Finding Hope in the Garden

by Julia Reynolds Thompson, Director of Garden Operations

On a staff conference call this week, my garden coworker Sally reminded us that, through unpredictable weather and pests, gardening and growing food trains us to live with many unknowns. I thought to myself, “I have been growing food for a long time; why am I so bad at living with many unknowns?” We are all living in a time of uncertainty… about our jobs, our health, our leadership, our society. So, how can we lean in, live well, take care of ourselves, support our neighbors in the midst of this reality?

Working in gardens is hopeful work for me. I can only work with what’s available to me today.  There is no way to know what the season will be like. Certainly some things will flourish and some will struggle. So, we plant the seeds. We worry over them and rejoice when they germinate. Or when they don’t germinate (I have been struggling with carrots for years), we sow again. We monitor the water they are getting. We crawl down the rows and pull up the weeds. We rejoice in our relationship to the earth, to our commitment to this plot of ground and to the delicate but resilient plants growing in it.

None of us knows what life will look like in the coming weeks and months. We can’t know yet what will return to normal, what will have been altered, who will flourish, who will struggle. So, we sow the seeds. We check on our neighbors, we call our coworkers, we video chat with our families. We worry about folks losing their jobs or not having enough to eat. We rejoice in our relationship to the people we love, in our commitment to our city and the delicate but resilient people growing within it.  

I have seen my coworkers doing this work as I’m sure you have seen those around you cultivating community despite physical distance, rejoicing in the work before them, caring deeply about both neighbor and stranger. All of this cultivates hope in me. May it be so for you as well.

The Nashville Food Project Care Package for Uncertain Times (Part 1)

Cultivating community lies at the heart of our mission at The Nashville Food Project, but at this time of social distancing, we’re learning how community means much more than physical proximity. 

We’re seeing inspiration for community everywhere — from living room concerts and “cloud clubbing” (for the ravers among us) to movie discussion groups and online home cooking forums. In David Byrne’s magazine “Reason to be Cheerful,” Nick Green, creator of the Social Distancing Festival, says this:. 

“As long as we are sharing a space in which we can be present, provoke, inspire, promote kindness and compassion, and share ideas, then we are all together in one space, even if it’s in different places at different times.” 

Along those lines, we recently found encouragement from On Being’s Care Package for Uncertain Times, a collection of interviews and poetry on topics ranging from grief to hope. It inspired us to make our own version for our friends and for each other. We collected our inspirations, recommendations, motivations—all salve for the loneliness and fears this virus and social distancing can produce. These recommendations aren’t necessarily heavy or directly related to the pandemic or our work. Rather it's a collection intended to nourish and accompany our community as we all stay home together. 

We’ll be sharing our care package in small digestible bites—five staffer reflections at a time. Please find Part 1 below with Part 2 coming soon!

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Meg Schmalandt, Sous Coordinator - California Kitchen  

Book: Tattoos on the Heart by Fr. Greg Boyle. It’s kind of related to our work but also very related to being a human, trauma, healing, and spirituality. 

Podcast: Dolly Parton's America. I'm. Obsessed. With. Her

Movie: JoJo Rabbit. It'll make you laugh and make you cry. A lot about what it means to grow up and joy as a state of being. 

Article: TIME magazine’s 100 Women of the Year 

TV: Honestly, Cheer on Netflix was so good. 

Ways I'm Coping with COVID-19: Dance parties with my roommates, funny movies, going on walks, working out, and cooking soups + stews. Dreaming about the spring. Planning my wedding flowers :)

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Sally Rausch, Growing Together Market Manager

Podcast: This American Life's episode called The Show of Delights made me chuckle out loud so many times, exactly what I've needed the past few weeks-to be reminded that we can find delight in the simplest things and also that someone else sharing their delight can in and of itself be delightful! 

Book: Part of that podcast episode highlights poet Ross Gay and his recent book of "essayettes" about finding delight.  It's called The Book of Delights: Essays. I've been trying to read one or two before bed instead of scrolling. He is so real and talks about real issues—racism, being black in America, grief—not escapist but about finding delight in our lives as they are. I'm finding it nourishing in the most grounded way.

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Bianca Morton, Chef Director

Music: 90’s R&B. It takes me back to a simpler time—high school years when the biggest problem was schoolwork, graduation and fitting in. On Tuesday I let loose some steam and danced to Whitney Houston's Greatest Hits. I danced, sang and cooked. And just for a moment didn't have a care in the world. Just joy!

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Tallahassee May, Growing Together Education Manager

Books: I am currently re-reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. Both seem so fitting and are perfect escape-reads in the age of quarantine.

Audio Book: Anne Patchett's The Dutch House. First, you are supporting a local author and small business heroine. And second, you’re supporting a coronavirus survivor, Tom Hanks, who reads it on audio and does an amazing job.

Podcast: Poetry Unbound, an offshoot of On Being with short poetry readings by Padraig O' Tuama.

Music: Nothing beats Beyonce's Homecoming, Live at Coachella! Amazing live music, festival vibe (for when you need to remember what it was like to share intimate space with thousands of people) complete with the best HBCU Marching Band!  And when you are feeling quiet and introspective (and alone), Keith Jarrett's solo piano concert masterpiece The Kohl Concert. 

Movie: The new movie adaption of Emma was recently released and since its time in theaters was cut short, it is now available for streaming! It’s a fun, gorgeous adaptation. The director, Autumn DeWilde, and I were hippy kids together on The Farm commune in L.A. in the early 70s, and I have loved watching her career blossom and evolve over the years.

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Teri Sloan, Development Director

Podcast: I'm a big fan of the Armchair Expert Podcast with actor Dax Shepard and his friend Monica Padman. They do at least two episodes each week having long, deep-dive conversations with different folks from the entertainment industry as well as "experts" like writers, scientists, psychologists, etc. No matter who is being interviewed it always turns out some interesting conversations that make you laugh and make you think about something a little differently. 

Article: Not that there's anyone in our city who hasn't read it yet, but Margaret Renkl's "What it Means to be #NashvilleStrong" article moved me to tears recently.

TV: I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu. It's Reese Witherspoon's and Kerry Washington's television adaptation of Celeste Ng's popular book of the same name. The first three episodes dropped last week, and I'm already hooked. I've also been taking the time at home to start binging some of the TV shows everyone else has been talking about over the years that I never watched: Schitt's Creek, The Wire, etc.

Other ways of coping through COVID-19: I've been cooking, and I've got a batch of homemade limoncello steeping in the cabinet. My next big idea is teaching myself the longtime TNFP pastime of knitting. Anyone got any good YouTube videos to check out?

When the Helpers Need our Help

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 15 gallons of chicken stock

• 20 gallons of marinara 

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

• Scones, frozen on sheet pans with baking instructions 

• A 12-gallon Lexan pan of pasta salad

• 2 full Lexan pans of herbed croutons 

• 450 sack lunches with wrapped home-baked cookies 

• Several pans of banana bread, portioned and labeled

• Replenished mise en place and sliced deli turkey 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sharing Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With love and gratitude for every expression of community,

WAYS YOU CAN HELP:

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

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

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

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

March 2020 Emergency Response

Dear Nashville, 

What a hard, sad, mixed-up time for our city. My heart breaks for so many in our community whose homes, neighborhoods, and favorite local places were devastated in the tornadoes this week. And yet... I swell with pride when I witness the ways neighbors are showing up for one another. Life often delivers both beauty and chaos together. I do not understand why life unfolds this way, but stand in awe of the hope and love and connections that emerge when unexpected loss rips through our community.

As in other times when our city has found itself in the midst of an emergency (like the 2010 flood and the 2019 partial federal government shutdown), The Nashville Food Project is poised to respond. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today and yesterday sharing thousands of made-from-scratch meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North Nashville, East Nashville, and Donelson. We are listening to our partners and local emergency management services to coordinate and activate a sustained response effort that we expect to stretch long into the coming days and weeks. We will be keeping our social media and website up to date, so please check there for updates and specific ways to support and plug in. Scroll down for more.

