Nashville Earth Day
Week Two: Earth Month Challenge!
For Week 2 of Earth Month Challenge, we’re taking a look at food waste.In the U.S. alone, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of all food produced. Wasted food is the largest contributor of material placed in landfills, which produces approximately 15% of all methane emissions. The water, energy, and labor used to produce wasted food could have been directed for other purposes. Not to mention the nourishment that is wasted that could have gone to feed families in need.
A Spirit of Service
"What I love about these programs as we think about the spirit of service is these programs are built on the strengths of those who participate and not their deficits." - our founder Tallu Schuyler Quinn delivering her acceptance speech for the 2020 Alumna Spirit of Service Award at Harpeth Hall School. You can watch the full speech here, where we also offer our gratitude to Harpeth Hall for their recent donations helping us stock our pantry and provide nourishing meals in the community.
Flood Relief: A Few Ways to Help
It’s hard to believe we have faced yet another set of tragic circumstances in Nashville after a brutal year of a tornado, COVID, a bombing and now floods, which recently took the lives of seven Nashvillians. We are doing our small part by sending out meals alongside Metro Social Services, Open Table Nashville and People Loving People. These organizations have all been tirelessly caring for and advocating for our neighbors without housing who have shouldered the brunt of this latest trauma. Additional ways to help partners and friends listed here.
Offering a Place of Hope and Joy
When Food Tells a Story
Goodbye (and Thank You), Winter: A Reflection on Finding Beauty Even in the Toughest Seasons
New Seasons, New Phases: An Update Regarding Volunteers
A Collective Look at the Food Heroes Series (So Far)
An Update on the Leadership of The Nashville Food Project
This is a consequential year for The Nashville Food Project — one in which we will commemorate the organization’s tenth anniversary. I am honored to lead our board through this milestone as 2021-2022 Board Chair for The Nashville Food Project. It’s also a year in which we’re making deliberate, strategic, and thoughtful steps regarding leadership of The Nashville Food Project. And in so many ways, this is our most vital work of 2021.
Finding Dignity and Power in Food
Partner Spotlight: Community Care Fellowship
State of the Plate: A Meal Study for Better Nutrition and Less Waste
Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers studied our meals for children this summer to help us learn more about how meals are consumed—and to help us maximize economically sustainable nutrition for better child health. While we always try to include as many fresh vegetables from our gardens and local farms as possible, researchers formally measured the nutritional value of our meals. Then they looked at the parts of the meals children wanted to eat, and which parts were left on the plate.
Recommended Reads: Thanksgiving Edition
For the Thanksgiving weekend, we pulled together a few recent, thought-provoking articles, podcasts and threads, from how to reduce waste to the story of Thanksgiving from the Indigenous perspective as well as an immigrant story of the holiday, and a Twitter thread that lifts up farm workers who help bring us the dishes that grace our tables on this day.
We are only just beginning
On November 3, many of us across the nation donned our masks—or sealed our envelopes—and submitted our votes with a deep conviction about which candidates will best set us up to move the needle in the direction of our values…However, countless unknowns, rising COVID numbers, and the brokenness of centuries of injustice continue to gnaw at us. The same convictions that surround the way we voted in this presidential election have shallow roots if they end when a POTUS is announced.
Partner Spotlight: Trap Garden
We love collaborating with and supporting the vibrant, creative work of community building-organizations in our city. And this fall, we have been especially pleased to work with Trap Garden. Farmers from the Growing Together program have been providing vegetables through Trap Garden and Preston Taylor Ministries.
Apple Season Keeps Kitchen Buzzing
Even imperfect apples get put to the highest, best use in our kitchen. The meals team often makes apple sauce— sometimes tossing in other fruits such as berries from the weekly Whole Foods donations or pears from a recent food drive. Fruits like plums even give it a pink hue. We try to make our applesauce as low in sugar as possible (or no sugar when using the sweetest varieties like Fuji). See recipe here.
Hard things and simmering soups
Garden volunteer extraordinaire, Linda Bodfish once said that when the needs change, we change with them. And as we’ve been in the fields, passing bags along (metaphorically and for some staff, quite literally), there have been moments of clarity when we see the opportunity of these moments of crisis. We are challenged to recenter our work around TNFP’s core values and move in a common rhythm to meet the ever-changing needs of our neighbors.