Community, Gardens, Volunteers
The Nashville Food Project
The Community Agriculture Network Is Live—And ...

The Community Agriculture Network is a collaboration of growing spaces—community gardens, church plots, urban farms, and orchards—each managed by trusted leaders in their respective communities. These sites are independently managed but supported by TNFP through shared tools, technical assistance, access to seed and compost, and a network of volunteers and educators.

The Community Agriculture Network Is Live—And Growing!

Generosity!

This guy! Continued thanks to John Patrick of Foggy Hollow Farm who dropped off 30 dozen certified organic eggs for us to use in our meals. John is building a sustainable poultry network in our community and his enthusiasm for chickens is contagious! You can purchase his eggs, meat and chickens. Learn more at foggyhollowfarm.net

The MEAT Report

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.

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

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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) 

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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