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You've gotta love spring when this is what 6pm looks like in the garden!

The MEAT Report

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Several weeks ago, The Nashville Food Project got a call from an event coordinator at Opryland Gaylord asking whether we could receive a large donation of fresh meat (never been frozen) at the conclusion of the American Meat Convention. We were told the take would be something like a thousand pounds. Over the course of a few days, we got a plan in place to recover so much meat: organized volunteers, rented freezer space, counted vehicles, and purchased wax-lined boxes to be palletized. In a caravan of trucks and station wagons, our people arrived at the convention center last Monday evening, ready to pack up thousands of pounds of meat for inclusion in our meals.

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As the conference was winding down, company reps began packing up, leaving all of their meat products on display for our team to pick up. In food project aprons, we went from booth to booth, boxing up pork, chicken, beef, turkey, lamb and veal, as well as some other exotic meats, like boar, buffalo, duck and goose. These were products that would have otherwise gone into the dumpster at the end of the night. Did you all know 40% of all food in our country gets wasted? And one person in every five people in Tennessee doesn’t have enough healthy food to eat? The wasteful nature of our economy is one of our most egregious sins, especially when we remember we are talking about actual life wasted—each animal's life an important part of God's inexhaustibly beautiful creation.

The Nashville Food Project boxed up 5,100 pounds of high-quality meat that night! Based on current outputs, this should be enough meat to get us through 10 months of meals shared with people in need. I am proud of the new challenges The Nashville Food Project is able to meet, thanks to the TREMENDOUS support from our ever-widening circle of friends. If you want to get involved in this joyful, life-giving, sometimes-messy work, email us, and we will find a place for you!

Strawberry Ricotta Bread

What to do with all our strawberries?! We recently received a beautiful donation of strawberries along along with a case of ricotta cheese. We found a delicious recipe for a tasty dessert bread and served it last week. The ricotta makes this bread low fat, moist and has a unique consistency that we all loved.

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 4 tbsp melted butter (cooled)
• 2 cups All purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 1 1/2 cups sliced strawberries

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, whisk ricotta cheese and then add eggs, beating until well combined. Add buttermilk, vanilla, lemon juice and cooled melted butter.

In another bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and lemon zest. Add ricotta mixture to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined and then fold in strawberries.

Bake in greased 9 X 5 loaf pan for 30-40 minutes.

Chicken Curry with Chick Peas and Tomatoes

This recipe uses an abundance of chick peas. We served this on a bed of brown rice and garnished it with recently harvested cilantro from our garden.

Recipe: (serves 50) 

• 15 cups brown rice 
• 18 cups roasted, pulled chicken meat 
• 9 cans of chick peas, rinsed and drained (15 oz) 
• 9 cans of diced tomatoes, drained (14 oz) 
• 5 cups of lowfat sour cream 
• 4 Tbl of curry 
• 3 Tbl of ground cumin 
• 1 cup of fresh cilantro (chopped for garnish) 
• 1 Tbl garlic salt 1 tsp pepper

Cook rice according to package directions and divide evenly into 3 large serving pans; meanwhile, transfer the chicken to a stock pot. Add chick peas, tomatoes, sour cream, curry powder and cumin. Mix well. Simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes to heat through. Remove from heat and season with garlic salt and pepper. Adjust seasonings to your preference. Serve curry over rice and garnish with chopped cilantro.

Enchilada Sauce

One of our interns prepared this amazing made-from-scratch enchilada sauce this week. We served it with our Mexican Shepherd's Pie. Makes 3 gallons.

• 24 14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes
• 3 6oz cans of tomato paste
• 3 14.5oz cans of low sodium chicken broth
• 4 medium onions, or 10 cups roughly chopped onions
• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 handfuls of crushed tortilla chips
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 6 tablespoons of cumin
• 6 tablespoons of chili powder
• 3 tablespoons of garlic powder
• 6 tablespoons of salt
• 6 tablespoons of pepper
• 4 cups dice green chilis
• 1 Tbl chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

In a 3 gallon pot, add 1/2 cup of olive oil, or enough to coat the bottom of the pot. Bring the pot to medium high heat. Add the onions and garlic cloves to the pot and sauté until lightly browned. Add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and chicken broth, and stir together. Stir in the cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil. Add in the chilis and chipotle mix. With an immersion blender, puree all the ingredients. Add 2 large handfuls of crushed tortilla chips and leave them for 1-2 minutes, until soft. Using the immersion blender, puree once more until smooth consistency.

Hummingbird Cake

This Hummingbird Cake is a favorite, especially with the residents at Vine Hill Towers. Here is a simple version we have adapted for serving large crowds.