As many of you know, a helpful, coordinated relief effort takes a bunch of layers of communication with many partners and key stakeholders, so thank you in advance for your patience and all your tremendous support. 

With love,

If you know of a shelter or community hub in need of food support, let us know. We don’t have capacity to accommodate all requests, but we’re working with partners to fulfill as many as possible. This week we have routes serving the following locations:

Lunch:

New Covenant Christian Church, 3/16, 3/17

FiftyForward, 3/17

Lunch, Saturday/Sunday:

Cheatham Place 

Andrew Jackson Courts

Cumberland View Apts.

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Now more than ever, financial contributions are needed to meet the needs of our city. We can put those to important use by helping us buy food and supplies, fuel our vehicles and run our kitchens to keep cooking high-quality meals. A donation of $5 buys food and supplies for five meals.

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As we receive updates from our partners and learn more about how our partners, our volunteers and our team can get involved we will share that information here.

Additional resources we’re hearing about:

• Metro Nashville Storm Response Information

• More resources collected by the Nashville Scene.

• To volunteer your time, sign up with Hands on Nashville.

• To donate everything EXCEPT clothing, stop by the Community Resource Center, located at 218 Omohundro Pl, Nashville, TN 37210.

• Eater Nashville is collecting ways the hospitality industry is pulling together.

Partner sites and affected areas:

Update: 3/3/2020, 9 p.m:

In addition to restoring power at our headquarters, sharing food at emergency sites and working on a coordinated relief plan for the week, we were also committed to our largest food recovery project of the year tonight. We collected, sorted and packed 28,000 pounds of meat from the Meat Conference at Gaylord Opryland. It will help fuel our meals program going forward. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make this happen on an already very busy day. More updates on our plan moving forward tomorrow.

Update: 3/3/2020, 4 p.m.:

Thanks to the kindness of our friends at R.C. Mathews and Dodd Electric, we now have a generator running our kitchen at limited power. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today sharing cold meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North and East Nashville. Now that partial power has been restored, we are working on a full relief effort plan for the remainder of the week and weekend. This will include volunteer opportunities in our kitchens to support emergency meal service in our community. Updates will be posted here as available.

Previously Posted:

Thank you to the many folks in our community who have reached out to support recovery efforts after last night’s devastating storms. Currently at The Nashville Food Project, our power is out, and we are working quickly to restore it and reallocate any cold meals we currently have prepared. Many of our partners are closed today so we are actively working to reallocate all planned meals to emergency shelters and community centers in the areas most affected. Sites that should receive support in the form of prepared meals today include:

North Nashville:

• Lee Chapel AME Church (lunch meal)

East Nashville:

• Margaret Maddox YMCA

• East End UMC (lunch meal)

We are in close communication with our partners and with the Metro Emergency Services to determine how we can continue to support efforts this week. We do hope to increase our volume, and will keep this site updated on how you can pitch in. Besides getting meals out to shelters today, our highest priority is restoring power to ensure no food on hand is lost.

Starting a Community Garden

by Lauren Bailey, Director of Garden Programs

Over the years, we’ve witnessed the benefits of community gardens firsthand. Participants tell us they experience improved physical and mental health as well as a stronger sense of belonging. One of nearly 70 community garden participants in our programs last year told us this: “To know that I have the power to grow my own food if I want to is definitely life-changing.” 

But in addition to participants in our own programs, we also hear from folks who want to start community gardens of their own. If you’re interested in assembling a group and inspiring change, as we are, then here are a few good places to start:  

1) Get started by measuring interest and bringing people together. If you’re working to organize a new community garden, gathering folks together to understand common goals and motivations could be a great place to start. Much like gardening, there are different approaches and strategies that folks use. What has been helpful for our planning and implementation is to have an understanding of why we believe community gardens are important. After years of stewarding a few different community gardens, we’ve seen themes emerge as our “why”. Since the work involves stewardship of land and organizing people, we’ve found that in addition to knowing why you want to garden, having realistic expectations of what it takes to maintain the community garden is key to success. 

2) Identifying land. Maybe you have your eye on a slice of land behind your church or school, or maybe you want to grow on government or private property? You’ll first want to assess the land and make sure it is suitable for growing (more about that later). Then you’ll want to learn the types of gardening allowed on the land by zoning codes. You can find more information about zoning in this guide: A Guide for Growing Food in Nashville- Nashvitality. This will determine whether (and what type of) permit is needed. If you don’t own the land, you’ll also want to draw up an agreement with the land owner that specifies what you’re allowed to do and for what duration. Examples of agreements can be found on this website: American Community Garden Association. 

Having trouble identifying land for your garden? In Nashville, the Ag Extension is working closely with several other Metro Departments to help residents of Davidson County utilize some of the flood buy-back properties to start up community gardens, but know that gardening on these properties presents some challenges. Aside from the risk of flooding, there are restrictions on building structures on these properties. Contact the Ag Extension to learn more about what properties may be available. 

3) Invest time up front in designing and planning your garden. While gardening can be as simple as starting a seed in the ground, the task can become more nuanced when you are sharing space, resources or have a collaborative effort to grow food. 

Brene’ Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” Sometimes the planning process can be messy and ever-evolving. And the commitment to getting “clear” requires transparency and trust.

Here are some questions we encourage people to consider while planning a community garden:

• Who will be involved? Who will lead?

  • Defining who is involved in this garden is key! 

  • Who will be taking care of the garden? Do you have a committed individual or group of individuals who will take on the primary responsibility of gardening?

• What tasks will be shared? Who will be responsible?

  • We recommend having a detailed list of responsibilities: watering, harvesting, and weeding being the main tasks involved. 

• How do you want to involve people in the work? What resources, events or education do you want to connect people to?

  • Do you want to have allotment style plots where folks grow on their own space? Or more of a communal effort where people contribute to one garden?

• Where is the produce going?

  • We’d encourage you to create a plan for the produce. In our gardens, community gardeners take home the vegetables from their plots. At our McGruder Community Garden, we have a free stand where folks can share their excess produce.

• How do you stay motivated?

  • We see a lot of excitement at the beginning of the season and then weeds and heat and pests happen. What is your plan to keep people excited? How do you stay motivated?

• Determine how the garden will be funded. Will you apply for grants? Will it be underwritten by a company or individual? Will gardeners cover costs collectively, and if so, how will payment be collected? 

4) Know your soil and land. Before even breaking ground, starting with an understanding of your soil and the health of it is important. 

• What is your land like? And who owns the land? Answering this ranges from the physical space that you have available to understanding the expectations for how the space needs to be kept. 

  • Have you tested the soil? Make a plan for how to keep your soil healthy.

  • Do you want to do raised bed gardens or grow in the ground?  

  • Do you have a water source available? 

  • How much space do you want to start with?

5) Get Started! Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. Start small, rather than not starting at all. Maybe your vision or plan isn’t fully formed. Maybe you need more time to build raised beds or prepare the soil. If that’s the case, start with what you have where you have it. And keep up the momentum!

Here are some other resources and organizations that we’d recommend you check out: 

• American Community Garden Association is an invaluable resource! 

• The Denver Urban Gardens Club provides a Best Practices Handbook which can be downloaded here.

• Nashville Foodscapes is an option if you are able to pay for the installation of beds designed to support edible landscaping and their team is seasoned at designing, installing, and maintaining edible plots. 

• For technical gardening education, you may be able to reach out to the Master Gardeners of Davidson County who maintain 5 demonstration gardens which may be a valuable learning tool!

• A Guide for Growing Food in Nashville- Nashvitality

• A variety of seeds can be found through Nashville Public Library’s Seed Exchange and is accessible to any person with a library card!

• Keep your eye out for local Seed and Plant Swaps. Richland Park Library is hosting a seed and plant swap on Saturday, April 18th, 10:30-11:30 am. 

• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange- gardening advice

• The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast by Ira Wallace

One of the best ways to learn about community gardens is to get your hands dirty. Sign up to volunteer in our gardens and learn first hand about growing in the community!  

