Our Simmer Series: An Update

By Jennifer Justus, TNFP Culinary Community Liaison

Thanks to a generous food community and your support, we’ve hosted two sold-out Simmer dinners in our community dining room recently. We’re grateful as funds raised at these pop-ups go directly back to our work, and we’ve been thrilled to see community cultivated over these special meals.

In April, Executive Chef Katie Coss from Husk took over our commercial kitchen with her crew to prepare an epic “Ode to Meat and Three.” She incorporated an Asian twist thanks in part to produce from TNFP’s Growing Together farmers. But more like a “meat and 10,” the courses flowed beginning with passed appetizers — crunchy bites of shiitake lettuce wraps, ham pimento cheese tea sandwiches and cups of shrimp and grits. A salad course highlighted strawberry season and then family-style platters of Thai barbecue Boston butt hit tables with bowls of Tokyo bekana Slaw and other dishes alongside rolls slick with butter and flecked of benne seeds.

Photo Recap: A Farm Dinner with Chef Katie Coss

Then earlier this month, Top Chef alum and Nashville native Arnold Myint paid tribute to his mother Patti Myint who opened International Market & Restaurant (Nashville’s first Asian restaurant) in 1975. A pioneer as both woman and immigrant in the industry, Patti passed away in October 2018 and inspired Arnold to take a trip to Thailand, which inspired his menu. It began with pork floss wrapped inside betel leaves and studded with peanuts and whole chopped lime, and it ended with a dramatic coconut soup garnished with edible flowers, ruby water chestnut boba and lychee agar jelly. In between, a bevy of dishes brought Thai tradition and a family’s journey to the plate with five-spice duck, trout with curry custard and more. Chef Arnold will serve a version of the menu at the James Beard House in New York City later this month.

Photo Recap: Chef Arnold Myint's Dishes to Honor His Mother

It has been a thrill to see our kitchens turned into a sea of plated finer dining cuisine, and the food at all the Simmer dinners has no doubt been phenomenal. But beyond that, we’ve also loved the stories shared behind these dinners and the bridges built between the restaurant community and our work.

Arnold Myint gave an emotional toast to his mother who helped inspire him to give back. Guests shared stories too including one diner who said he has been eating for 40 years at International Market — a testament to its long run as community gathering place.

Chef Arnold Myint

Chef Katie of Husk also shared stories at her dinner. She spoke about an appreciation for local farmers, which came through in every course including succulent ribbons of shredded pork donated by Bear Creek Farm. Then over mini Mason jars of banana pudding, she talked about her path, which included a background as a ballerina. Her former job required her to stick to a strict meal plan, but Katie also kept a beloved copy of a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. While rehearsing, she said she would daydream about meals she wanted to make, and sometimes she baked cakes to stash under her bed. Looking back now, it seems a career in the kitchen—a different sort of dance—was inevitable.

Chef Katie Coss

The morning of Katie’s dinner, the following article appeared in Forbes:

“How Nashville Is Becoming an Inclusive Magnet for Women Chefs and Restaurant Owners.” 

It told stories of Nashville restaurant matriarchs like Chef Margot McCormack of Margot Cafe, Chef Deb Paquette of Etch and celebrities like Chef Maneet Chauhan. But it also included a newer guard such as Chef Katie, who took the reigns at Husk restaurant (previously associated with international superstar Chef Sean Brock) late last year.

Had the story been written earlier, it might have included Patti Myint and her legacy too. And while Patti would have no doubt been proud of her son Arnold at his dinner, we can’t help but imagine how she would have been proud of Katie, making her way as a women, in the restaurant scene too.

Patti Myint of Nashville’s International Market. Photo courtesy of The Tennessean.

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Thank you to our sponsor Piedmont Natural Gas and to all in-kind sponsors including Creation Gardens, BonusBev, Athens, Lipman, Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery, Bear Creek Farm and Tallahassee May for the flower arrangements.

Interested in attending future Simmer dinners? Next up we have a Sunday Brunch Spectacular with Jaime Miller of Lockeland Table, Carter Hach of Hachland Hill and Kurdish pastry chef Najat Al Zahawi on Sunday, June 23, 1:00 PM

Pastry chef Jaime Miller will host a pop-up Sunday brunch with friends including Chef Carter Hach, grandson of Tennessee culinary legend Phila Hach and proprietor of Hachland Hill Inn, and Najat Al Zahawi, a Kurdish pastry expert who also cooked with Phila Hach. Discussion will include Jaime’s approach as well as Phila’s legacy and influence in creating community through food.

Click here for tickets.

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Springs Sorghum Simmer Cocktail

Husk Bar Manager Adam Morgan concocted this “welcome cocktail,” the Springs Sorghum Simmer, which includes a generously provided nip of Belle Meade Bourbon.

For the Basil Sorghum Shrub

2 quarts sorghum syrup

1 quart basil leaves

2.5 ounces apple cider vinegar

For the Cocktail

2 barspoons Basil Sorghum Shrub

2 ounces Belle Meade bourbon

Pinch Maldon Salt

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

1. Make the shrub: Combine 2 quarts sorghum and one quart water to a sauce pan and bring to a gentle boil. Add the basil leaves and apple cider vinegar. Let steep for 24 hours. Strain. Keep refrigerated up to 2 weeks.

2. Make the cocktail: Combine 2 barspoons of shrub with bourbon, salt and bitters. Serve over ice with a twist of citrus.  

Local Food + Lemon Shallot Vinaigrette

By TNFP’s Culinary Community Liaison, Jennifer Justus

As construction cranes loom over Nashville and development creeps into the countryside, we’re thankful for a growing number of farmers who make the best use of our fertile land and do the hard work of tending it for produce that nourishes our community.

The Nashville Food Project wants to support this work. We’re committed to a vision of vibrant community food security, in which all members of our community have the food they want and need through a just and sustainable food system. With this vision in mind, we’ve committed to deepening our relationship to local farms by purchasing and supporting local food.

In fact, our commitment to purchasing local food is a growing portion of how our meals happen. We entered 2019 knowing this would be a year of transitions for our own gardens, moving all production to the newly opened Community Farm at Mill Ridge Park (read more about the grand opening of that farm here). With less produce coming from our gardens this season, we sought farm partners we can support with our dollars whose produce can help supplement the food we grow and meals we make and share. Currently, the majority of food for our meals comes from donated and recovered food. The slice of pie for ‘local food’ represents our food purchases from local farms.

What’s going into a TNFP MEAL?

With a dedicated local farm purchasing budget, we put out the word early this year that we’re seeking to purchase locally-grown produce from area farmers on a weekly, seasonal basis for use in our meals program. This resulted in new relationships with four farms: Rally House Farms, Bloomsbury Farms, West Glow Farm, and SE Daugherty & Sons.

Here’s a bit about each farm:

• Rally House Farms recycles shipping containers for growing hydroponically and providing healthy, fresh produce year round. The operation needs 90 percent less water, no harmful pesticides or herbicides and a fraction of the physical space of traditional farms, which means they’ve turned a paved corner of Murfreesboro Pike and Fesslers Lane into a thriving, sustainable food source. Though Rally House Farms operates as its own for-profit business, it’s connected with Rally House Recovery Homes, which aims to provide temporary structure and employment to those in recovery and transition.

• Bloomsbury Farms is located over 400 acres in Smyrna, Tennessee. Owner and farmer Lauren Palmer has farming in her family. Her father grew up on a dairy farm, though his parents were forced off the land by the Army Corps of Engineers and eminent domain. A love of the land continued with his motto: “bloom where you were planted.”

• West Glow Farm is a small-scale, Kingston Springs farm with naturally grown vegetables, fruits and flowers. Farmer Booth Jewett (a Nashville Food Project alum) works to grow food in a way that honors and regenerates the land and all who live on it.

• SE Daugherty & Sons launched in 2016 with Shaun Daugherty at the helm. As lead cultivator (and former personal trainer), he’s made it his life’s mission to make “good-tasting, good-for-you foods accessible to everyone.”

In one of our first farm partner deliveries to our kitchen from Rally House, we received lettuces. Here’s a go-to recipe we often use when whipping up dressings for our salads. It’s a simple set of directions for committing to memory that allows the gifts of the earth to shine.

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Lemon Shallot Vinaigrette

(courtesy of Christa Bentley)

Yields 2 cups

Ingredients

2 shallots, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1/2 cup lemon juice

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon honey (or until desired sweetness)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

In a medium bowl, combine shallots, garlic, lemon juice, vinegar and mustard. Whisk in olive oil and honey. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle on local greens, toss and serve.

Celebrating the Community Farm at Mill Ridge

Since last fall, we’ve been busy breaking ground and building infrastructure at our newest garden site in southeast Nashville - the Community Farm at Mill Ridge Park. Located in Metro Nashville's newest regional park, this community farm will be a new home to TNFP garden programs. So much planning, love and work has already been poured into this project, and we were incredibly excited to celebrate with a grand opening of the farm on Saturday!

From the moment staff, volunteers and gardeners first arrived to begin set up on the morning of the party, this was truly a community event. Everyone pitched in with setting up tables, chairs, activity stations, flower arranging, and more.

