We often say that many hearts and hands go into this work. But what exactly do we mean by that? Follow us while we make a beef lasagna to find out!
Food Donations and Recovery
When most people cook, they decide on a recipe and then go grocery shopping for the ingredients. But for us, it’s the other way around. At any time, our walk-in refrigerator, freezer and dry storage may have thousands of servings of meat, pasta, beans, assorted veggies and more — and most often, it came from generous donors or was diverted on its way to the landfill. In fact, about 65 percent of the food we prepare in our kitchens comes from donations or recovery efforts. When it comes time to plan our menu for the week, we begin by taking stock of what we have and leaving room for any fresh ingredients that may be coming later in the week. This week, our first step is evaluating our protein supply…
Every Tuesday, a few of the fine folks from Porter Road Butcher pull up at the freezer behind our headquarters to drop off a weekly meat donation: usually some combination of ground beef, bacon, sausage and steaks. Always, they’re donating in quantities of hundreds of pounds at a time. If we’re cooking with meat, this is often where our meal begins. This time, we’re using ground beef!
Then comes produce! For something like a beef lasagna, the vegetables we need are fairly basic — mostly tomatoes for the homemade marinara sauce. Besides, all meal recipients will get a veggie side; in this case, it’s a roasted veggie medley. During the summer and fall months especially, we often receive gracious donations from local farms with a bumper crop. These particular tomatoes came from Cul2vate and Bells Bend Farms, with a few cans of recovered Costco tomatoes thrown in to thicken up the sauce a bit.
We round it out with cheese recovered from Whole Foods and lasagna noodles donated by a recent local food drive. From there, we’re ready to start cooking!
Food Preparation and Assembly
A huge branch of our volunteer program is processing donations. Usually, that means getting the bulk food that has been donated or recovered into manageable pieces for our kitchens to cook with. Whether a team of volunteers is chopping veggies or shredding chicken, there are always extra hands around here.
A few days before it was time to put together this meal, volunteers cut up huge chunks of cheese into easily meltable blocks. This ahead-of-time preparation makes it easy for our meals staff to get to work making cheese sauce! Meals Coordinator Bryan cooks off the beef and blends up the marinara sauce. At this point, everything is prepped and ready for assembly.
Food assembly is a little more detail-oriented and labor-intensive than processing, so the volunteer group that helps us put together our lasagna is one that has been around a while. Led by our friend Ann, this group of women comes in a few Thursdays a month to help us cook — a task almost always reserved for Food Project veterans. They do an amazing job!
Food Distribution and Delivery
We always prepare meals at least a day in advance. After this one is baked, it spends the night in our walk-in refrigerator and is reheated the following morning before our share team loads the vans and leaves for their meal distribution routes! Our food access partners include after-school programs, immigrant communities, homeless outreach organizations and so many others in Nashville.
We share this beef lasagna with the veggie roast and a portion of homemade applesauce with friends at Dismas House, Community Care Fellowship, FiftyForward, Project Transformation, Preston Taylor Ministries, the Martha O’Bryan Center, YWCA, Project Return and seven different after-school sites in partnership with the YMCA.
Once it gets to the sites, many more hands are involved in serving, eating and cleaning up after the meal. But that’s a story for another time…