"Dirty Pages" Community Potluck

“I tell my daughters that when I go, they’ll know the good recipes by the dirty pages. —Kim McKinney”

That’s the quote that launched Dirty Pages, a recipe storytelling project celebrating our well-loved recipes with their splatters and stains. We know they make good dishes, because they’ve been handed down to family and friends. But they also act as maps, their scribbles in the margins helping connect us and tell our stories. 

The Dirty Pages project has produced three exhibits. The first exhibit (featured in The New York Times) lives in the permanent collection at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans. The second exhibit, Dirty Pages: 10 Roads to Nashville, was featured at Casa Azafran. Now the third and most recent exhibit hangs at The Nashville Food Project. 

To celebrate it, we’re hosting a “Dirty Pages” Community Potluck this Sunday, Feb. 16 at 1 p.m. If you’d like to join us, please bring a dish to share that serves about 8-10 people. We’ll have lunch and conversation and a bit of show-and-tell time for those who would like to talk about their recipe. 

The event isn’t ticketed, and it’s open to all. Space, though, is limited, so please RSVP here. We hope to see you Sunday!  

Also, please stay tuned for an exciting Dirty Pages-themed Simmer dinner next month! 

In the meantime, TNFP staff shared their Dirty Pages in a team building meeting recently. Here are a few excerpts:

Julia Reynolds Thompson, Director of Garden Operation 

Recipe: The Reynolds Family Eggnog

I chose the Reynolds Eggnog, which is a recipe my family makes every year. My great-grandfather, Edward Reynolds, had grown up in Pembroke, Kentucky, which is just on the other side of the state line. He grew up on a tobacco farm, but he and his brother hated tobacco farming, so they decided to leave Kentucky and go to Dallas. They lived in the YMCA there while they looked for work. They ended up in the clothing business and eventually they owned their own men’s clothing store, which was also passed through the family. I remember growing up playing inside the racks of clothes. 

I like this recipe because I feel like it is a thread that connects all the way back to my great-grandfather and his journey from Kentucky to Texas. My family, growing up, felt very Texan. Everyone is from Texas and has been there a long time. But now that I live in Tennessee I like having that trace of story all the way back. 

It’s a really simple recipe. It has four ingredients: a dozen eggs, 12 tablespoons of sugar, a pint of bourbon and a quart of whipping cream. We still make it every Christmas. 

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Bianca Morton, Chef Director 

Recipes: My Grandfather’s Yeast Rolls 

My grandfather baked something every meal—yeast rolls, fresh-baked breads, cakes, fried pies. I did not inherit that skill. 

Every holiday he always brought fresh-baked, melt-in-your-mouth yeast rolls. He brought some for dinner and packaged some in gallon-sized Ziplock bags for each family to take home. We fought over them. 

My first Christmas after graduating culinary school, I cooked a big, fancy dinner, my first one trying to impress everybody. Watching him eat, he was so happy and excited, and you could tell he was proud. Here’s the tear-jerker: He had a massive stroke that night. That was the last time I saw him smile. I spent the next two weeks caring for him in the hospital. He couldn’t communicate, but he looked at me and squeezed my hand, and it made me feel invincible, all his love. I’ve been chasing that, and every holiday I’ve been trying to make these rolls. This last Christmas, 18 years since he passed away, my family was like, “I think you got it.” 

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Tallu Schuyler Quinn, CEO

Recipe: Mama’s Marinara Sauce from Dom DeLuise’s “Eat This...It’ll Make You Feel Better” cookbook 

My dad bought me this cookbook by Dom DeLuise. When I was young, maybe 8 or 9, I thought Dom was a chef, but I understand now he was just an actor and maybe not even a good one. 

My parents wouldn’t let my brother and me buy a lot of stuff when we were kids, but they would pretty much always say yes if it was a book. 

I remember making this marinara sauce with my dad and what a mess we made. When I was growing up, I loved food shows like The Frugal Gourmet, Julia Child and any other food show on the television. I vividly remember an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when he visited a Pittsburgh bakery and learned how to make sourdough pretzels. Later on in life, I loved Food Network shows like Molto Mario, Nigella Lawson and Barefoot Contessa. I am now a mother to children who love watching Mind of a Chef, America’s Test Kitchen, and The Great British Baking Show. 

My 7-year-old daughter is strong-willed, capable in the kitchen, and wildly creative. She makes grocery lists every week, begs me to “mise en place,” wants an internship at The Nashville Food Project’s kitchen, and recently made flyers for a pop-up bake shop at our house called “Lulah’s Larder.” In other words, every page is a dirty page in Lulah’s world. The scope of her big ideas overwhelms me, and now I know that’s how my own mom must have felt as she figured out how to give me the space I needed to be me. Maybe still does. I obviously know that Lulah is not me, and she is not mine, but the congruence and similarity of the kitchen obsessions settle over me, and that where I go when I reflect on this dirty page from my past—it connects me to the mystery of my own life; I’m so grateful for that. 

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Grace Biggs, Director of Food Access

Recipe: Chicken Noodle Soup

This is my mom’s chicken noodle soup and her mom’s, and it’s one of my favorite early memories. The noodles are the main event of this recipe. My mom made the dough from scratch, rolled it out, and cut the noodles dumpling-style. They would be laid out taking up the whole kitchen table, which was most of our kitchen, for hours. My sister and I would sneak dough off the table, and she told me she added the note later to “double the recipe” because of “sneaky fingers.” My grandmother would make it when we were sick and bring it over in Mason jars. I’ve adapted my own version of the original recipe over the years by adding veggies and sometimes even curry, but anytime I make it I feel connected with them.

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Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

Recipe: Wassail 

Wassail is something that my family drank every holiday season, and I always remember that we had enough of it to share with other people—that it could be a gift at a time that could be stressful. It was fun for our family to share. We would fill up big Mason jars and give it to teachers and neighbors. And I have funny memories of lugging big, hot sloshing posts of wassail to family gatherings—inching down the road and hoping that it’s not spilling out in the back. 

It’s a twist on apple cider, and it’s something a lot of my friends know as our family holiday beverage. My siblings and I still make it in our own spaces.

Food as a Lens

By Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

On a recent Thursday, more than 45 people filed into The Nashville Food Project’s community dining room. Guests entered shaking umbrellas and shedding coats to join us for a hot cup of scratch-made sweet potato chili, a panel, and community conversation on the complexities of food injustice and how hunger intersects with other systemic inequities.

Panelists (featured below) sat perched on tall, colorful stools as moderator and the Nashville Food Project’s CEO, Tallu Schuyler Quinn, set intentions for the evening.

The conversation, like the reality of food inequity, was messy. Mentions of racial tensions, top-down versus bottom-up change, the stigma that inhibits folks from accessing lifesaving safety-nets, and institutions that have long held up inequity speckled across panelist contributions. Through our Q and A time, it was evident that guests were also struggling with how to reconcile the picture of what a just food system could look like with the reality of the amount of brokenness we see splintering across so many people’s access to elements that should be basic human rights. It’s an uncomfortable and necessary conversation. It’s a discussion that requires both fierce hope and space to feel the deep brokenness of our existing system.

Here are some snapshots of the many contributions from each of the folks who leveraged their time to discuss how food can be a lens for other pressing justice issues.

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“ We have a federal government actively working to dismantle SNAP… One of the changes that recently came out was a proposal on time limits. Individuals between the age of 18-49 are only allowed to be on SNAP for three months unless you meet certain requirements or are working…  If you are struggling to find a job, why is taking food away going to help you find a job? There is no research that exists that shows that that is the case. Another one that happened this past Friday, is a proposal that is attacking the school system and the nutrition standard. So, when you have a government that is going through not normal channels to dismantle these programs, that’s going to impact all of our communities.”

— Signe Anderson, Nutrition Director at Tennessee Justice Center

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“We need shared ownership and shared equity… We need grocery stores that are cooperatives… For-profit entities where people actually get to own and buy from the same place… We need to figure out neighborhood connectivity. I’m thinking of neighborhood ownership, farmlands, grocery stores. I’m thinking large scale so that way we could actually sustain a city.”