As guests arrived, staff began to offer tours of the gardens. This year, TNFP is opening the farm with two elements of our garden programming: production and community gardens. The production gardens offer a way for folks to play a role in growing food for our meals program, engaging volunteers in a small-scale and efficient garden. The community garden at Mill Ridge hosts 12 families this season, offering land, resources and education opportunities for folks to grow food for themselves and their families, with plans to expand next year.

Throughout the property, visitors to the farm also found opportunities to engage in community art projects, a comfrey planting, and offerings of free plants and seeds for their own home gardens. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a TNFP event without lots of snacks, marked with a “Lettuce Eat!” sign.

Next, everyone gathered in the tent for an INCREDIBLE line-up of speakers. Lauren Bailey, Hannah Davis and Christa Bentley of TNFP, Darrell Hawks of the Friends of Mill Ridge Park, Monique Odom of Metro Parks, Metro Councilwoman Jacobia Dowell, Community Gardener Bridget Bryant, Vanessa Lazon from the Mayor’s Office, and a beautiful performance and blessing by Rashad Rayford of Southern Word. The speakers talked about their excitement for people to have the opportunity to grow their own food in community at this farm.

Vanessa Lazon (Mayor's Office)

Bridget Bryant (Community Gardener)

We were also honored to have Ms. Mary Moore and Ms. Aileen Williamson attend the celebration, whose family owned and ran the property as a family livestock farm beginning in 1919. Before it was purchased by the Moore family, the property was owned by the Holloway family, who grew commodity crops and kept livestock. When the Holloways settled here in 1850, they had two young children and owned 32 slaves. In 2015, Metro Parks of Nashville purchased the Moore Farm and several adjacent properties to create what is now Mill Ridge Park.

The Moore sisters, Ms. Mary Moore and Ms. Aileen Williamson

As the speakers closed, Sankofa African Drum and Dance of Tennessee led us all in dancing together as a community. They shared with us that Sankofa is an Akan word that means, "We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.”

This call to understand our past, including slavery and the genocide of native peoples, is vital to understanding where we are today in agriculture. At TNFP we envision vibrant community food security where people have the food they want and need through a just a sustainable food system. We know that we have never had a just and sustainable food system, so we hope that you'll join us in this work to create a just and sustainable food system through this community farm!

Learn more about volunteering in our gardens at thenashvillefoodproject.org/givetime.

Sweet Peas: Summer Eats for Kids

By Christa Bentley, Interim Chief Programs Officer

Since moving into our new building in December we have been learning a lot. Dipping our toes  into what’s possible in our incredible, shiny new kitchen; inviting our volunteers to get comfy here; meeting our neighbors; making new friends; and working hard to make this kitchen a home for ourselves and, we hope, for many others. Our meals program has been slowly adding meals as we’ve been getting to know this new space and the incredible capacity that comes alongside it.

But now, we’re ready to GROW. Over the last few years, we have been learning about the incredible need for summer meals for youth in Nashville and wishing we could do more. Every school year, Metro Nashville Public Schools serves 8.4 million lunches and 4 million breakfasts. During the summer months, without these daily meals, many children and youth are at risk of hunger. According to Feeding America, this could be as many as 1 in 5 children under the age of 18.

These numbers are staggering, and we are finally in a position to do something about it. We are thrilled to announce a new initiative for our meals program: Sweet Peas, summer eats for kids. This summer, The Nashville Food Project is partnering with the YMCA of Middle Tennessee, Project Transformation, the Martha O’Bryan Center, United Way’s SPARK program at Haywood Elementary, and Nashville International Center for Empowerment to share over 35,000 nutritious meals with over 600 of Nashville’s children and youth. This is in addition to the ongoing local meals partnerships the Food Project maintains all year long.

These meals will not just be another drop in the bucket. They will be healthy, delicious, local, and made-from-scratch. Our hope is that the love that goes into these meals from the hundreds of volunteers who had a hand in their making will be evident to the children who eat them. That they will inspire a new salad lover, a new broccoli eater, some orange smiles. This is the kind of community food we have been working towards all these many years, and now we are ready to act in a larger way.

We need your help to bring this work to life! This expansion will cost over $36,000 and require hours of additional volunteer time, but the impact -- putting good food on the table for so many children and community partners this summer -- will be well worth the effort and expense. You can help us today by donating or signing up to volunteer at one of our kitchens in West Nashville, St. Luke’s Kitchen and California Avenue.

I hope daily that our work at The Nashville Food Project will no longer be necessary because everyone in our community will have access to the most basic human right of nutritious food. But as long as we are needed, these meals, and the many more we plan to cook over years to come, will continue to amplify our vision of nourishing, community food for all.

I hope you’ll consider supporting this important work.

Christa Bentley, Interim Chief Programs Officer

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Want to learn more about meals available for Nashville area children and youth this summer? Addressing the summer nutrition gap requires collective work by many, and we’re grateful for the incredible programs and community partners who are sharing in this work! As we learn about additional summer meal resources, we’ll be adding and updating information here.

Metro Action Commission’s Summer Food Service Program prepares nearly 6,000 meals daily during June and July for an average of 110 sites and 3 communities served by the agency's Mobile Youth Café Diners. 

Information on Metro Action Commission sites and all Summer Food Service Program sites is available on the Department of Human Service website. You can find meal sites near you by:

1. Going to https://www.fns.usda.gov/summerfoodrocks to use the Site Finder

2. Texting  “Summer Meals” to 97779

3. Calling 1-866-348-6479 

Metro Nashville Public Schools’ summer meals program is free to children ages 0 to 18, regardless of whether or not they attend Metro Schools. Adults aged 19 and over can receive meals at a reduced cost of $3.75. There are no income requirements or registration. It is paid for through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and comes to Nashville at no net cost to taxpayers.

J.E. Moss Elementary School - June 3 to July 12
1-2 p.m.
4701 Bowfield Dr.
Antioch, TN 37013

Gra Mar Middle School - June 10 to July 3
1-2 p.m.
575 Joyce Ln.
Nashville, TN 37216

The Nashville Food Project is partnering with local organizations this summer to share over 35,000 nutritious meals with over 600 of Nashville’s children and youth. This is in addition to the ongoing local meals partnerships the Food Project maintains all year long. Click here for a list of all Sweet Peas partner locations and dates/times of meal service - note that some of these sites require enrollment.

Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee sponsors the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) at sites throughout Middle Tennessee each summer. Free meals that meet Federal nutrition guidelines are provided to all children at SFSP sites in areas with significant concentrations of low-income children.

List of Second Harvest’s open SFSP Sites

List of Second Harvest’s SFSP Sites that require enrollment

Do you know of additional summer meal resources for children and youth in the Nashville area? Add them in the comments!

Understanding Garden Pests

By Grace Biggs, Impact Manager

It’s a beautiful spring day, and neighbors are gathering at the Wedgewood Urban Garden, an urban oasis tucked off of Wedgewood Avenue near the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Since The Nashville Food Project undertook management of the space in 2011, hundreds of Nashvillians have grown their own food in community at the garden.

There are many different methods utilized to establish community gardens. Here at TNFP, gardeners manage their own individual or family plots.  With the support of monthly garden trainings and community work days combined with assistance from TNFP garden staff and community leaders, each gardener is well equipped and supported for a successful growing season. So far there are 25 people who have signed up for a plot at the Wedgewood Urban Garden. This includes both new and long-time Wedgewood-Houston neighbors, as well as families who came to the United States as refugees from Bhutan.

Today, I’m joining the neighborhood gardeners for their monthly garden training. As I come up the hill to the upper garden, I see a few gardeners have arrived and are already working. Some are tending to their young spring crops while others are just starting their garden journey and are preparing their beds for planting. As I walk around, I get the run-down on what people have planted: arugula, collards, radishes, carrots, bush beans, snap peas… the list goes on!

When it’s time to start the training, we head down to a shaded deck in the lower garden, surrounded by trees, perennial herbs and flowers. Lauren, TNFP’s Director of Garden Programs, uncovers a board with an outline on today’s topic: spring garden pests.

“There are some pests that will out-compete us if we don’t get ahead of the game,” Lauren begins as we settle in for the workshop. To start off, we went around the circle and shared about any past experiences we’d had with garden pests.

“I had a lot of beetles on my cucumbers last year,” said one gardener. “Never caught any in the act, just saw the evidence after.”

There were many nods of agreement as we took turns sharing our experiences. Whether it’s aphids or caterpillar worms, many gardeners can relate to pest problems.

So why not spray a chemical and be done with the problem?

The gardeners have agreed and are committed to only utilizing organic methods of gardening, which also includes pest control. Most chemical insecticides can’t target a particular kind of insect, so they kill not just the pests but their predators as well. That means, ironically, that these pests can easily return -- unless you spray again, and again.

At TNFP gardens, we’re using and encouraging an approach to natural pest control called Integrated Pest Management. Lauren broke it down for us into four steps: 1) identifying and understanding the pest, 2) prevent, 3) physical control, and 4) organic chemical control.

1) Identifying and understanding the Pest

“When you’re able to identify the pest and understand their behavior, it’s like knowing your enemy. If you know their behavior, you’re better able to stay one step ahead.”