• 10c all-purpose flour
• 6c sugar
• 1T baking soda
• 1T salt
• 1T cinnamon
• 4c canola oil
• 10 eggs
• 3 large cans of crushed pineapple, drained
• 12 ripe bananas
• 2c chopped walnuts
• 3 (8oz) packages of cream cheese, softened
• 3 sticks of butter, softened
• 3lb. confectioners’ sugar
• 1T vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour two full size serving pans. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In a large bowl, combine oil, eggs, pineapple, bananas and nuts (mix on medium speed). Add flour mixture and mix together by hand. Divide batter equally between prepared pans and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Remove from oven and allow to cool on racks.

Prepare the frosting by blending together the cream cheese, butter, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Divide frosting evenly and spread over both cakes. Each pan makes 32 servings.

What Can Happen Along the Way (and Does)

Earlier this month I accompanied a food project volunteer-turned-friend to the Social Security Administration office to see about becoming his “payee.” My friend had received a medical diagnosis years earlier that deemed him incapable of managing his own money. As a consequence, he was assigned a payee through a local state agency. A payee acts as an intermediary between the SSA office and the person receiving benefits. His payee would receive his monthly disability check of $621, pay his rent and other bills, disperse money to him each week for food, medicine, transportation, and other personal expenses, and in exchange for providing this service, charge a percentage of his monthly income.

My friend has a lot of self-awareness. From his own stories about his past, I think he knows there were plenty of good reasons he was incapable of managing his money at one point, as well as other aspects of his life. But a couple years ago, he found stable housing through a partner organization where The Nashville Food Project delivers meals each week. And that same month, he began volunteering with us on a weekly basis. From the start, he always had bus fare to get to our kitchen. He always arrived on time, and called ahead if he was running late. On the rare occasions he would be absent for his volunteer time, he notified us in advance. He remembered staff birthdays. He started calling me his boss. He treated his commitment to our work with great respect.

Anyway, my friend was having some issues with his payee. Three times this year his rent had been paid late. So, one afternoon at the office, over a few slices of stale bread and an invoice history from his housing agency showing the late payments, he humbly asked me if I would consider becoming his payee. I said of course, and asked him to do the research for how we could make the switch.

Turns out an in-person meeting with a SSA employee is required, and let’s just say a person can wait a long morning there, waiting for her number to be called. He and I waited and waited and waited. Hours later, our number was up and we approached our appointed window with the necessary paperwork and identification in hand. My friend introduced himself to a kind gentleman behind the glass and then explained our business there that morning. After I handed over my two forms of ID to become his payee, I decided to say a little bit about my friend to fill the silence – I noted his record attendance as a volunteer, his reliable nature, his communication skills, his generosity. And then the man behind the counter stopped copying the info from my license and addressed my friend directly. He asked if he was still taking his meds. My friend said he was. He asked if he feels like he is capable of managing his own money. My friend said he was. Then he typed a little more and said to him “I really believe people get better, and to me, it seems like you are really getting better.” We all talked a little more before he handed me my ID back and removed the payee requirement from my friend’s file.

He was BEAMING! He could hardly contain his joy at what felt like a huge compliment and new responsibility. He immediately began to plan a trip to the bank to open his own checking account. He thanked the SSA officer profusely and then me too on our way back to the car. I had to remind him over and over that there was nothing I had done, only testify and shine the light on what he, himself, had accomplished over the last two years with The Nashville Food Project. A couple days later we sent our contact at the SSA office a thank you card, with my friend’s childlike scrawl addressing his name on the envelope.

At The Nashville Food Project, we grow food, cook food and share it… but so much other stuff happens along the way. Not only for the poor among us, but for all of us. We have a big year planned, and rely on the support of so many to invest in our work to alleviate hunger in our city and cultivate community. I ask you sincerely to consider a financial gift to The Nashville Food Project as the year draws to a close. With love and thanks and much hope for the New Year,

Tallu

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Makes 32 servings

• 3 cups all purpose flour

• 2 tsp cinnamon

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 4 eggs

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 2 cups canned pumpkin

• 1 1/2 cups canola oil

• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

In large bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, salt and soda. In another bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, pumpkin and oil.  Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.  Fold in chocolate chips.  Pour into greased full size pan and bake at 325 for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.  Cool in pan for 30 minutes.  Cut into 32 portions.

Putting the "Sweet" in Sweet Potatoes

“It all started in a garden” can be said of the story of our creation, of the lifestyles of our agrarian ancestors, and, now, it can be said of The Nashville Food Project’s newest partnership with Harvest Hands, a local non-profit working in community development in the Wedgewood area.