— Brittany Campagna of Inner City Invests

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“People’s access to housing affects where people live. Where people live affects the schools their children go to and where they can get food… these issues are so interconnected. In Nashville for instance, our housing costs have almost doubled in the last 10 years, from around $700 or 750 to around $1400... that’s double. When our housing costs go up people have less money spent on healthy food and have to start cutting corners. In the United States, we have dug a very deep hole… We have divested from the lives of poor, indigenous, black, and brown folks. That hole has been dug by slavery, redlining, not having a living wage, not supporting the rights of workers who need to organize… we have the gutting of the federal funding of housing... same thing with cutting food stamps. This hole is man-made, women-made, made by the people in power, and this hole is deep.”

— Reverend Lindsey Krinks, Founder and Interim Co-Director at Open Table Nashville

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“ Many [older people] have never been at a place in their lives [until now] where they need help accessing food. When you become older, you can be invisible and you can look like you are okay… But I’ve seen people who were emaciated from malnutrition. I see hunger manifested through isolation. It is hard for [aging adults] emotionally to be at a place in their lives where they have to seek food [assistance].”

— Sharie Loik, Director of Fifty Forward Fresh/Meals on Wheels

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“When we talk about equality, we are talking about sameness. When we talk about equity, that is when we move into the realm of justice and fairness. That is where we need to be in a systematic approach in everything that we do in our country and in our city. Nashville operates in a silo tendency. We look at everything in its own specialized department. We want to talk about housing today, so let’s open the housing drawer. We want to open about transportation, let’s open the transportation door and close this [housing] drawer. All of this is a systematic, circular framework that we need to put equity at the top. ”

— Ashford Hughes, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consultant with Blueprint Solutions Group LLC.

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Tallu closed by paraphrasing a past professor who noted that we have to absorb enough of the world’s brokenness not to paralyze but to galvanize us, moving us to action.

Signe noted “People often feel intimidated by being advocates but it can be as simple as saying ‘This is what I believe and this is what I see and I think others should see this.’ Find stories, share stories, learn more…”

Inspired to act? Here are a few ideas!

Click here to find council person by your home address.

To receive nutrition policy updates, click here to follow Tennessee Justice Center and sign up for email updates.

To learn more about OTN’s work around homelessness, and to join them in advocacy and action, visit their website.

To volunteer for Fifty Forwards Meals on Wheels Program, contact: sloik@fiftyforward.org

To learn about My Brother’s Keepers Network visit their Facebook. 

Missed the conversation? Click here to check out our recording of Food as a Lens.

Beloved Community

Kicking off the day with reflections on Dr. King’s life and message at the Food Project’s headquarters.

Imagine a global community of caring where poverty, hunger and injustice are no more. Hard to picture, right? On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, we celebrate the life of Dr. King and reflect on his dream for a “beloved community” - the ultimate goal of nonviolent activism for peace and justice.

While this vision of a beloved community may seem far from reality, at the Food Project we truly believe that…

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

— Dr. King

As a ‘move forward’ on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we’re grateful to have the support of a grant by the Corporation for National and Community Service! This year, several chapters of The Arc and partner organizations are working together to promote inclusive volunteering, bringing together people with and without disabilities to serve their communities.

For this Day of Service, we partnered with volunteers from the alumni associations of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, and Park Center’s Emerging Adults Services to provide vital food support in the Nashville community.

Volunteers gathered together in the morning for a kick-off meeting, spending time reflecting on the life and message of Dr. King. The Nashville Food Project’s CEO, Tallu Quinn, opened the morning by sharing some thoughts on Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community.

Simba The Poet

We were also honored to welcome Simba Alik Woodard -- also known as Simba The Poet -- a Black, Queer, Trans activist and spoken word artist from Nashville. He has been leading writing workshops and working with youth organizations around the city to contribute to the movement of healing young people through the arts. Simba shared a poem from his recently released book, The Gun That Killed Devin.

At the Food Project, we know that good food alone is not a solution to hunger, poor health, poverty and isolation. That’s why we make sure our nutritious meals and snacks are supporting the vibrant, creative work of anti-poverty and community-building organizations in our city!

MLK day volunteers working at our two commercial kitchens prepped food for 1,299 meals, which TNFP staff will deliver to 22 partner nonprofit program sites across Nashville. Volunteers also assisted with preparing seeds for our production and community gardens, where TNFP grows food for our kitchens and facilitates access to land and garden training for Nashvillians to grow food for themselves and their families.

Chef Bianca

To close the project, volunteers returned to the Food Project’s headquarters to reflect on the day while sharing a meal cooked by our Chef Director, Bianca, inspired by Dr. King’s favorite foods with a Food Project twist: oven baked “fried” chicken, mac & cheese, and salad.

In addition to our event on January 20th, our headquarters kitchen also hosted 15 college-age students from the following schools: Belmont, Fisk, Lipscomb, Meharry, Nashville State, Tennessee State University, Trevecca and Vanderbilt University on Saturday, the 18th. Their time prepping fresh ingredients for our meals program was part of a MLK Joint Day of Service, helping connect over 400 students to special projects in the Nashville area with intention around food access, community beautification and other community needs.

In the true spirit of Dr. King, MLK Day of Service shines a light on what all people can do to love, uplift, and support their neighbors. Feeling inspired to get involved? Click here to learn more about how you can volunteer in The Nashville Food Project’s gardens and kitchens!

The Messy Work Of Giving Thanks On Stolen Land

By Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

Map of Native American tribes designed by Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., showing their locations before first contact with Europeans.

We are currently approaching the Thanksgiving holiday, a season I’ve looked forward to for many years. If you grew up in the U.S. school system, there is a good chance that your kindergarten experience mirrored my own, with construction paper headdresses and pilgrim attire, stories of shared abundance and friendship between Native peoples and new European settlers. Even as a young adult, November brought apple pie, time with long-distance family, warm beverages, and pumpkins galore without the overwhelming consumerism that December often lends to. This year, however, feels different. Not because the holiday changed, but because gradually I have. I am now actively practicing recognizing tensions and calling out the complex implications of things that were once glazed and made glowing by sentiment and tradition. I have recognized that things that hold great personal warmth and nostalgia for me (a white, now middle-class, cis-woman) may still be traditions that are deeply problematic in nature and may be devastatingly painful for other groups of people whose voices I haven’t considered because I haven’t sought them out.

As a member of The Nashville Food Project team, I am very aware of how our organization benefits from the positive implications of the Thanksgiving holiday, as many non-profits and food organizations do with increased (desperately needed) donations and an uptick in volunteers. However, this is an incomplete picture without a way to easily acknowledge that our celebrations of thanks and prosperity take place on stolen, bloodstained land. The gifts and comfort that many of us know have not come without a devastating historical cost and one that has resulted in generations of destruction to the Native peoples of this now-colonized space.  It is a truth that is so hard to swallow, but impossible to ignore if we truly desire to be a justice-seeking community.

Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1850–1936), "The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth," 1914.

If you are like me and grew up with a singular narrative of Thanksgiving that celebrated U.S abundance and refused to acknowledge the genocide of this soil’s first stewards, I encourage you to use today as a step forward. I’ll be here doing the same. Glennon Doyle Melton says, “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways”. This is my messy attempt at being a better ancestor. Here are a few tools I am using to push back against my own white-washed understanding of the Thanksgiving narrative and more importantly, tools I have found to inspire and challenge my understanding of the current injustices that remaining tribes of Native people face.

1. Understand that this is no single “First Thanksgiving” narrative.

I’ve spent hours researching and the story depends a lot on who is telling it. There are many unknowns that popular culture has taken advantage of filling to paint a picture worthy of elementary school celebrations everywhere.  The more I’ve learned, the more questions I have. I’m practicing sitting with this discomfort and uncertainty. And maybe the history of that actual day is less important than the nature of the relationship between settlers and indigenous peoples that followed.

2. Seek out indigenous voices.

Understand that indigenous people are still very much present. Their story did not begin with the arrival of European settlers and it did not end with the systematic desolation of over 90% of their people at the hands of colonizers. Read diverse thoughts of indigenous people on our modern Thanksgiving holiday HERE and HERE and learn about indigenous-led resistance movements and Native leadership HERE. This is just a starting point. 