— Lauren, TNFP’s Director of Garden Programs

Identifying and understanding the pests in your garden is the foundation of integrated pest management. If you’re trying to identify a pest in your garden, these questions can often help get you there…

• What does it eat?

• What does it look like or how does it behave?

• What kind of insect is it? A beetle, bug, caterpillar or worm, or maggot?

Click through the photos below for some examples of spring pests and their behavior.

Cabbage Worms

Cabbage worms like anything in the brassica family, including kale, broccoli, and collards. The moths come about mid-spring and lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves.

Flea Beetles

Flea beetles are very, very small. They’ll chew holes in pretty much anything, but especially love greens and eggplant. They’re most damaging in early spring, so that’s the time to be on the lookout. They also can spread diseases.

Cut Worms

True to their name, cut worms live under the ground and come up at night time and cut your plant.

Cucumber Beetles

Cucumber beetles pretty much like everything in that family, including zucchini and melons. They like to hide & thrive in old plant matter.

2) Prevent

Now that you’ve identified and understand the behavior of the pest, you can prevent! Being prepared for pests and doing what you can to discourage them can save your plants from damage and lessens the need for other controls later on.

There are lots of approaches to both long and short-term prevention that you can apply to your garden. Click through the photos below for some examples!

Long term prevention:

Compost application

In sustainable gardening, building healthy soil is key! Studies show that plant resistance to pests and disease is directly linked to soil properties. Applying compost is a great way to improve the health of your soil.

Broadforking

Broadforks allow you to till and aerate your growing beds by hand, using a natural motion that's easy on your body.

Plant for beneficials

Not all insects are foes! In fact, the vast majority are either benign or can actually help fight off pests. Planting a variety of crops, including flowers, can help bring beneficial insects to your garden, such as ladybugs, lacewings, predatory stinkbugs, parasitic wasps, and many others.

Crop rotation

In its simplest form, crop rotation is planting crops from the same family in different places each season. Since many pests are drawn to plants in the same family, this can help prevent some pests from getting established in one area of your garden.

Short term prevention:

Row cover

Using row cover is a great way to protect crops you know are especially prone to pests. Just make sure they’re not already there, or you’ll just be making them a happy home!

Appropriate spacing

Overcrowded plants are more susceptible to pests and diseases than properly spaced plants.

Removing old plant materials

Some pests love to hide in old plant material, so removing as you go is a great way to discourage pests.

Trap crops

A trap crop is planted to attract pests away from your main crops. Which trap crop you choose depends on the pest you are trying to prevent. Nasturtiums, for example, are attractive to aphids.

3) Physical control

Even after using these prevention methods, there’s a good chance you’ll still confront some pests in your garden, especially in a shared space. The next step in integrated pest management is physical control, such as knocking pests off of plants with a spray of water or using barriers and traps.

Here are some examples…

Handpicking

Physically picking off eggs or insects. It’s a lot easier to squish the eggs than the insects later on, so it’s a good idea to check early and often, especially the underside of leaves.

Cup collars

In spaces where we’ve had problems with cut worms, we use ‘cup collars’ made of toilet paper rolls or cut dixie cup to protect transplants. Just make sure you place it deep enough in the soil so the cut worms can’t reach the plant.

Sticky traps

There are lots of store-bought and DIY options for ‘sticky traps’ to physically catch garden pests. Here’s one example. Photo by Veganomaly.

4) Organic chemical control

If all else fails, there are a number of organic chemical control options that are not particularly toxic except to insects. We use this as a last resort, since some of these approaches can also harm beneficial insects. Look for products that are approved by The Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) - a private, nonprofit organization that determines whether or not a product qualifies as organic under the USDA's National Organic Program. Food grade versions of Diatomaceous earth, Safer Soap and Neem Oil are a few examples.

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We often say the trainings at our community gardens are more of a knowledge exchange… many of the gardeners bring a wealth of different experiences, and we’re always learning more together!

If you’re interested in reading more about natural pest control, The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control is a great resource that you can find at the Nashville Public Library. We also love The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast as a general guide to gardening in Tennessee.

What pest control approaches have worked for you in your garden? Let us know in the comments!

New Ways of Being With Each Other

This article by TNFP’s Growing Together Market Manager, Sally Rausch, was recently featured in Tending the Fire Quarterly, which reports on efforts of contemplative justice within St Augustine’s Chapel, the Center for Contemplative Justice and the wider world.

In a time of extreme division in our country - most notably, the fight for a literal wall to separate us from our southern neighbor, I am time and again reminded that we long for deeper connection, deeper relationships, and a deeper sense of belonging to each other.  

During my recent knitting project, a blanket, I couldn’t stop thinking about this innate desire. As a (very) novice knitter, this project improved my ability to pick up dropped stitches. As I moved along, I slowly got better at seeing them, picking them up, mending the hole they’d created in my work, and incorporating the stitch back into the pattern of the blanket.  Knitting seems a fitting metaphor, a tangible representation of the way we are all woven together in this large patchwork connecting people, the earth, and all beings that inhabit this place. Some of the holes are gaping, seemingly too large to mend, but the blanket is meant to be whole.

I have the privilege to work at The Nashville Food Project, where we believe food is one way we can begin to pick up the dropped stitches and reincorporate them into the fabric of our shared humanity. As a manager of our market garden program, Growing Together, I work alongside eight farmers and their families who grow vegetables to sell across Nashville. These families came to Nashville as refugees from Burma and Bhutan, bringing with them cultural traditions and years of experience working with and rooted in the land.

As I witness the farmers and their families in the plots, tending the soil, pulling weeds, and harvesting for the day, it is hard to miss the reconciliation unfolding. Farmers who were forcibly removed from the land they called home, many of whom spent decades in refugee camps, are now putting down roots and reconnecting to the land in this new place. Farmers who are spending countless hours every week tending their plots side by side are connecting to each other and to the Nashville community through this shared work.

I notice a similar pattern at the Richland Park Farmers’ Market. Here the Growing Together booth is piled high with veggies of all kinds, a dozen varieties of mustard greens, radishes of many shapes and colors, spinach and arugula, tomatoes and peppers. But what’s missing if you only look at the beautiful vegetables on a steamy summer day are the hands that got those veggies to the table and every touchpoint of connection between seed and sale.  

Noticing the baseball bat-sized bottle gourd at the farmers’ market booth one Saturday, I smiled, remembering the cold March day when the farmers and staff gathered together at The Nashville Food Project’s greenhouse to plant seeds for summer crops. Several staff members and I were busily distributing the seeds that farmers had ordered for their disease-resistant and heirloom varieties of tomatoes. As I moved from one table to another, I was greeted by Chandra, one of the farmers who has grown with Growing Together since its inception. He was holding out to me a large tooth-shaped seed from a cluster cupped in a wrinkled paper towel that he had pulled from his pocket. It was unlike any seed I’d ever seen – it was a bottle gourd seed. Chandra had been saving this seed over the course of several seasons, perhaps even traveling with it across thousands of miles from a refugee camp in Nepal to Nashville several years ago. With encouragement, Chandra assured me that I too could grow this crop, and I slipped the seed into my pocket, a gift. He was right! The plant was prolific, the vine growing across the metal archway leading into our home garden an invitation to delight. The gourds filled our kitchen counter in the late summer, gifting me the opportunity to seek advice from the Bhutanese farmers about how they prepare and eat bottle gourd at home. That one seed bridged language, culture, and place, teaching me not only what a bottle gourd is (and how many people one plant can feed!), but also that our differences create opportunities to learn from each other.  

Often, tomatoes are piled all around the bottle gourds on the market table. As I stood admiring them on a humid August morning, I was reminded of a moment earlier in the week when I’d watched a farmer, Garja, and the look of pure joy on his face as he ate a tiny, sweet, cherry tomato straight off of one of his plants. I too have experienced this same pleasure in my garden, finding nature’s sweet candy irresistible and filling my belly before I even make it to the kitchen. While our differences create opportunities for learning, our similarities cultivate connection.

I remember so vividly a coworker and I were standing between two farmers’ plots one morning, listening as they shared about their prayer rituals performed before coming to the garden. Their morning prayers always include a prayer for peace. After listening intently, my colleague said, “every day I pray for that, too.” Maybe the prayer rituals look differently, but the fiber of the blanket sure seems the same.  

I must admit that I come to the communion circle at St. Augustine’s Chapel without any idea what it means to eat the body of Christ. The theological implications seem inaccessible and the mystery too great. What I do know is that I’m hungry, that I long to receive a piece of bread from my neighbor and I delight in sharing the same gift with another. Just as I long for the sour leaves and shrimp paste my farmer friend brings to share with me, I delight in sharing my zucchini muffins as we stand at the farmers’ market table together. Food binds us together simply because we all need it! Growing Together has taught me that we need the nourishment of connection just as much as we need the nourishment of food. And Growing Together reminds me of what is possible: to give and to receive nourishment, love, and our gifts, this is justice.

I am not sure I know what prayer is, but my hope is that we continue living out our deep desire to weave our human fabric closer to wholeness. 

