simply Beautiful
Our spring crops are thriving as we await the much anticipated summer fruits. Pictured here starting from the bottom is a bed of buckwheat, two beds of leaf lettuce, a bed of chard, snow peas (yum!), and finally the tall grass in the background is winter rye. Want to help harvest or pull a few weeds? Drop by anytime.
Salad Train
This year's lettuce harvest has allowed us to include beautiful salads on over 2,000 meals thus far. This photo is one of the beautiful salads we've made that included TNFP lettuce, strawberries from Nashville Grown and hard boiled eggs from Foggy Hollow. Thanks to all the hundreds of volunteers that planted, tended, harvested, washed, chopped and made these tasty dishes to help us nourish our community.
Many Friends
Our onions are growing strong. Thanks to this awesome group from Friends Life for mulching them well with straw to keep the soil cool and moist. Thanks friends!
Sharing Hospitality along with a Meal
A mens group from Woodmont Christian Church pose with Tallu before taking their monthly truck run to Murfreesboro Road, where they share a meal with residents of Mercury Courts. Woodmont, its members and its Senior Minister Dr. Clay Stauffer have been so supportive of our work from the beginning. We are grateful!
In the garden
GM Financial sent out their A-team to volunteer recently in our gardens. They turned compost, planted carrots, and harvested spinach without one word of complaint on the first day to break 90 degrees this year. Thank you for all the hard work!
A Sweet Donation
This Cub Scout troop sent along something special with their donation.
Cub Scout Troop 221 recently donated 200 delicious made-from-scratch cookies for our meals to be served at Operation Stand Down. They included this sweet note along with their gift! If your group is interested in providing dessert for any of our meals, contact Anne Sale at anne@thenashvillefoodproject.org. We'd love to put you on our calendar!
Starbucks in the Garden
What was Starbucks up to in the garden?
This awesome group of Starbucks managers volunteered at our Wedgewood Urban Gardens. Glad to see them still smiling after two hours of pulling weeds, prepping soil and laying irrigation lines. Must be all the caffeine. Thank you Starbucks for supporting our work!
Tomatoes Tomatoes!
Hmmm. Wonder if they planted enough?
These Harpeth Hall 8th graders planted the first 50 tomatoes of our summer tomato crop. We're excited about the San Marzano, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Tropic and Brandywine headed for our kitchens. Do you have a favorite heirloom tomato variety?
Good Enough to Eat!
What a unique way to learn about fruits and vegetables!
Learning while using these beautiful handmade fruits and vegetables certainly make us want to eat the real thing!
We could not be more thrilled with the latest art project that students at Ensworth High School have completed for us. We now have two full binders of incredibly detailed felted vegetables to use in our educational 'nutrition rainbow' activities with youth and for ESL support with the refugee community gardeners with whom we work. We so appreciate their creativity!
Dollar General gets cooking!
This great group of folks from Dollar General spent a recent morning in our prep room working on potatoes and veggies for one of our favorite meals - shepherd's pie. Finished with a sprinkle of freshly grown TNFP parsley, this hearty meal served 75 residents at Mercury Courts. Great Job Dollar General!
It's here!
We are so excited to have this new walk-in freezer installed behind our office! Just in time for freezing the abundance of summer crops that come our way. A huge thank you to Judy Wright and Christ Church Cathedral for making it happen!
McGruder garden is ready for spring!
Thanks to these ladies for contributing their artwork to the McGruder Community Garden. This space is now truly full of life in many senses of the word!
Thanks to these students from Glencliff High School for volunteering in the garden. They worked hard to dig a new plot in the orchard, and the community gardeners have since planted it with potatoes!
After planting spring crops and working together to get seed potatoes in the ground, the McGruder Green Thumbers gathered around picnic tables to relax and enjoy a delicious lunch.
Granola Truffles
This is the result of some creative work in our prep room. Remember our granola bar recipe...
This is the result of some creative work in our prep room. Remember our granola bar recipe from a couple weeks ago? We made a batch that came out a little too soft to cut and serve. Our meal prep volunteers put their heads together and decided to turn them into "truffles" by rolling them in crushed vanilla wafers. Voila! Instant perfect snack. We love the creativeness of our volunteers!!
New meal prep times
Let's get chopping!
We are excited to begin a new partnership with the United Way’s SPARK program whose mission is to engage youth in consistent, structured physical activity; to promote movement; to advocate basic nutrition through education; and to provide accessible, cost-effective meals for the entire family two times a week. We are providing 36 families at both the Salvation Army and Bethlehem Center with two healthy meals per week. With this expansion of our meal program, we have added additional prep times and are looking for volunteers.
Two new prep times are available on Saturdays for 10 volunteers each session: 10am-12pm and 1-3pm. Monday prep is from 10am-12pm and Wednesday evening prep is from 5:30-7:30pm. Ready to get chopping? Sign up here. If you are interested in scheduling a group of 4-10 volunteers for a meal prep activity, contact Malinda at malinda@thenashvillefoodproject.org.
Turn, turn, turn
Feeling a little slouch after a long winter hibernation? Nothing gets the blood flowing like turning compost at our gardens. Come by anytime to see what's cooking in our compost pile!
Keeping it HOT!
What are those boxes in our food trucks?
Check out our latest food truck upgrade, courtesy of our incredible friends at Triumph Aerostructures! These insulated food carriers will allow us to carry more food for longer distances, just in time for a major expansion of our meals program.
Garden Teamwork
This candid photo captures two friends from Glencliff's International Teen Outreach Program as they hand off a bucket of seed potatoes. We truly love having these students in our garden--they bring so much joy and positivity with them every single time.