3. Discover who were the original stewards of the space you call home with this tool.

For most of us, we currently occupy land that was acquired through colonization. My little spot of the world where I am raising my baby, loving my partner, tending chickens and figuring out this life is part of what was once Cherokee Country . Members of this tribe still reside in Cherokee, North Carolina after losing the majority of their territory as the result of forced removal and relocation through the Trail of Tears. This new (to me) knowledge is helping me shift the way I see my responsibility to this space and to learn more about the injustices that its original occupants still face. It has me thinking about the other people who have raised babies, laughed, planted, hoped, cried and mourned on the soil where I now live. It reminds me of those who will do so when I am dust and has me asking what can I do now to create the kind of world I want for each of them. 

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There is much to be thankful for. But may our celebrations of thanks not be a tool to revel in our own distorted narratives. May they be an invitation to build a future that is truly worth celebrating. 

A Food Waste Challenge Friendsgiving

For November’s Simmer series dinner, the fabulous Chef Maneet Chauhan had the idea to host a Friendsgiving in our Community Dining Room. But rather than bring in the typical Thanksgiving turkey and sides, she wanted to see what she could whip up with just the ingredients we had on hand in our kitchen — a special Food Waste Challenge Friendsgiving to celebrate abundance. 

Maneet enlisted the help of our team — chiefly Chef Director Bianca Morton who plans thousands of meals for TNFP partners each week based on the donated food we receive and vegetables we grow along with our farm partners. Then for dessert, we pulled in the talents of Sam Tucker, the fantastic baker behind Village Bakery & Provisions. 

As the date approached, we provided Maneet with a list of possible ingredients: butternut squash, cabbage, onions, potatoes, canned coconut milk, tomatoes, bags of rice and beans. We figured Maneet might choose one or two items for her menu. But instead, she managed to work every item on the list into a meat-and-three-style feast. Every item!   

Pork Vindaloo Kemma made a rich stew of meat donated from Whole Foods. Cabbage Butternut Squash Subji brought together vegetables gleaned from local farms by the Society of St. Andrew and from farm partners, S.E. Daugherty & Sons. Black Bean Lentil Daal, Vegetable Rice Palal and Yogurt Raita served alongside Papadum and Naan also included donations of black beans, lentils and rice from One Generation Away.  

Papadum made with tapioca.

Our own Bianca Morton kicked off the meal with spiced meatballs made with a Whole Foods donation in a butternut and coconut sauce as well as a Spiced Lentil and Sweet Potato “Meat” Ball and Autumn Salad that tossed together lettuces with apple, almond, raisin and blue cheese.   

The meal was bookended with a celebration of the organic apples we receive by the bushel from Joe Hodgson (“Apple Joe” as we call him). Joe followed his love of heirloom apples to plant his own orchard, and every few weeks he drops off a batch that we can toss into fruit salads or serve as a healthy snack for our after-school meal partners. For the welcome cocktail, we garnished an Apple Cider Mule (thanks to a donation by Pickers Vodka) with Joe’s apple slices . 

Baker Sam ready to make dessert.

Then for the big finish, Sam Tucker created an Apple Walnut Cake with Joe’s apples and served it with cool dollops of Calvados Zabaglione and a warm Apple Compote. Maneet added her flair and pop of color with edible orchid. 

Chef Maneet ended the dinner by talking with guests about her experiences on Food Network’s Chopped and family memories of making the most of every ingredient. 

“Growing up in India, there was no waste,” she said. She recalled her parents buying milk, pasteurizing it and then using the cream that settled at the top to make butter on weekends.

“Sunday morning was the most amazing time to get up,” she said, remembering the sounds of her family making butter. Fresh butter would then become ghee and the milk solids would be turned into dessert. 

She also spoke about what draws her to the work of The Nashville Food Project. 

“Food, to me, is about connection. It’s about making sure people are nourished. When you are connected both with your soul and your stomach,” she said. And she recalled learning how TNFP makes that happen on her first visit to our previous headquarters. “Every aspect of food was so carefully talked through — such as making sauces and repurposing them. There are a lot of organizations that do great work, but The Nashville Food Project does it at a grassroots level and that gets everybody excited and the community involved.”  

On a day when we hosted a Friendsgiving, Maneet says the richest people on earth are those with the most friends. We’re sure grateful to be friends with Sam and Joe and Maneet — and all our partners and all of you. 

We have just one more Simmer dinner to close out the series for the year — a Sunday brunch on Dec. 8 with Chef Levon Wallace featuring Mexican home cooking influenced by his time growing up in Los Angeles. Tickets can be purchased here and all proceeds support our work. Join us!

Farewell to Wedgewood Urban Gardens

By Lauren Bailey, TNFP’s Director of Garden Programs

If you’ve ever been to the Wedgewood Urban Garden, you know that it is a magical space- one that immediately draws you in. As you climb up the steps and pass the trees that greet you, you come upon the urban oasis that it is. 

After a decade of cultivating nourishing food and community in this space, we will be relocating our Wedgewood Urban Garden. We have known that this transition would come as our programming and needs have grown and evolved, and we leave the space with so much gratitude for what it is and what it has become. The vibrant community food work that has grown out of that space has been beyond our wildest dreams.

As our staff reflects together on the past 10 years, so many memories arise!

“Volunteering at the Wedgewood Urban Garden space was my introduction the The Nashville Food Project. This garden has been a space for me to both learn life and veggie lessons, and I have been blessed to be able to pass that knowledge and joy onto others. I have grown and stretched as a person in this garden. It was where I was first introduced to the magic of big questions coming from little mouths, and the journey that spark of curiosity could take. Relationships have been built and nurtured in this garden beyond age and language. There are so many freeze framed moments captured in my mind that I am grateful for. The beginning of spring when on a sunny day your eyes are bombarded by the lush growth and the hues of green life. Butterflies and honey bees dancing in the buckwheat. The excited chatter of children as they make their way to the garden. The background noise of conversations that trickle like a creek through the community garden space. These memories and more come to mind when I think back on my experience at WUG.

There is a language one learns while tending and caring for a piece of land. This language is intuitively known by everyone but at times needs to be rediscovered. This rediscovery begins a journey that can teach us many things like how to grow amazing vegetables, but it also enables us to understand the connections that all living things have to one another. I have learned and am still learning this ancient Earth language but am forever grateful to the Wedgewood garden and its tenders for showing and walking with me on this path. ”

— Kia Brown, Community Garden Manager

“When I read the lines ‘keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs’ in Marge Piercy’s poem ‘The Seven of Pentacles’, I see the Wedgewood Garden.  Certainly from the outside there is some wildness to the space; it’s a bit of a secret garden. From Wedgewood Avenue, you see an arbor built by youth at the Oasis Center. It announces an entrance into this green space.  A sign reads ‘We are here to awaken from our illusion of separation. -Thich Nhat Hanh.’ Grass paths beckon into the perennial garden where insects buzz on elderberry, tansy and oregano flowers. Perennial sunflowers wave in the background.  Bermuda grass creeps from the walkways into the beds and wild morning glory attempts to outgrow and overrun everything at least once a summer.  

Walk up the stone stairs past a picnic area and into the heart of the garden.  The trees in the garden are large, old, misshapen & beautiful. They nestle the garden between them in the middle of this busy neighborhood.  It makes for a still, quiet place. Here community gardeners have battled the weeds every summer, bringing forth bounty from rich soil overflowing with tomato, melon, radish, henbit, chickweed.  It may look like a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but look a little longer and you’ll see people reconnecting with their neighbors, healing as they work the soil, putting down roots in a new community.  Under the surface of the soil, season after season this garden has been interconnection for people and plants.  ”

— Julia Reynolds-Thompson, Director of Garden Operations

Three years ago I landed at The Nashville Food Project as the organization took stewardship of what we now call the New American gardens. In the years prior to this transition, I was working with the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee and worked closely with TNFP staff to establish these garden programs. I have been thinking a lot about what those first years looked like-- the many hands that carried the work to where it is now, the ways the gardens and programming evolved as we “dug” in a little deeper. I’ll always remember the first time I visited the Wedgewood Urban Gardens and how inspired I felt upon leaving. Now, as I think of all of the many people who tended this land in the years since, my thoughts drift from gardener to gardener and the life and growth that each person brought to this small piece of paradise in the middle of the city. As we move from this piece of land, I’m grateful for the many ways that it has provided nourishment for the people that tended it and what it taught me about growing community and food, together.