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Beginning in May, you can visit the Growing Together farmers at the Richland Park Farmers’ Market on every Saturday through October. The farmers are also offering a Fall CSA. Learn more about this work and how you can support the Growing Together farmers here.

Corn Five Ways

By Culinary Community Liaison, Jennifer Justus

Author and journalist Erin Byers Murray welcomes guests.

As our gardens begin to thrive and the kitchens ramp up for the summer, things have been heating up and coming together in beautiful ways at The Nashville Food Project — “simmering,” if you will.

And that’s part of why we gratefully launched the first installment of our new fundraiser this month, “Simmer: a chef series where good food and ideas come together.” It includes nine, monthly events running through the end of the year and aims to take guests a bit deeper by telling the stories behind the food and the people in our city who grow, cook and share it.

For the first installment, we invited author and journalist Erin Byers Murray to speak about her new book “Grits: A Cultural & Culinary Journey Through The South.”

Erin prepared, naturally, a grits dish -- warm bowls of long-cooked grits held together with grueye and topped with a mix of oyster mushrooms, shiitakes, butter and flecks of thyme. She also asked some friends to join her in telling the stories from her book through food.

Food writer and spirits expert Jim Myers prepared variations on “corn from a jar.” Thanks to a donation by Pennington’s Distilling Co., we learned about the local company’s new Davidson Reserve Tennessee Whiskey. Jim spoke about the charcoal-mellowing process that gives a whiskey its Tennessee distinction, and we tasted unaged whiskey (or “white dog” as it’s called) before and after the charcoal filtering process.

Jim Myers pouring his almost legendary sangrita!

Jim also whirled together a Mexican sangrita. Similar in appearance to a bloody mary, the sangrita is nothing of the sort. Ancho chiles rather than tomatoes give it the deep red hue while orange juice, pomegranate syrup, onion, lemon and lime provide a balance of tart, sweet and heat. Though traditionally served with tequila, Jim mixed his sangrita with Pennington’s unaged Davidson Reserve Tennessee whiskey.

“The fine line between the grits miller and the distiller had long been blurred, over and again, into one long, woven story of similar purpose. The two end products, one solid, one liquid might differ in terms of texture, style, and, of course, resulting fortitude once consumed, but their coexistence creates a through-line for grits and whiskey, both of which are claimed as deeply Southern totems. Grits are the happy, soul-sustaining by-product of the moonshiner’s bounty.” -- Erin Byers Murray, “Grits”

Karla Ruiz hand pressing corn tortillas for the first dish of the evening.

Guests were handed corn tortillas hand-pressed by Karla Ruiz of Karla’s Catering and topped with cochinita pibil. Karla shared stories about coming to Nashville from her native Mexico and landing at Belle Meade Plantation where she became a quick study in the kitchen on Southern American cooking, which she marries with her native cuisine and its nearly 60 varieties of indigenous corn. Karla says cochinita pibil comes from Yucatán, Mexico, and involves wrapping pork in banana leaves, marinating it in sour orange and achiote (a sweet peppery red sauce made from annatto seed), and baking it for several hours, traditionally in buried or underground pits.

As for the tortillas, the Mayans and Aztecs viewed corn as a foundation of humanity. When the Spanish arrived in the New World, they took note of the flat corn breads made by the Aztecs and called them tortillas.

Tandy Wilson preparing thin sour grit cakes.

Tandy Wilson, chef/owner of City House, served a third corn-related course and spoke about the part he played in Erin’s book. Erin joined Tandy on a trip to Orlinda, Tennessee, where he buys his corn from Windy Acres Farm. Then, he takes the extra tedious and labor-intensive step of milling his own corn for grits and cornmeal. Tandy served thin sour grit cakes (which undergo a three-day souring process) with scoops of beef sugo made possible through a donation by Bear Creek Farm. Spicy bits of arugula -- grown by Growing Together farmers -- brightened the dish.

Tandy’s dish: Sour Corn Cake, Bear Creak Beef Sugo and Spring Vegetables

And to end things on a sweet note, Rebekah Turshen, pastry chef at City House, spoke about the fresh cornmeal she uses fresh from the restaurant’s mill for desserts like the buttermilk cornmeal cookies she served pressed together with a scoop of tart creme fraiche ice cream.

Rebekah Turshen finishing her buttermilk cornmeal cookie ice cream sandwiches.

Special thanks to Piedmont Natural Gas for their sponsorship of Simmer. Thank you to in-kind sponsors: Ian and Kady Navarro of Creation Gardens and Pennington’s Distilling Co. Last, but far from least, thank you to Erin Byer Murray, Karla Ruiz, Jim Myers, Rebekah Turshen and Tandy Wilson for donating their time and talents.

To see the full Simmer lineup and purchase tickets to future events -- including our next installment of farm dinner by Katie Coss from Husk on May 4 -- please visit thenashvillefoodproject.org/simmer.

And check out the recipes below to try out Jim’s sangrita and Erin’s grits!

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Jim Myers’ Almost Legendary Sangrita Recipe

Ingredients

• 64 ounces fresh orange juice

• 1 cup fresh lime juice

• 5 ancho chiles

• 2 cups white onion, chopped

• 4 tablespoons pomegranate syrup

• 2+ tablespoons chili piquin (pequin) powder

• Salt to taste

Directions

1. Tear open dried ancho chiles and remove stem and seeds. Roast chili pieces in cast-iron skillet to release flavor, being careful that the pieces don't burn or char. Admire the sweet aroma and have a sip of some good reposado and turn up the music a little bit. 

2. Place roasted chili pieces in a stainless steel bowl and add enough boiling water to cover. Weigh down the chili pieces with another bowl on top. Let soak for about 15-20 minutes.

3. Have another little sip of tequila and call that friend you've been missing. Lie about your weight. As you're catching up on the last 10 years, squeeze your limes with a hand-squeezer. Remember to wash your limes first, and then roll them on the counter with the palms of your hand. This makes juicing them easier.

4. Chop your onion and put it in a blender. Cry, but only for a moment, over all of life's lost opportunities. No, wait, that was just the onions. Take another sip of tequila and throw into the blender a couple hearty pinches of salt and the soft ancho chili pieces. Pour in enough of the rusty-colored soaking liquid to make blending easy. Blend until all is well-pureed.

5. Combine in a large pitcher (1 gallon) the orange juice, lime juice, chili/onion puree and the pomegranate syrup. Add a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of the pequin powder, shake well and let sit refrigerated overnight. Have another sip and put on that old DVD of "Night of the Iguana" and look at how cool Puerta Vallarta was in the '60s. Have another sip as you wonder if you were ever as cool as Richard Burton. Have yet another sip with the realization that the answer will always and forever be "no."

6. The next day, fix yourself a cup of strong coffee and taste the sangrita for balance. This is where I add what seems to be too much salt, but it has to compete with the sourness and acidity of the pomegranate and lime. Just add what's needed for the right balance and your personal taste, and then do what I always forget to do -- write down exactly what and how much you added. 

7. Finally, adjust for your level of heat. I usually start with a tablespoon of the piquin powder, and then add a bit at a time, remembering to stir well in between. Stop and marvel, for just a moment, at how improbably blue the sky is. Call your friends or make some new ones. Find some cool small glasses that are bigger than standard shot glasses. Pick out your favorite guayabera and crank up the music.

8. Serve sangrita with a good quality tequila. I prefer reposado, but choose whatever you fancy. Sangrita also mixes well with clear spirits like vodka and gin (and moonshine).

9. Salud!

Notes: This recipe is perishable and should be used within 48 hours. All ingredients are available at K&S Markets on Charlotte and Nolensville Pike.

Recipe from Jim Myers (jim@culinarity.com)

Erin’s Gruyère Grits with Wild Mushrooms

Serves 8

Ingredients

• 3 cups stone-ground grits, cooked

• ½ cup heavy cream or whole milk

• 1 cup grated Gruyère cheese

• 2 tablespoons butter

• ¼ teaspoon white pepper

• 2 or 3 shallots, cut into thin slivers (about 1/3 cup)

• 1 or 2 garlic cloves, finely minced

• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme, plus leaves for garnish

• 8 ounces sliced mixed mushrooms (about 2 cups)

• ½ cup dry vermouth or white wine

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

In a heatproof bowl or serving dish, combine the warm cooked grits with the cream and Gruyère. Cover the bowl with a lid or foil and keep the grits warm while you prepare the mushroom.

In a medium nonstick skillet, melt the butter over medium heat and season with the white pepper. Add the shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, until the shallots are translucent, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the thyme and mushrooms and cook, stirring, until the mushrooms begin to brown, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and simmer the mixture until most of the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms are tender. Depending on the mushrooms you’re using, you may need to add more liquid and simmer a few moments longer to ensure they’re tender.

Fold the mushroom mixture into the grits. Taste for seasoning - you may need more salt. If the grits seem too thick, add a splash of water. If they’ve cooled down too much, reheat them in the microwave. Top with freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves.

Recipe from “Grits: A Cultural & Culinary Journey Through The South” by Erin Byers Murray.

