Meals Coordinator Sarah Farrell shares a quick and easy(ish) way to cut hardy, resilient butternut squash, and we include a few favorite recipes too!

The Nashville Food Project’s Sustainability Team invited the wise Leah Larabell of High Garden Tea to join our staff meeting and lead us in a session of ethical wildcrafting. Naturally, we served snacks too including these Red Clover and Carrot Cupcakes. We’re sharing the recipe (from Elke) with a bit of Leah’s advice too.

Senior Meals Coordinator Meg Doster cooked up a special treat for the St. Luke’s Community House Pre-K children recently — her family’s favorite French Toast Bake. She shares the recipe and a bit about its backstory with us.

Winter holds space for all of us to deal with the hard truths of the year that has just passed. And through the sharp lens of winter’s harsh reality, it gives us something else too: the prospect of new beginnings, and with it, the arrival of spring.

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.

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.

“I tell my daughters that when I go, they’ll know the good recipes by the dirty pages.” —Kim McKinney

That’s the quote that launched Dirty Pages, a recipe storytelling project celebrating our most well-loved recipes with their splatters and stains. We know they make good dishes, because they’ve been handed down to family and friends. But they also act as maps -- their scribbles in the margins helping connect us and tell our stories.

One of the things we love most about the connection between our gardens and our kitchens is the fun challenge of incorporating local, seasonal foods you don’t often find at area grocery stores. For example? All summer long, a vine has been working its way up, over and all around the trellis entryway to the Woodmont garden behind TNFP’s office...

Much of our food recovery efforts are through ongoing Food Donation Partnerships with local grocers, farmers, markets and restaurants. Every day, we’re astounded by the generosity and creativity of these partners…

There may not be a more beloved dessert here at TNFP than hummingbird cake. This is one of those recipes that just keeps following us through the years, with different hand-written versions tucked away in kitchen drawers…

Wwhen we asked the farmers of Growing Together what to do with tomatoes for sampling at the Nashville Farmers’ Market, they suggested achaar — a tomato-based chutney popular in Bhutanese and Nepali cuisine…

When Garden Intern Kate Patterson learned she would need to complete an oral history project for her Foodways class at Belmont University, she decided to compile a cookbook of traditional family recipes from Burmese immigrants growing food in the refugee agriculture program…

We served more than 2,000 meatballs over the last week mixing meat with grated carrot, herbs from the garden, garlic, onion and breadcrumbs. They're nestled here in a marinara sauce that makes good use of 700 pounds of donated tomatoes from the generous folks at Delvin Farms. 

One of our most frequent donations comes from the lovely people at Chipotle, who regularly donate their naturally raised, hormone-free grilled chicken and beef. It is easy to turn this meat into Mexican-inspired dishes, but we love finding ways to transform it into something totally new…