To celebrate this land and what it has gifted us with over the years, we will be hosting a small gathering at the garden (613 Wedgewood Avenue, 37203) Friday, November 15th, from 10:30-12:30 pm. We hope you can join us!

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The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup

she is looking at her work growing away there

actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.

If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,

if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,

if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,

then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.

You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.

More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.

Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.

Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,

a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us

interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:

reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,

for every gardener knows that after the digging, after

the planting,

after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Creating Seeds

By Kia Brown, Community Garden Manager

As I sit down to write this post, I keep thinking about the cycles that come with gardening. The ebb and flow of planning, planting, tending and harvesting. And just like planting a garden, our work is cyclical- with a constant desire to make next season a better season, to reflect on all that we’ve learned and put that into motion for the next year. 

It’s hard to believe that we’ve once again come upon the conclusion of another community garden season. Gardeners and staff have spent the last 6-8 months laughing, learning, and growing together, and now we come to a period of rest and reflection. How did the year how turn out and were expectations met? Exceeded? Was something new tried? What would we try again or change?

In the spirit of reflection, we invited community gardeners to share their thoughts about the year. 

“It has been an incredible year gardening with the Nashville Food Project’s Wedgewood urban garden. This is a place where magic happens: delicious food is grown and community is built! I learned so much through digging my hands in the dirt and with the help of guidance from Kia and other veteran gardeners, I was able to successfully grow my own food: tomatoes, radishes, peppers, eggplants, spinach, lettuce, and so much more! I’ve cherished my time spent in this urban oasis and look forward to continuing learning and growing with the skills I’ve gained here. Thank you for providing the ideal environment for our plants and selves to grow!”

— Marie Holzer, member of the Wedgewood Community Garden

“I’m glad that I joined a community garden. I’m glad because I’ve learned so much about gardening and myself since becoming a member.  Three years ago I thought that if I planted seeds, then watered and seeded, that my garden would grow. On a basic level that is exactly what happened. When I decided to become invested in the garden (helping other gardeners, trying my best to combat the heat, humidity and garden pests, etc.), I realized that time, care and patience are the real elements to growing a garden and maybe growing up a little.”

— Linda Owens, McGruder Community Garden leader

We’ve been saving seed this year -- mostly flowers and herbs. There’s so much that goes into making a seed, so much that goes into creating that potential for future life. And as a plant prepares for the end of its journey and carries with it hope for the future, we too are cultivating the seeds of our future and growth. 

An Apron With My Name

By Catherine Mayhew, a regular volunteer in The Nashville Food Project’s kitchens, originally published on her blog The South In My Mouth.

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I want an apron with my name on it.

I stopped working full time in January. I can’t quite bring myself to call it “retired.” But that’s really what it is. One of the nice things about it (there are tons of nice things about it) is I can choose where I want to spend my time and one of my favorite places has become The Nashville Food Project. It satisfies my need to do something involving food and my passion for social justice, particularly these days.

Katie, the catering manager, and a volunteer, Jake. Please note that Jake has his name on his apron.

The Food Project provides healthy nutritious meals for anyone who needs them. It has a beautiful commercial kitchen that receives bounteous donations from a healthy number of food donors plus uses the produce it grows in its own gardens (more like mini-farms). They have an army of volunteers directed by their small, amazingly cheerful and endlessly patient staff.

I started in the “make 20 gallons of fruit salad” station. The fruit salad is part of almost every meal The Project serves. It involves whatever donated fruit is around on any particular day — strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, apples and melons. So many melons. After washing up and donning plastic gloves, I got a knife, a cutting board and commenced to spend two hours cutting fruit. Oh, so much cutting. It got me to wondering would anyone consume all this fruit salad?

As it happens, it’s the number one most requested item. If you are a person of privilege, you regard fresh fruit as the tired but necessary road to a virtuous diet. If you are not and you might get a can of peaches every once in awhile, a fresh fruit salad is a damn miracle.

This is the kind of beautiful produce The Food project works with every day.

After a few weeks of chopping fruit, I noticed a group of volunteers at another station making something more decidedly sophisticated than fruit salad. I wandered over to watch them stuff couscous salad into endive leaves. “What are ya’ll doing?” I said. “We volunteer for the catering program,” they said entirely in unison. I’m lying. But that was the gist of it.

Catering? I would like to be an unpaid caterer. Truly I would. So I just kind of wedged myself in there and haven’t let go since.

The catering arm of The Food Project is just genius. They take donated food, make it fancy and charge other nonprofits a modest fee for their luncheons, banquets and such. It totally goes against all the catering norms where the food is consistent and predictable. For the Food Project, every catering job is different because there’s no telling what kind of product they’ll have around on any given day. There are no standardized recipes. It’s a what the hell, swing for the fences affair every time. So much fun.

Which brings me to the apron. I hadn’t been volunteering very long before I noticed that some of the aprons volunteers were wearing had names on them. Mine didn’t. I always got the anonymous apron. What’s up with that? Turns out when you volunteer a certain number of hours within a certain time period you get you’re own apron and you can take a Sharpie and write your name on it.

In the world of food I used to think I wanted expensive ingredients, fancy equipment and perfection in the kitchen. Turns out all I wanted all along was an apron with my name on it.

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The Nashville Food Project’s catering program is a social enterprise which earns revenue in support of TNFP programming. Learn more about having TNFP cater an event for your organization!

For this Thanksgiving, we’re also offering healthy sides, salads and desserts for purchase to serve alongside your turkey, such as honey balsamic brussels sprouts and mashed butternut squash. All Thanksgiving sales will be done by pre-order online through Sunday, November 17th. Dishes will be ready and available for pick-up at The Nashville Food Project’s headquarters on Tuesday, November 26th or Wednesday, November 27th. You will select your desired pick-up day during check-out.

Click here to check out our Thanksgiving offerings and place your order!

Winter Is Coming

By David Frease, Procurement and Sustainability Manager

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

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

Pantry Staples

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

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil

• Canola Oil

• Canned Diced Tomatoes

• Unseasoned Canned Beans of Any Kind

• Unsweetened Applesauce

• Peanut/Almond/Cashew Butter

• Honey

• Jelly

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

• Rolled Oats

• Canned Pumpkin

• Graham Crackers

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

• Chocolate Chips

• Cheerios

• Healthy Snack/Granola Bars

Fresh Fruit & Vegetables

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

Protein

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

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

Senior Meals Make A Big Impact

By Grace Biggs, TNFP’s Impact Manager

Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s Community House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ark

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

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

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

Photo courtesy of the Ark

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

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

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

Fifty Forward

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

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

Photo courtesy of Fifty Forward

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

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

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

St. Luke’s Community House

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

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

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

Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s Community House

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

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

Siddi Rimal: Gardener, Interpreter, Advocate

By Jennifer Justus, Culinary Community Liason

Siddi Rimal: photo by Danielle Atkins

The farmers of Growing Together gathered under a pavillion near their farm plots and snipped the dried scapes off garlic bulbs and trimmed the roots they had planted the previous fall. They talked amongst themselves in their native Nepali as cicadas sang from the trees. And occasionally, a jet from the nearby Nashville airport buzzed their acre teeming with Nepali mustard greens, tomatoes, zinnias and dancing with butterflies and bees.  

There’s always work to do as farmers, so cleaning garlic had to happen during their weekly meeting. But when the group starts communicating—especially from Nepali to English and back again—that’s when Siddi Rimal’s job begins. 