Making Gold: Composting In Nashville

By TNFP’s Community Engagement Manager, Elizabeth Langgle-Martin

“The world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it, there is nothing purer than that.”

— Rupi Kaur

This quote from Rupi Kaur is one of my favorites. This idea, this value, of creating worth out of something that can be seen as the garbage of life (literally or figuratively), is inspiring and challenging.   

I’m fairly certain the Rupi Kaur wasn’t talking about compost, but the idea of taking our forgotten bits, our discarded carrot ends, broken eggshells and spent coffee grounds and diverting them to be used as rich inputs for the earth which we have abused and abandoned for so long feels almost holy.

This ritual, this practice, of carefully collecting the skins of onions, the stubby bottoms of asparagus and the spinach that has developed an acute layer slime, speaks to a level of restoration that is life giving to me.  

In both of our TNFP kitchens, you’ll see volunteers and staff alike hoarding apple cores and potato peels and transporting them to our compost bins to be turned lovingly into invaluable nutrients that are sown back into our gardens to grow countless more serving of organic fruits and vegetables for individuals facing food insecurity in the Nashville area.

Not all of us operate commercial kitchens or spend our days tending production and community gardens. However, there is space for each of us to create rhythms of intentionality in reducing the waste we contribute to the landfill and leveraging every smidge of our resources for the benefit of our world.

So how can you make gold out of the forgotten bits of tonight’s dinner or tomorrow’s lunch?

We often have folks reach out and ask this exact question. Individuals living in apartments or families who may not have the time, space, or desire to facilitate their own composting process but who are acutely aware of the need for a change in the way we view and handle our kitchen waste.

Many Nashville neighbors aren’t aware that Metro Nashville provides drop off for compostable materials at 4 of its convenience centers scattered throughout Davidson county. These sites allow residents who are interested in the practice of composting a feasible way to make a shift in the way they view and revere scraps and other materials. Their website notes that 28% of all waste in Nashville is actually compostable materials.

Metro provides simple guidelines for those wishing to participate:

1. Ensure that all the items you are collecting are truly compostable. See their whole list HERE. Unlike many home compost systems, Metro Convenience Centers can even accept meat, fat and bone scraps. Double check that your contribution is free of materials deemed off limits: Plastic, expanded foam, metal, aluminum foil, animal or human waste and dryer sheets.

2. Collect items in a compostable bag or cardboard container. Alternatively, you can transport your items in a re-usable container and dump the contents directly in the compost container at the convenience site.   

3. Deliver to one of the four designated Convenience Center Sites free of charge.  

And the options don’t end there! If you’re interested in paying to have your compost picked up from your home or business, The Compost Company and Compost Nashville are two great local resources.

The practice of compost exists at the intersection of our TNFP values of Interdependence and Stewardship. We are committed to seeing these values realized in our spaces as an organization, but feel truly effective when we see them spill over into the homes of our friends, our teams, our volunteers and families.

We invite you to participate as we strive to honor both those around us and our world more fully each day, with our words, our actions, and yes… even our moldy strawberries.

Homemade Pasta

By TNFP’s Impact Manager, Grace Biggs

Any given day you walk through The Nashville Food Project’s kitchens or gardens, the incredible care put into the little details of the work is so evident. One great example? Every week, a group of friends and acquaintances comes together in our kitchens to make fresh bread and pasta from scratch for our meals program.

The group is led by long-time TNFP volunteer Rob Stein, a retired orthopedic surgeon and bread maker. He started inviting friends to bake with him at our St. Luke’s kitchens about three years ago, where they’ve made everything from challah to artisan dinner rolls. Fresh pasta is their most recent addition.

“My wife and I had been making pasta at home for many years,” says Rob. “And we just thought, hey, why don’t we do it at the Food Project? Fresh pasta normally would be considered a gourmet item… I think it’s nice that at TNFP you can say you’re sharing the best. We want to be proud of the food we’re sharing with our community.”

I’m joining them on one of their regular Wednesday prep times at our California Avenue kitchen.  Today, they’re making fettuccine as an entree for fifty seniors. “We’ve gotten very efficient,” says Rob. “When we bake rolls at the St. Luke’s kitchen on Thursdays, we scoot off to the side and make the pasta dough so it has time to rest.” Like clockwork, aprons are handed out, and the team starts clamping pasta machines onto the prep tables. Though some were new to the group, an easy flow quickly develops.

Pasta making is a two-part process. First, you make the dough. Then, after a rest period, you roll it out the dough and cut it to shape, such as lasagna sheets, ravioli, or linguine.

For the dough, Rob uses a light egg pasta recipe by Lidia Bastianich, a renowned Italian-Croatian chef. “It’s a very reliable recipe,” he explains. “It’s more of a northern Italian recipe, because it’s got 2 eggs in it. In the south, they don’t use eggs at all. It’s just flour, oil and water.” To cut and roll your pasta, we recommend using a pasta machine (like this one), but you can also roll and cut the dough by hand.

Ready to try it out for yourself? Don’t be intimidated, it’s easier than you think! Below, we’re sharing Lidia’s recipe for a light egg pasta dough, plus a guide on using a pasta machine.

Homemade Pasta

Part One: Making the Dough

recipe by Lidia Bastianich

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting (Rob also recommends using semolina flour)

• 2 large eggs

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

• 3 tablespoons water

To make the dough by hand, measure the flour and shake it through a sieve into a medium mixing bowl. Drop the eggs and/or egg yolks into a small bowl; beat briefly with a fork to break them up. Pour in the measured amounts of oil and water, and mix well with the eggs. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour. Toss and mix everything with a fork until all the flour is moistened and starts to clump together. Lightly flour your hands, then gather the clumps and begin kneading right in the bowl, folding the raggedy mass. Turn the dough out onto a very lightly floured surface and knead by hand for another 30 seconds or so, until it’s smooth, soft, and stretchy. Form the dough into a disk, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and let it rest at room temperature for at least ½ hour.

Part Two: Rolling and Cutting

(adapted from The Spruce Eats)

Set up your pasta machine, clamping it to a table. Turn the dial to the widest setting (usually 1). Next, divide the pasta dough into four pieces. Take one piece, and flatten it into a rectangle shape and feed it through the rollers. It's best to work with a helper, so one person can turn the crank and the other person can guide the dough into the machine with one hand and catch it with the other hand.

Begin rolling it thinner by turning the dial to the next narrowest setting (usually 2). Roll the pasta through the machine. Continue reducing the settings until the dough is rolled as thinly as you'd like (we usually go to 6). If the sheet of pasta gets too long, you can cut it in half with a knife.

Attach the noodle-cutting attachment to the pasta machine. Then, feed the thinly rolled sheet of pasta into the cutting attachment, catching the noodles by draping them over your hands as they're cranked out of the machine.

Repeat the entire process with the remaining pieces of dough.

Finished noodles can be kept on a special pasta drying rack or you can scatter them on a sheet pan that's been dusted with rice flour or cornmeal. Be sure to separate the noodles and toss them with rice flour so they don’t stick together.

To cook the pasta, add a small handful of salt to the boiling water and add your pasta. Fresh pasta only takes 2 to 3 minutes to cook in boiling, salted water. Drain the pasta well and serve it with the sauce of your choice.

A Guide to Seed Starting

By TNFP’s Growing Together Market Manager, Sally Rausch

Lal Subba, Growing Together farmer, mixing potting soil in the Nashville State Community College greenhouse.

It’s officially spring! And like many vegetable growers, the Growing Together farmers are in the flurry of activity that comes with warmer weather and the beginning of a new growing season. These days you’ll find the farmers at their garden in South Nashville getting their plans and seeds in order, tilling their beds, and planting cool weather crops. But you’ll also find these farmers starting seeds in the greenhouse on Nashville State’s campus, which they generously share with The Nashville Food Project.

Starting seeds indoors is a primary component of spring farming work (and is utilized throughout the growing season as well). This allows farmers to get a head start on the growing season, cut costs (seeds are much cheaper than purchasing seedlings), and maintain control over the health of their seedlings.

Since gardeners and farmers growing in many spaces can utilize and benefit from starting seeds indoors, we thought we’d share some of the tips and tricks the Growing Together farmers and staff of The Nashville Food Project use to grow the healthiest transplants!

Materials You Need

• Potting Mix: You can find pre-made potting mix at most local hardware or garden stores. When the Growing Together farmers purchase their own potting soil, they look for brands that are organic to eliminate any chemicals that might have been added. You can also make your own potting soil! There are many recipes out there, but you can find the recipe The Nashville Food Project uses at the end of this post.

• Seed Trays: Growing Together utilizes various types of trays depending on what they are planting, but it’s really up to you and your preferences. You can find seed trays at your local hardware store, or you can get creative and use recycled items like egg cartons, eggshells (be sure to carefully crack the eggs, so that most of the shell is retained like a small bowl), homemade newspaper boxes, K-cups from your morning coffee, and so much more. Click here for an article with even more ideas! Just make sure your medium has a drainage hole of some sort.

Varieties of plastic trays

DIY newspaper trays

• Seeds: Growing Together purchases their seeds from several seed companies, but many of the farmers also save their own seed from year to year! Here’s a great resource for learning more about the best tips for saving your own seeds.