For the past few weeks, I have personally been blessed with the opportunity to lead a small group of middle school students from Harvest Hands’ after-school program at Wedgewood Urban Gardens. During these few weeks of partnering, we’ve toured the garden, where the girls got to smell the smells and taste the tastes of a truly organic community garden. Once the girls were acquainted with our space, we had our first day of real work, where the girls got the chance to pull, dig, and eventually enjoy our sweet potatoes during their time in the garden.

We started with some facts about sweet potatoes, and after a short demonstration, we very literally jumped right in, cutting vines, unearthing the beautiful brown potatoes, and getting to understand (for the first time, for some of us!), with our hands as well as our heads, where sweet potatoes come from. It was definitely an adventure, and while we found out that some spiders just shouldn’t be messed with, the satisfaction of harvesting these root vegetables for ourselves was well worth the risk. After the girls were finished harvesting, we brought clipped potato vines to the compost pile, returned our trowels, shovels, and gloves to the toolshed, and went to enjoy a snack of toaster-oven-baked sweet potatoes (after, of course, appropriately washing and sanitizing our hands!) prepared while we were working by TNFP’s own Christina Bentrup. Digging into the still steaming potatoes after a hard day’s work let us experience for ourselves the benefits of this vitamin packed power food, and even the benefits of a little butter on top, which actually promotes our absorption of the potatoes’ rich supply of Vitamin A!

Working with Harvest Hands is a very real and very tangible opportunity for The Nashville Food Project can grow in our communities, where these girls are given the chance to get their hands dirty for the growth and improvement of their own neighborhoods. We are only in the beginning stages of nurturing the seeds of this partnership, but I can’t wait to see what blooms.

Love and potatoes,

Julia

Thank You and Amen

Talking to strangers is hard. Even when I meet another person who dresses like me, looks like me, talks like me—appears, in fact, almost indistinguishable from me—often I find myself at a loss for words. I open my mouth and out fall superficial questions like, “What do you do?” and, “Where are you from?”. Occasionally we share in common a city or acquaintance or hobby, but usually I walk away from these encounters as alone as I walked into them. Sometimes I wonder how people ever get to know each other at all.

Last month, The Nashville Food Project began partnering with Trinity United Methodist Church to host weekly “community dinners” in the church’s fellowship hall. I have gone to all of these meals so far (although I must admit I have only gone to eat and haven’t prepared food or served or really even helped clean up at any of them). Every week I sit at a different table with a different group of people: people who live in the area around Trinity, members of the church, TNFP staff members and volunteers. We all gather around tables of six or eight, pass one another platters of homemade entrees, sides, and desserts, and eat together. We also talk. While I have no trouble polishing off everything on my plate each week, I have not mastered the art of connecting with every person at my table, learning their stories and telling them mine. But I keep going back—not only because of the free, delicious food, but because I am learning how to make friends out of strangers.

I learn from the Trinity member who drives with his wife from Goodlettsville every Sunday to go to this church, the church where he was baptized as a baby and where he belongs as an adult. I learn from the woman who, as she wraps up napkinfuls of leftover brownies to take home, says she wants to be remembered for having a big heart. I learn from the young man who tells me every week he’s so happy to see me; even though he can’t quite remember my name, I know he means it. I learn from the child who says grace before we eat, forgets her words in the middle, and ends with a rather abrupt, “Thank you, God, for…Amen.”

Yes, thank you. Thank you for meals that nourish us body and soul. Thank you for friends and for strangers, and for those flashes of connection we cannot plan or predict. Thank you even for those awkward moments when we can do nothing but look at our watches and wonder what, exactly, we are doing here. And thank you for giving us just enough of an answer to call us back to each other each week, each day, each moment.

“Thank you, God, for…”. Amen indeed.

Breaking Down the Barriers

The Nashville Food Project has been partnering with Trinity UMC, a church in North Nashville near the intersection of Trinity Lane and Dickerson Road, to host a sit-down community meal every Tuesday night. Our volunteers load nourishing foods onto our trucks and deliver them to the church’s fellowship hall. Members of the community help prepare the space with flowers, tablecloths, real plates and cups and forks and knives. People from all over gather at 6:30 for a blessing and a meal served family style.

The collective “buy-in” from the neighborhood has been awesome—community members are volunteering as table hosts, greeters and helping with set up and clean up.

Learning when to step up and learning when to step back and let others take the lead has been a real education for me and others who are used to being the “givers.” I am serious when I say the line between who is living with plenty and who is living in poverty is pretty blurred. Theologian Ted Jennings wrote in his book Good News to the Poor:

Breaking down the barriers between the givers and the receivers of aid, between those who have and those who have not, is an essential expression of the solidarity that liberates the privileged from their blindness and the marginalized from their invisibility. 

