“Food is the centerpiece of all my relationships.”
Jenn arrives as usual to the Tuesday evening volunteer session at our kitchen with several grocery bags in tow, filled to the brim with cans of black beans, bags of rice, bottles of oil and applesauce cups for our pantry. The occasion? A week before, she had a group of friends over to celebrate her newly-finished cookbook and saw it as an opportunity to host a food drive.
That’s right: earlier this year, Jenn wrote, photographed, edited, and designed her own cookbook — a labor of love that aimed to preserve the meals that got her through a tough season. Food has always been central to Jenn’s life, from growing up in a close-knit Italian family to forging friendships around the table here in Nashville. Her grandmother's cheesecake, a cherished but undocumented recipe, inspired her to create a cookbook to ensure her own recipes could be passed on to her loved ones.
The cookbook, aptly titled “A Season of Food with Friends,” is a celebration of the foods that have acted as invitations to connect with others throughout her life, from childhood memories all the way through present day. It includes recipes that feel like home to her (and even a buffalo chicken dip recipe originally inspired by a salad dressing she helped make at the Food Project!). The cookbook itself is a gift to her community: she’s not selling any copies, but is happy to share it with anyone who wants one.
The process of creating her cookbook became a community project in itself. Because she’s not much of a recipe-follower, Jenn wrote the book by actually making her favorite dishes and recording each step she took to bring them to life. The abundance of food from her recipe research resulted in countless impromptu dinner parties: joyful celebrations of food and friendship, shared meals with friends experiencing big life moments, and casual weeknight snack hours. “If I was going to make all that food anyways, I wanted to gather my friends to eat it together,” she explains.
Jenn’s journey with The Nashville Food Project began when she moved to Nashville and sought a way to give back to a city that, as she puts it, "people tend to take from." At the time, the Food Project was still working out of the little kitchen at Woodmont Christian Church, which happened to be across the street from her condo. After an evening spent delivering and serving the community meal at Trinity Community Commons, she knew that this was where she wanted to give. Jenn has become a regular fixture in our Tuesday night prep group and is slated to reach the celebrated milestone of 50 volunteer hours by the end of 2024.
“Food is such a powerful way to bring people together,” Jenn says. “Volunteering here lets me unplug and share that connection with others while giving back to a community I care about.”
We’re so grateful for volunteers like Jenn, whose warmth and creativity reminds us all of the power of food to create community.