Getting dirty!

1. Adding water: We often transfer the potting mix from our large bag into a smaller container, so that we can mix in water more easily. A five-gallon bucket works great when seeding smaller amounts. Begin adding water and mixing it into the soil. You want the soil wet enough that it clumps together when you squeeze a handful, but not so wet that it drips water when you squeeze it.  Adding water before you put the soil in the trays helps the soil to absorb water more evenly after you plant your seeds. Beginning with dry soil, you run the risk of flooding the tray and disrupting your seeds when you water them.

After adding some water, we begin filling the seed trays.

2. Filling trays: Once your soil is ready, you can begin to transfer it into your trays. A great tip is to fill the entire tray and then go back through and press down gently with two fingers. This will lightly compact the soil, so you can then go back through and top off the tray with potting. This ensures that the seeds you plant will have the best growing environment to successfully germinate and begin growing roots.

3. Now it’s time to plant! Some tips to follow when you’re planting:

• Depth matters! This is listed on the seed packet, or a good rule of thumb is to plant seeds 2-3 times as deep as the diameter of the seed.

• Plant extra seeds, because sometimes every seed doesn’t germinate. You can always thin out extras later.

• After you plant, place your seed trays in a warm location. Seeds germinate best at different temperatures, so it’s helpful to use the seed packet to find this information. For seeds that prefer warm soil to germinate (like tomatoes and peppers), we often put the trays on heating mats in our greenhouse. There are some DIY heating mat options out there, although this step isn’t absolutely necessary.

• Once seeds germinate, make sure they are in a very sunny location. Seedlings will get leggy quickly if they are reaching too hard to find the light they need.

• Water regularly to maintain soil moisture. You never want the soil to dry out, but balance is key. Add too much water and you run the risk of either your seeds or roots rotting.

• Label your seeds! No matter how much you think you’ll remember, it’s always better to label what you’ve planted and when.

Remember to label!

When to start seeds

When to plant your seeds indoors varies greatly. Location, first and last frost dates, and crop are all things that impact planting dates. We love this resource that creates a planting calendar for your specific location with information about each crop’s best planting dates.

Ready to get started? Make your own potting soil at home using TNFP’s recipe below! You can also purchase produce directly from Growing Together farmers — find out where here, including information on purchasing a Fall CSA share (hurry, before it sells out!).

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TNFP Homemade Potting Mix

Measure with a 5 gallon bucket:

• 3 buckets peat moss or coir

• ½ cup lime (to adjust pH)

Mix well.

Add:

• 2 buckets coarse sand (for drainage)

• 2 cups feather meal or blood meal (for nitrogen)

• 2 cups greensand (trace minerals)

Mix well.

Add:

• 1 bucket sifted soil (adds healthy bacteria from the garden)

• 2 buckets sifted compost (good organic matter)

Mix well.

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!

Rocky Glade Farm

By Growing Together Intern, Julia Bridgforth

Last month the Growing Together program hit the road on a research mission, AKA, a field trip! We arrived at the Rocky Glade Farm in Eagleville, Tennessee on a cold and rainy Tuesday morning. The operation is 50 acres and even in February, it was a bustling place! Rocky Glade Farm is an interesting facility because instead of focusing on the summer growing season, the Vaughn family does the majority of its business during the winter months. The diverse array of vegetables were flourishing during a time when the trees were bare.

Julie Vaughn was our tour guide. When Chandra, a Growing Together Farmer, asked her why her family focused on winter growing, she answered in two parts. Six years ago, Julie became pregnant with twins, and since she is such an asset to the farm, the Vaughns decided to take it easy that year and not participate in the summer markets. What they thought would be a one year hiatus turned into an idea. Since most farms grew in the summer, there was a bounty of competition at markets which made selling produce a bit more challenging. However, in the winter, restaurants and families still wanted fresh produce but found it much more difficult to find. So, the Vaughns decided to switch gears and make winter their cornerstone season. They spend summers growing storage crops like winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes and other vegetables in preparation for fall and winter CSA customers. About 70% of their customer base is restaurants in and around Nashville who are dedicated to serving farm fresh produce all year round. While they also do CSAs and online markets, Rocky Glade Farms has stopped going to traditional farmers markets, since the winter markets are far less popular.

Julie and her husband started the farm together and have kept it a family business ever since. Their only employees are themselves and their four hard-working children, ages 14, 11 and the 6 year-old twins. Since she homeschools her children, they are able to have traditional lessons in the mornings with plenty of time for farm work in the afternoons, which is also incredibly knowledge enriching.

On top of their impressive vegetable production, Rocky Glade Farm also has cows and chickens. The chickens, which are the oldest two sons’ business, provide farm fresh eggs and eat leftover produce as well as incredible lessons for the boys such as business management and animal husbandry. The cows are not a typical production. Rocky Glade Farm Beef is 100% grass-fed. Through rotational grazing, the cows have fresh grass all the time and are never fed or given supplemental antibiotics or growth hormones. Instead of selling packaged meat to customers, families purchase entire cows while they are alive. The Vaughs raise the cows until they are full grown, bring them to the processor and then the family picks up the assorted meat cuts to enjoy. The Rocky Glade Beef method is most useful to families who generally eat meals at home three or more times per week and who are able to use and enjoy different cuts of beef. Also, it is advisable to have an entire freezer or two dedicated to storing the meat, which takes up about 7 square ft of space.

The tour of Rocky Glade Farms was an incredible experience. We owe so much thanks to the Vaughn family for giving us such a wonderful tour of their facilities. As we walked through the hoop houses filled with the fresh smell of greens, a meditative feeling befell the entire group. The hoop houses were a warm sanctuary, an oasis of life that energized the Growing Together Farmers in a time of winter trainings and planning that can seem underwhelming in comparison to rooting around in the dirt in the sunshine-filled spring. Many of the farmers left even more inspired to pursue their dream of having their own lands where they can farm with their family.

Learn more about Rocky Glade Farm on their website.

Basic Chicken Stock

By Culinary Community Liason, Jennifer Justus

Ever wonder about the difference between stock and broth? As we’re still deep in soup season, we figured this would be a good time to take stock in our own stock.

The person on staff to consult? David Price, sous coordinator at The Nashville Food Project’s St. Luke’s Kitchen. He appreciates a good stock and helps explain how to do it here.

First, we talked about stock vs. broth:

Stock generally comes from simmering bones, pieces of meat or scraps, connective tissue and sometimes vegetables in water. Broth is made from vegetables and sometimes meat with no connective tissue or bones.

Well-made stock, in contrast to broth, will have body and should solidify into a gel. It results in a rich base that adds depth of flavor and silky texture to soups, greens, beans or for braising meats.

To begin the stock process, David breaks down a whole chicken (click here to watch a video on that process). Then he adds water and salt -- and sometimes some vegetables that he has on hand -- before bringing the liquid to simmer for about four hours.

“I come from an environment where good food was a luxury, and to be able to create that for yourself is really empowering,” he says. “And also the idea of waste-not-want-not has always been a key motivator for me in a lot of ways, especially with my work in the kitchen. What I really value at The Nashville Food Project is being able to convert things that would otherwise have been wasted. ”

David says he likes being able to make use of the less popular parts of the chicken – the necks, tails or organ meat, for example, and make several meals in a more economical and sustainable way.

“I guess it is philosophical in a way, because my philosophy is waste-not-want-not. My philosophy is to make that dollar work for me. And I’m able to do both those things by breaking down my own chickens and making my own stock.” 

 Basic Chicken Stock

Adapted loosely from The Food Lab.

Makes about 2 quarts

Ingredients

1 chicken, cut into pieces

4 quarts water

Salt and pepper to taste

Vegetables on hand – a few smashed garlic cloves, an onion, a couple carrots or celery, roughly chopped

A couple of bay leaves

Directions

1. Cut chicken into pieces. Reserve the chicken breasts for another use. Place remaining parts, bones and any organs into a medium-to-large stockpot.

2. Cover the chicken pieces with water, about four quarts.

“It’s better to have too much water than not enough,” David says. “You don’t want to be making soup and need four quarts and only have three.”

If your stock seems too weak at the end of the process, you can always reduce it down by simmering it longer. “All the stuff that’s in that water will stay.”

3. Add salt – starting conservatively (about a tablespoon to begin). It’s easy to add more salt but mostly impossible to take it away. Sometimes David might use soy sauce instead of salt if he knows that the end result of his stock will benefit from that flavor.

4. Bring water and chicken to a boil but immediate reduce heat to simmer for about four hours, occasionally skimming off any foam or scum that rises to the surface.

5. About an hour into the process, use a pair of tongs to remove larger pieces of meat such as drumsticks and thighs. Remove cooked meat from the bones, reserving for another use, and place bones back into stock while it finishes simmering.

6. Take stock off heat, taste and season with salt and pepper if needed. Strain stock with a fine-mesh strainer into a large container. Discard the solids.

7. Place the stock in the refrigerator where it will keep for five days (or freeze it to keep for three months). Use stock to make soups, braise meats or cook greens and beans or to begin sauces.