Siddi has worked as an interpreter between the Growing Together farmers and community gardeners who speak Nepali and the English-speaking staff of The Nashville Food Project for five years. He’s crucial to the programs' successes. His support to the programs came at the perfect time and he has remained committed though he’s not professionally trained as an interpreter and he has another job (like many of the farmers) as a technician on the paint line at Nissan.

And it’s not that the Bhutanese and Burmese farmers in the program need help in knowing how to grow things. They’ve got that part down. Many of them came here with decades of experience and fill their plots to the edges with crops and trellises for hanging gourd and long beans. But they do need help navigating the red tape of American systems and sales outlets. 

For example, in their meeting they discussed harvesting schedules and plans for packing CSA boxes. Tallahassee May, Education Manager for Growing Together, also talked with the farmers about wholesale orders for restaurants and plans for the Saturday booth at the Richland Park Farmers’ Market. 

Siddi must listen carefully and then accurately convey what’s being said even if there’s not a direct translation. It requires concentration and patience because every conversation takes four times as long -- Tally to Siddi, Siddi to farmers, farmers to Siddi and Siddi back to Tally. 

Siddi with Growing Together farmers and TNFP staff at the Haywood Lane garden.

But for Siddi, a man who spent half his life in a refugee camp, time is relative.  

All the farmers in Growing Together came to the United States as refugees. In Siddi’s case, his family was evicted from Bhutan in 1992 during ethnic cleansing and complicated tangle of factors including religious, political, socioeconomic and geographical reasons (read a brief history of the Bhutanese refugee crisis here). 

“Many people were killed and many people lost their homes, lost their property, land, cattle and all,” he says. “When we left, we had to leave our land, our home, cattle— everything. We had to run at nighttime.” 

Siddi was 5 years old when his family fled. 

“It was a violent moment,” he says. “As far as I know from history and people being a witness, we’re told that armies raped the women and killed some of the social activists. They sent some of them to prison and some were sent for no reasons and tortured there. Some people they kill —put in the sack and throw in the river. Lot of torture and things.” 

At the refugee camp in Nepal, they received basic needs from organizations like the United Nations and Red Cross. 

“But even though they help us, we had to spend a miserable life,” Siddi says. “We lived in a small hut, made of bamboo and like straw or plastic roof.”

The Nepali camps, which eventually swelled to about 100,000 people, had problems with malnourishment, illnesses, overcrowding. 

“In the hut when the weather was very hot like this, it was very hard to live in there,” Siddi says. If there was heavy rainfall and storms, most of the rain goes into the house and floods. It was very hard to tell this story. Because we were in a very difficult situation. And not for a couple of years, it was 22 years.”  

The refugees in Nepal often found jobs outside the camp with locals by working in their fields or cutting rice patties. Siddi, who was educated in the camp, worked as a trainer in camp where he met his wife. The couple started the process of applying to come to the United States when they were in their early 20s. It took them three years — repeated interviews, medical tests and background checks — before they were cleared. 

“I came to Vegas the first time—Sept 25, 2012,” he says of his first placement in the United States at 26 years old. “There were a lot of people, and it was crowded. I was a little bit nervous there. I never had any experience with the airport, you know? We had to go to the train, so that was like...my mind was blown.”

After two days in Las Vegas, he made his way to Nashville where his wife’s family had already been resettled a couple years prior. Siddi’s father-in-law also later introduced him to The Nashville Food Project’s Wedegewood Urban Gardens, where Siddi began maintaining a plot as a community gardener. Then when the Growing Together program began for growers who take their produce to market, Siddi took on the role as interpreter. 

Siddi translating introductions at a community garden potluck.

“Obviously it is very helpful,” he says of the Growing Together program. “Every time I meet with people, even at the grocery store, I always talk about the program.” 

Farmers share that it helps provide fresh food for their families in addition to supplemental income. They’re able to grow crops traditional to their backgrounds like komatsuna, bitter gourd, long beans and hot peppers. It’s also a way for farmers to feel more rooted here. And even though the elders might struggle to pick up the language or feel as useful here compared to their younger family members, farming gives them the opportunity to pass along the life-giving skill of tending to the earth and coaxing nourishing treasure from it—all in the company of their community. As one farmer told TNFP, “It helps me feel less alone.”

Granted, there are still challenges. For many of the farmers and gardeners, transportation often arises as a hurdle since many don’t have a driver’s license or access to a vehicle. Language barriers for some, especially when Siddi isn’t around, also pose problems.

But just as TNFP’s Tally and Sally Rausch have picked up Nepali words, the farmers too have learned English words like the names for vegetables— “onion,” “tomato.” They know “gift,” which they use while pressing a potato into the palm of a friend. They issue lots of “good mornings.”

As the meeting at the Growing Together farm neared its end, one of the farmers, Nar, finished working through her stack of garlic, so she threw her arms up in a “V.” She flashed a smile and shouted a word in Nepali. The others laughed. And then she pressed her palms together at her heart. 

Some things, it turns out, don’t need translating after all.

Bianca's Skillet Cornbread

By Jennifer Justus, Culinary Community Liason

Bianca Morton, Chef Director at TNFP’s California Avenue kitchen.

Bianca Morton is up to her elbows in tomatoes. A few yellow bins sit brimming with red and orange orbs perfuming The Nashville Food Project kitchen with their clean, acidic scent and mingling with the earthy tones of pasta roiling in a giant kettle.

The pasta will get tossed in tomato sauce, of course. That’s because Bianca has been working quickly to have all the summer tomatoes processed—chopped for green salads, dehydrated for later, or whirled up in enchilada sauces and marinas for layering into lasagnas.

She has to think smart and fast every day about how to use thousands of pounds of food that generously come through our doors from farms and markets. And then she works with volunteers and TNFP co-workers to turn ingredients into scratch-made meals for those who need it.

And it’s not just tomatoes. As Bianca sorted donated chicken from Cracker Barrel recently —determining its next iteration as chicken salad, chicken pot pie or roasted with balsamic and rosemary—a volunteer team filled pans with roasted peppers from our production gardens with hunks of bread that will become strata.

“Do you have any spinach?” one of the volunteers asked.

Bianca disappeared to the walk-in, one of her kitchen domains, and returned a few moments later carrying containers from Whole Foods.

“How about baby kale?”

“Perfect,” the volunteer said.

While the stratas will go to the YWCA and veterans through Operation Stand Down and workers’ dignity workshops on wage theft, Bianca is already thinking about meals for seniors at Wedgewood Towers and Fifty Forward.

Breakfast stratas being prepared for meal partner sites.

The truth is Bianca has been sharing food long before her days at the food project.

During middle and high school, she baked her step-grandmother’s pound cake every time someone had a birthday. “I would bring it in a cake container. Cut slices all day long and share with everybody,” she says.

She had turned to cooking as a way to help cope with a clinical depression diagnosis as a teenager. “I cooked when I was happy. I cooked when I was sad. I cooked when I was angry,” she says. “When I was angry, I would go in there and bang the hell out of pots everywhere. You were liable to get two meats for dinner that night.”

She cooked for the family at least four days a week. But she always brought her lunch the next day sharing the leftovers.  “This is funny now that I’m thinking about it and here (at TNFP)… I would bring enough to feed four or five people,” she says. “Everyone would eat off my lunch.”

Bianca’s curiosity about food came early, but she skipped a few steps on the typical path. When her mother bought her an Easy Bake Oven at age 10, Bianca left it in the box. But when her mom went out to choir practice or Bible study on Wednesday nights, Bianca snuck into the kitchen for the real thing. “I knew I had a three-hour window. I would take her Betty Crocker cookbook, and I would flip through that and figure out what I was gonna make.”

That usually meant cakes since they often had pantry staples on hand.

“As soon as she would leave… I was on it. I would fix my cake batter up and bake my cake. I would cool my cake and put it in a Zip-lock bag with a butter knife. I had cakes hidden in the piano bench, in my toy box, where I could go any time and cut me a little slice of cake off.”  