Yes. A million times yes!

There are gaggles of children from the neighborhood who want to gulp down their dinner as quickly as possible so they can move to the basketball court. There are babies (like my very own) in highchairs making smiling eyes at the big kids. There are single moms, old men, big families, recovering addicts, church people, people living on the street, me and you. The room can get loud, the meal can feel hectic, but more than anything, people feel welcome.

Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:8-11

Come break the bread with us one Tuesday night. God’s grace and peace, tallu

Kale Salad with Apple

This bright, delicious salad is the perfect addition to any meal.

8 -10 bunches of Red Russian or Lacinato kale washed, trimmed of tough stem and thinly sliced into ribbons (chiffonade)

3 - 4 apples (your favorite variety, cored, peeled and diced - we like Granny Smith or another tart apple)1 bunch celery, dicedPrepare dressing:

1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup of honey

1/2 cup of olive oil

7 cloves of garlic smashed and finely diced

1 tsp salt and pepper

Whisk the ingredients for the dressingThirty minutes before serving, add apples and celery to sliced kale. Pour dressing over kale mixture and gently "massage" dressing into the leaves for 5-7 minutes until kale is gently wilted. Enjoy!

Cowboy Cookies

Makes 5-6 dozen

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 Tbl baking soda
• 1 Tbl cinnamon
• 1 Tbl baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 sticks butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 Tbl vanilla
• 3 cups chocolate chips
• 3 cups oats
• 2 cups coconut
• 2 cups pecans

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, cream the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. Add eggs and the vanilla and beat until well blended. Stir in the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Add oats, nuts, chocolate chips and coconut, mix until combined. Spoon cookie mixture onto greased foil lined cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

What's Ordinary

My good friend C gave Lulah a money jar for her first birthday last month. It is an old tin coffee can with a slit in its plastic top for coins and a small sign on the front that reads “Lulah’s EDU Fund.” When he was writing out the words for the sign, it became clear to me that he didn’t feel that comfortable spelling the word “education,” so we left it at that. Every time I’ve seen him since her birthday, he has come back to my office with a sweaty handful of pennies for her jar. Last week he pointed out a quarter in all the copper and said with his toothless grin, “This week there’s some silver too!” C is our most devoted food project volunteer and also a meal recipient at one of our truck stops. He had some health trouble a couple months ago and when I went to visit him in the hospital his nurse told me, privately, that upon arriving at the hospital he first identified himself as a volunteer at The Nashville Food Project…

—

A few weeks ago my family and I landed in BNA after a weeklong vacation. While Robbie and Lulah were waiting for our bags at baggage claim, I ran into the women’s restroom. As I turned the corner, I saw a young woman and former camper of mine, T. She was servicing the bathroom stalls, working now as a custodian for a company who has a contract with the airport. We had our own little reunion in the bathroom, hugging and squealing with delight at seeing each other after all these years. We caught up a little and I heard about how she wasn’t in school because she was needing to work, how her sister has a job over on Elm Hill Pike and how her mom and grandma had been facing some health problems. I introduced her to Robbie and Lulah, exchanged contact info and we made plans to get together soon.

—

My staff and I have been fortunate enough to work with a small group of men who are living in a halfway house after many, many years in prison. They volunteer in our kitchens every week and do a lot of our baking for the hundreds of meals we send out on our trucks. Because they are at the food project so often, we have had some great time to get to know them and hear their stories. They were all locked up before they had the chance to finish school and get jobs. Now, with criminal records, it is almost impossible for them to find employment—the critical objective before their time is up at the halfway house. My staff and I are hustling now, trying to figure out how we can offer these guys some opportunities or hire them on at a living wage.

I recently heard an interview with Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries in L.A. say about Christians:

“We have to have our sacred in a certain way. It has to be gold-plated and cost millions and cast of thousands or something… We’ve wrestled the cup out of Jesus’ hand and we’ve replaced it with a chalice. Because who doesn’t know that a chalice is more sacred than a cup? Never mind that Jesus didn’t use a chalice... Jesus doesn’t lose any sleep that we will forget that the Eucharist is sacred. He is anxious that we might forget that it’s ordinary, that it’s a meal shared among friends.”

As I grow in faith and in my ministry, I feel God pulling me toward what is ordinary. Pennies in pockets, old coffee cans, a joyful reunion in a bathroom stall, friends in need of work – any work. It is not always comfortable being there. But I don’t think Jesus calls us to be comfortable.

Would love to hear from you this week about times you’ve found God in what is most ordinary and how we can best share the cup in our hands.

Grace and peace and love, tallu