8. Enjoy!!

The Farmer & Chef Bond

By Growing Together Intern, Julia Bridgforth

Last week, the farmers of Growing Together gathered for their weekly winter training session. Although these sessions are usually filled with robust lessons about crop planning and best practices for marketing, this day was extra special.

Jessica Benefield, of the renowned restaurant Two Ten Jack, entered the classroom at Christ Lutheran Church off of Haywood Lane with a full smile and genuine excitement to meet the farmers that have grown so much for her restaurant over the years. Jessica is the chef and partner at three restaurants - Two Ten Jack (Nashville and Chattanooga locations), a Japanese-inspired neighborhood pub referred to as an izakaya, and the recently opened The Green Pheasant, which is a Japanese-inspired fine dining experience.

Jessica and her husband, Trey Burnett,  were some of the first chefs to seek out and maintain a consistent relationship with the New American Farmers of Growing Together, supporting the farmers since they began selling to restaurants. Specifically seeking the farmers out for their unique and specialty crops, Jessica not only continues to purchase pounds and pounds of komatsuna, mustard greens, and shishito peppers throughout the season, but she’s also eager to try products she’s unfamiliar with like pumpkin shoots and hibiscus leaves - or whatever else the farmers are growing!

After a welcoming presentation which included adorning her with sindoor, a red powder on her forehead to celebrate her arrival, and a decorative shawl, the energy in the room was filled with gratitude and shared community marked by smiles, cheers and loud claps. Jessica took a seat in the circle and thanked the farmers of the program for their produce. “It is the highest quality food that I receive all year,” she said. She continued with a small speech explaining her background and reasoning for her close interaction with Growing Together.

“Sometimes, it is easy to get brought down by the work mentality of what I do as a chef, because it is hard work. But whenever we receive your vegetables, it excites the entire kitchen. Experimenting with the new and interesting ingredients that you all grow gives us so much life. And it is so important to us to know who we are buying the produce from. Our lives as chefs benefit every time we get food from you, and the culinary experience we are able to present improves.”

Two Ten Jack’s focus on the neighborhood is not just a catchy tagline. They partnered with local artists for their interior decorating and have a desire to be as involved in the neighborhood as possible, creating a welcoming space for food and community. The goal is to connect the rural Japanese culture of the 1800s to a modern Southern city. Having farmers that grow exotic crops such as thai basil, shishito peppers, komatsuna and a variety of mustard greens within the Two Ten Jack sphere has created the perfect partnership that benefits the farmers with a steady customer base, and helps the restaurant achieve its goal of supporting the community.

The farmers were extremely excited about Jessica coming to speak and were bursting with questions about which foods she prefers and swapping recipes for roselle leaves (also known as hibiscus leaves) and squash blossoms. Jessica is optimistic about furthering her partnership with Growing Together, and is especially interested in the intensely hot peppers that Chandra, a farmer from Bhutan, said he would grow specifically for her. Jessica requested, “the hotter the pepper, the better. I like to make people cry with our special hot sauce.” That is a challenge the farmers were eager to accept.

Direct relationships with chefs in Nashville are incredibly important to the success of the Growing Together farmers. These relationships help create a secure market by consistently purchasing farmers’ product, leaving them less reliant on weekly market sales which are constantly in flux. These relationships also create pathways for these farmers to grow their sales and share their produce with the larger Nashville community. And as Jessica explained, these relationships also improve the chef’s experience. Exciting ingredients and a true bond with the hands that cultivate the ingredients increase the enjoyment chefs feel in the kitchen, which Jessica believes presents itself with love in the dishes she creates to feed the people of Nashville.

Learn more about where you can find Growing Together produce in Nashville here.

Mill Ridge Community Farm: A Place to Grow

By TNFP’s Impact Manager, Grace Biggs

TNFP’s Urban Agriculture Programs have come a long way from when we first broke ground on a small plot behind our kitchen in 2009. Now, almost 10 years later, programs include includes vibrant production, community and market gardens across our city…

In production gardens, hundreds of Nashvillians from all walks of life receive informal agricultural education through volunteer activities each year while supplying our kitchens with thousands of pounds of produce.  The community gardens provide people who face barriers to growing their own food with a space to reconnect or connect to the practice of growing food. And through an innovative market garden program, New Americans from agrarian backgrounds are growing produce to sell for personal income. Beyond the value of their earnings, these farmers are able to reconnect with farming to contribute financially to their families through meaningful work.

To continue and expand these thriving programs, we are excited to announce a new partnership with Metro Parks and Friends of Mill Ridge Park to develop a community farm at Metro Nashville's newest Regional Park, Mill Ridge Park in Antioch. Through an intensive, year-long public planning process for the park, the community was asked to share their vision for the space. The first theme that arose? Food! Specifically, growing and cooking food as a way to celebrate community, share special occasions, and learn about different cultures.

We’re delighted to be a part of bringing this vision to life! This season, TNFP is opening community garden programming at Mill Ridge with 15 families, providing access to land, tools, resources and monthly garden trainings and work days throughout the season. We’ll also be starting production gardens to supply food for TNFP’s meals program.

As you might imagine, starting a new farm is no small task! We are enjoying creating a vision for the community farm that will preserve a piece of rural Nashville while becoming a vibrant site of community agriculture for this growing area of Nashville.  We are digging into the work of clearing out old storage buildings, improving access, building site infrastructure like water and fencing. Moving our greenhouse from our original garden in Green Hills to the Mill Ridge site in December was a milestone in the process, and we plan to have it operational by mid-summer.  In the coming months we’ll be building community garden beds and transplanting perennial herbs and flowers. Amidst all this activity, we’re trying to save space to just enjoy the beautiful setting and dream about the spring.

Ready to get involved? We’ll be posting regular volunteer opportunities to support the continued work needed to get the farm off the ground and running. You can view the dates/times and sign up for volunteer openings here. We’ll also be hosting a grand opening of the farm on May 18th, including music, activities, snacks and a brief program - get the details and let us know you can join us here.

We’re excited to see you there!

Read the full Park Master Plan for Mill Ridge here.

In Case of Emergency

We certainly don’t need any reminders that it is a deeply difficult time for humanity and for our fragile earth. This time is fraught with tense borders, fractured politics, ideological bunkers, politicized echo chambers, egregious waste and pandemic loneliness. We’re feeling that acutely as we ring in the 33rd day of the longest partial government shutdown in US history, in a community where already thousands lack access to the basic things they need for life. We’re anxiously refreshing our news feeds for the latest updates, any word of a resolution… but in the meantime, what does the shutdown mean for our Nashville and Tennessee neighbors?

The partial government shutdown began December 22nd, 2018. This means all “nonessential” government workers have been asked not to report to work, and “essential” employees are continuing work without pay. There are several affected federal agencies with local offices such as the USDA, IRS, TSA and National Weather Service.

The effects of the shutdown will grow even more stark moving beyond February 1st, as the impact reaches nutrition programs, rental assistance and other safety net programs. As of now, federal nutrition programs are continuing to operate through February. Who is at risk if the shutdown continues into March? Nearly 1 in 6 of our Tennessee neighbors receive benefits from SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Among them, 40% are children, a third are seniors or adults with disabilities, and 144,000 are working households (that’s more than 3 times the same number 15 years ago). The federally funded National School Lunch Program also could be at risk if the shutdown continues. The initiative currently provides meals for more than 30 million at-need youth nationally.

Here at TNFP, we often emphasize that we are not in the business of emergency food. But what about when emergencies arise? As we believe we are all called to do, we are asking ourselves… “What do we have to offer?”

This past week, we have been working with TSA, which has one of the largest federal work forces locally also among the lowest paid, to pull together a plan of support for their roughly 200 furloughed employees here in Nashville with made-from-scratch meals to eat during their work shifts, as well as some nutritious meals to take home for their families. Beginning today, we have added an additional 600+ meals per week to our menu planning and next week we will begin deliveries to the airport at least once per day. Additional volunteer teams as well as local restaurants, hotels and bakeries have pitched in making this a true community effort. The Omni Hotel has offered boxed lunches as well as canned goods that we can incorporate into hot meals. The Thompson Hotel and Loews Hotel have offered food from their kitchens, and Dozen Bakery and Charpier’s Bakery will be providing fresh breads. We’ve added additional meal prep times throughout the week to support these extra meals.  You can sign up to volunteer for meal prep in our kitchens here.

It has been made clear by the folks at TSA locally that while relief support is deeply appreciated, the absolute best case scenario would be that the shut-down comes to an end as soon as possible. If you haven’t already--and if it is possible for you to do so--we encourage you to call, email, or tweet your members of Congress to let them know how the partial shutdown is affecting our local community.

Talking points from our friends at Tennessee Justice Center:

• As long as the government remains partially shutdown, Tennesseans are at increased risk of hunger, and many children, seniors, vets, and families are in limbo.

• Over 900,000 Tennesseans are at risk of hunger, including 467,000 children.

• One third of TN SNAP recipients are seniors or adults with disabilities.

• Food retailers will lose business. In TN, food retailers earn over $110 million in revenue from SNAP every month.
  