The night her mother caught her, though, Bianca had fallen asleep with a cake in the oven. She woke up to find it, burnt and black, outside her door with a note.  Her mother instructed her to change clothes after school and be ready to go. “I was like ‘she is gonna drop me off somewhere,’” she recalled. “She is literally abandoning me.”

But her mother took her to the grocery store instead.

“We were walking down the aisles and she said pick out stuff you want to learn how to make. So, I was like grabbing meats and everything. She would cook that for dinner and have me watch. I was like, ‘I love this.’” 

Bianca (right) at culinary school in Atlanta.

After high school, Bianca went to culinary school in Atlanta. She took double the course load and graduated early while also working full-time as dining coordinator in a retirement center. Then she moved back to Nashville and took jobs at convention centers and downtown hotels.

Those jobs warranted a tough exterior with their anxiety-inducing pace and high volume in a male-dominated and often unhealthy industry. But she also learned lessons that stick with her today. Like the time an unexpected snowstorm hit Nashville turning a 20 percent occupancy hotel to 100 percent within minutes as a line formed out the door. Bianca slept (or more like napped occasionally) at the hotel for three days and learned that staying ahead—even chopping onions and peppers when there’s an extra few minutes— is essential.

Now at The Nashville Food Project, Bianca says the intensity of turning out thousands of meals each week takes on a new meaning. “In that instance, it was like ‘okay we gotta get the job done.’ But now, it’s rewarding. It makes me feel lighter, like I have an effect on other people — that I’m actually working in my gift. That I have a purpose… I care about the impact that I have on the next person whether it’s direct or indirect. So I’m constantly thinking, how I can make it better? Or, how can I make best use of my skills to be a blessing to someone else in any kind of capacity?”

That doesn’t mean she’s lost all her hardcore kitchen vibes. You’ll find her some days cruising through the kitchen on a mission — cell phone tethered to one ear via ear bud and a Venti Starbucks nearby with more pumps than she probably ought to admit. Working in a nonprofit kitchen, after all, has taken some getting used to.

An incoming donation from the Bells Bend Conservation Corridor this summer.

When she first started at TNFP, a truck full of donations would arrive – all needing to be sorted, sized up and put away quickly – and Bianca viewed it as time and work. But Katie Duivan, catering and events manager would “turn flips,” Bianca says. “She would be like, ‘Oh my god look at this. This is beautiful.’”

“Where I come from you couldn’t show that,” she says. “I had to be hard. I couldn’t be friendly. Then they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re a woman and that’s a weakness.’ I had to run with the big dogs.”

But being here makes it easier to be genuine, she says. “I can smile. And the days I don’t smile, and I’m gruff, it’s fine. They accept me for who I am. Here they celebrate our differences and what makes us uniquely us.”

Plus, she says Katie, her other co-workers and the environment of a kitchen filled with the purpose of stewardship and service, might have rubbed off on her bringing her back to those days when she shared lunch at the cafeteria table with nothing to gain or prove.

“It’s kind of like somebody is throwing happy glitter,” she says. “You’re going to get some happy glitter on you, and you’re not gonna be able to get it off.”

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Lodge Cast Iron recently donated several skillets to The Nashville Food Project. We asked Bianca to share her favorite skillet recipe for cornbread. In her family, they like it sweet, almost like cake, she says. “I was raised that if you didn’t eat sweet cornbread, you were making dressing.”

She bakes this version for her family every other week and considers it a staple at Sunday dinner. Tag us on social media in a photo of your favorite cast-iron recipe, and we’ll enter you into a drawing for a new Lodge skillet.

Bianca’s Skillet Cornbread

Ingredients

1/2 cup self-rising cornmeal

1 1/2 cup self-rising flour

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup oil plus 3 tbsp oil 

2 eggs beaten

1 1/4 cup milk 

2 teaspoons honey 

3 tablespoons melted butter 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

In a medium bowl, combine cornmeal, flour and sugar. Mix in 1/3 cup of the oil, eggs and milk. 

Heat remaining 3 tablespoons oil in the cast-iron skillet. Pour hot oil into mixed batter. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.  

Top with the melted butter and honey before serving.

Introducing Tastes of Burma and Bhutan

By Grace Biggs, Impact Manager

With market season well underway, the Growing Together garden is a busy, vibrant place, full of life and movement. Farmers gather to harvest, wash, and pack their crops from their individual plots three times a week, often with the support of their families. Each farmer is autonomous, planting the crops they want, working according to their own schedule, and setting their own financial goals for the food they sell. But there’s also a lot that the farmers share.

“Being on a shared space has so many benefits,” explains Sally, the Growing Together Market Manager. “There’s the immense learning opportunity of seeing what other farmers are doing and learning from your peers. And there’s also a benefit in having shared market outlets.”

Marketing and selling to new customers is a huge challenge for any farmer. This season, the Growing Together program is connecting farmers with a wide variety of market outlets: the Richland Park Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, wholesale listings on Nashville Grown and Locally Grown, direct sales to area restaurants, a 20-customer fall CSA, and (new this year) weekly farm stands at TNFP’s headquarters on Wednesday evenings.

“The Growing Together farmers offer something unique,” says Sally. As a customer, you can expect to see many vegetables you are familiar with here in the South, like tomatoes and salad greens. You can also expect to taste traditional crops from farmers' home countries of Burma and Bhutan, such as bitter gourd, daikon radishes, and mustard greens. 

I see this firsthand while sitting with Sally at the farm stand in the Nations on a Wednesday night, as a return customer walks up to the booth, bags in hand. They chat about their weeks, and Sally begins to point out what’s for sale. “Here’s arugula, and this is a leafy chinese cabbage. It’s great raw, similar to lettuce, but you can also cook it.” Customers come and go throughout the evening, taking their pick of veggies ranging from yellow squash to shisoto peppers, often leaving with at least one food they hadn’t heard of before that day.

““The familiar veggies and flower bouquets make the booth accessible, then we get to introduce other new foods. It’s such as long process to change people’s preferences. Luckily, we have an amazing base of customers who are interested in trying something new!””

— Sally Raush, Growing Together Market Manager

This willingness to try something new has also been true of many of our chef friends, including City House, TKO, Two Ten Jack and Green Pheasant. In addition to ordering what they know they need for their menus, they’ve been excited to incorporate whatever the farmers have available, including the farmers’ traditional foods.

As summer winds down, farmers are gearing up for their fall CSA. “There’s going to be such a huge difference in the CSA this year. The transition from summer to fall can be a hard time in the season to have produce ready to harvest, especially if you’re trying to offer a diversity, but after learning so much in the first year, farmers are coming in more prepared, especially for the first few weeks of the CSA.” The 2019 Fall CSA is sold out, but you can sign up for the Growing Together email newsletter to stay in the loop on next year’s CSA here.

Ready to try some tastes of Burma and Bhutan for yourself?

For the month of September, Growing Together produce will be featured by MEEL, a local online marketplace and farm stand, including a special menu of Dinner Kits inspired by traditional Bhutanese and Burmese dishes such as Komatsuna with Creamy Heirloom Polenta and Ema Datshi with Bhutanese Red Rice and Suja.

These Growing Together MEEL Kits and a Growing Together Farmstand Box will go “live” on Monday, August 26th, available for delivery beginning September 3rd. Menus will be available at this link. Use the promo code “GROW” and they’ll donate 10% of your purchase to The Nashville Food Project!

Also, through the end of October, you can visit the Growing Together farmers at the Richland Park Farmers’ Market every Saturday 9 am to 12:30 pm, and at our headquarters in the Nations (5904 California Avenue) every Wednesday 5 pm to 7 pm.

Sweet Peas Recap & Bean Burrito Bowl Recipe

By Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, Community Engagement Manager

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Northwest YMCA

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

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Bianca’s Bean Burrito Bowls

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1 red onion diced

• 1 bell pepper diced

• 1 tbsp ground cumin

• 1 tsp salt and pepper

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

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

• 1/2 c cilantro

• 1/4 cup of your favorite salsa

• 3 cups brown rice (cooked)

• 1 to 3 cup of cheese

• Plus any additional sautéed seasonal veggies if desired!

Directions

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

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

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