Call Senator Lamar Alexander – (615) 736-5129

Email Senator Alexander

Tweet Senator Alexander

Call Senator Marsha Blackburn – (202) 224-3344

Tweet Marsha Blackburn

For more details on what’s happening with SNAP, see TDHS’s FAQ or call Legal Aid Society of Middle TN at 1-800-238-1443.

Not Just About the Meal

It’s not just about the meal…. we want our food to be the backdrop, the engine, the song in the background of all the good work of our partners. A few weeks ago, we received the note below from our amazing meals partner Preston Taylor Ministries - her feedback on a recent meal shared by TNFP with their community.

“Just wanted to let you know what an amazing time we had last night.  With holiday music playing, red sauce aromas coming from the kitchen and parents streaming through the door in droves speaking 3 different languages, it was a magical night. As always, we were able to share your story, not just about the meal, but with all the fresh produce, fruit, labor and love that you lavish on us all year long. I’m always so grateful when I get to brag on how rarely I serve a Cheezit and I couldn’t do that without the consistent and intentional ways in which you serve our students and families. We had about 8 new families there that had never experienced our community supper and several came up to me to tell me what a delicious meal it was.  We had 96 RSVPs and as usual, close to 120 plates handed out. The meal was super simple to serve and with all the prep work done by you, it gave me time to kiss new babies that weren’t here last year and hug on grandparents I haven’t seen since our summer meal. Wednesdays are long because we have students at PTM starting at 1:30pm and very little time to turn the gym into an event space. But your hard work of getting a meal prepared gives us the freedom to love them well, so it’s with a grateful heart that we say thank you. ”

— Lisa Lentz, Preston Taylor Ministries

The Nashville Food Project is more committed than ever to making our Nashville community healthier and happier by supporting partners like Preston Taylor with good food! Is there a way food could support the work of your organization or community group? Click here to learn more about becoming a meal partner.

Gratefull : A City-Wide Thanksgiving Feast

By TNFP’s Meals Director, Christa Ross Bentley

Last Monday, The Nashville Food Project was excited to participate in a new event held in Nashville this year: Gratefull, a city-wide Thanksgiving potluck. Many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving as a time for reflection and gratitude, shared with loved ones over a meal. At TNFP, we have experienced firsthand that sharing a meal has a powerful effect on each of us.

Gratefull, through the support of sponsors, community volunteers, and one long table, is a shared meal intentionally designed as an agenda-free platform to unite neighbors within divided communities over something we all share, food. This idea sparked our interest as a beautiful example of the vibrant community food system that we work towards every day.

The history of Gratefull is worth including here! The original event was held in Chattanooga, and is shared below as they describe on their website.

“Originally called One Table, this event [Gratefull] was born from a desire to unite different groups of people in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 2014 the staff of Causeway, a local nonprofit, were walking to lunch discussing the invisible wall that stood on Martin Luther King Boulevard, dividing two of the city’s green spaces. One was known as a popular venue for outdoor concerts and played a key role in Chattanooga’s startup culture. The other was known as a place for people experiencing homelessness, or who lived in the nearby public housing unit. They decided to invite both sides, and the broader groups that they represented, to share a meal at one table in the middle of that dividing line.

The first year, 700 people showed up to what everyone thought would be a one-time event. Because the city embraced it so much, it has since become a beloved tradition. Each year, it grew in numbers and in heart. Last year, 1500 neighbors showed up and 100% of the people who took our survey said that they had a conversation with someone they had never met before.”

You can also read more here in an article written about the event by The Washington Post.

The Gratefull: Nashville event was held outside of the Edgefield Baptist Church on Russell St. in East Nashville. Together, a group of incredible volunteers gathered to set up the event, serve the food, and clean up. While community members ate, they were serenaded by Terrell Hunt, The Cumberland Bend, and the Warner Elementary School Choir.

Of course, the highlight was the many tables groaning under mountains of delicious food. Just a few of the local businesses and restaurants who donated food included Margot’s, Marche, Martin’s BBQ, Taco Mamacita, EastLeigh Desserts, and Butcher and Bee. Many neighbors and friends also brought their favorite Thanksgiving dishes to share.

I was lucky enough to get to enjoy this meal with a friend. We filled our plates and went to sit down, deeply engrossed in a conversation about our tips and tricks for a perfect Thanksgiving gravy.  Before we knew it, others began to chime in, all sharing their own stories and tips for a great holiday gravy. This is the power of food, that with a shared meal inherently comes community and new friends. To me, making friends this way comes easily -  when we are comfortable and well-nourished, enjoying a warm bowl of soup on a cold day or a slice of pie.

"Hey Thanks"

We were so grateful to read this INSPIRED article "Hey Thanks, Nashville Food Project" in this week's Nashville Scene. Each Scene editor was asked to write a thank you letter to a person, place or organization in Nashville. The Scene's culture editor, Erica Ciccarone, was a community gardener with TNFP at Wedgewood Urban Gardens this summer. The thank-you letter written to us (below) is the the first of eight "letters" listed in piece. Check out the original feature here.

“hey thanks, nashville food project”

By Erica Ciccarone

My introduction to your organization came around this time last year, when I volunteered in your Wedgewood Urban Garden — more out of curiosity than a desire to be of service. Immediately, I was smitten. Over the course of the past year, I’ve turned compost with a big pitchfork, clipped buttery leaves of lettuce, collected eggs from your chicken coop and sunk my bare hands into soil.

You gave me a garden plot through the community gardening program, and I learned to tend my very own 40-square-foot patch of soil, which in turn tended to me with a bounty of tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, squash and basil. The garden has been a haven, without politics or Twitter or deadlines — just sun and rain, earth and bugs. Between volunteering and the community garden, I broke bread with fellow gardeners from Bhutan and Burma, and I pulled weeds and sprinkled seeds with musicians, teachers, corporate executives and missionaries.  You’ve provided me with an opportunity to internalize your values: that all Nashvillians deserve access to nourishing, delicious food; that we should welcome immigrants and refugees and create systems that benefit us all; and that growing food together can teach us how to be better stewards of the land.

That’s just how you’ve affected one person. I’ll throw down some stats: In 2017 alone, 3,758 Nashvillians volunteered in your gardens and kitchens and drove your trucks to partner sites. Sixty-nine families grew food with your knowledgeable, nurturing garden managers. Your gardens produced 15,780 pounds of organic compost, diverting 120,648 pounds (!) of food waste from landfills. Every week, you provide 4,000 meals and snacks, prepared in your two kitchens, to hungry Nashvillians. Your food trucks deliver these to after-school programs, emergency shelters and ESL classes. 

I first came to your Wedgewood Urban Garden as a volunteer because of a memory. When I was a child, my father and I converted our sandbox into a small raised garden bed. Our crops were limited to Italian-American necessities — peppers, tomatoes and basil — but something else grew with them: a closeness we achieved without effort. Planting seeds together nurtured our relationship for years down the road. I’ve lived far from home for almost 20 years, and neither of us is very good at picking up the phone. But the closeness persists. My father and I grew together. We are growing together. 

That’s what is so crucial about you, The Nashville Food Project. You provide an opportunity for people all over the city to build relationships through the most ordinary, ancient of activities: growing, cooking and eating. Thank you for reminding me of the value of community that’s formed through learning — the excitement of sharing a lesson with peers, of sampling Bhutanese cuisine, of discovering cucumber beetle eggs with a friend and squishing them with our fingers. Our city is better because you exist.

4 Favorite Cookbooks

If you’ve ever volunteered in our kitchens, you know there’s a lot of creativity involved in planning meals based on what seasonal produce is available from our production gardens, along with what food we’ve received as donations. Cookbooks are a great resource for inspiration and guidance on how to use the ingredients you have on hand! Our Meals Director, Christa Ross Bentley, compiled this list of her top 4 cookbook recommendations…

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The Art of Simple Food

by Alice Waters

An all time favorite and my first glance for any new recipe I'm hoping to try! Alice Waters has perfected the art of simple meals with good ingredients. Not only is this a great cookbook, but also a great read in general if you're interested in learning more about the theory of cooking. The way she approaches cooking in this book has taught me a lot about how to prepare a great, simple meal.

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Wild Fermentation

by Sandor Katz

This book will forever be one of my favorites, not least because my husband and I's first date was to a Sandor Katz class at the Nashville Public Library. These are all simple recipes you can try at home to wet your appetite for making and consuming fermented foods. Katz makes it simple and inspiring. 

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Nourishing Traditions

by Sally Fallon

This book covers it all! Fallon takes many recipes we make regularly and improves upon them with tips for adding nourishing ingredients for healthier, approachable meals. The best feedback I've ever received from a potluck item was a recipe from this book - her "All Raw Cheesecake". It's delicious!

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Smitten Kitchen Everyday

by Deb Perelman

Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite blogs and her cookbook is just a wonderful! I've never made a bad recipe from her and I love reading through this book, her sense of humor makes it fun! A favorite recipe is her Cucumber Yogurt Gazpacho, which we recently made as the appetizer for our Patron's Party! If you're making this recipe don't skimp on the toppings, they add a wonderful element to this cold soup.

What are your go-to cookbooks? Let us know in the comments!