Beets grown by Growing Together farmers. Photo by Emily Harper Beard.
by Johnisha Levi, Development Manager
Food, like politics, is personal. At its very best and most intimate, food is a method of storytelling that can convey the soul of a community—its traditions, its rituals, rhythms and culture. At The Nashville Food Project, we honor this storytelling in different ways.
One way that we honor community and cultural storytelling is through a recent initiative to share more fresh produce. This initiative launched as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in response to community need for fresh, culturally appropriate produce that is otherwise unavailable in greater Nashville. We listened when one of our community leaders and Growing Together participants made a request on behalf of the Bhutanese and Burmese community, which was particularly hard hit by COVID outbreaks and economic losses. Outside of our own programs, we heard a similar need from new meal partners who came to us as a result of the pandemic. Tim Mwizerwa, program director of one of our community partners Legacy Mission Village explains, “T[he Nashville Food Project was] willing to provide fresh produce to a lot of our families that were also culturally competent. You can gather a lot of goods but if families don’t recognize how to cook that produce, it goes to waste. We really appreciate that [The Nashville Food Project is] not sending [our client families] filler foods.” We will be working with six sites in the spring, summer, and fall of 2021 with plans to share food with approximately 82 families per week.
Volunteers with Legacy Mission Villages deliver vegetables along with pantry staples.
Another way that we honor cultural storytelling is in our own kitchens. Every day, Chef Director Bianca Morton proudly channels the innovation and the creativity of her Black ancestors when she is faced with how to best utilize food that is sometimes less than perfect and transform it into meals that are nourishing, life-giving, and appealing to our diverse clientele. Bianca explains: “Black women in the kitchen have traditionally had to put together scraps and turn them into tasty concoctions. That is what we [at the Nashville Food Project] do today with surplus, donations, and the seconds that are not good enough [for certain] stores to sell.” She notes that now it is “trendy” to do what black women did for centuries in this country by reducing waste, and utilizing all their skill and technique to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This is the alchemy of the kitchen, and she and the culinary team she leads are very adept when it comes to the art of transcendental cookery.
Chef Bianca stewards fresh fruit donations to best use by making apple-peach sauce.
While Bianca is our food hero 365 days a year at TNFP, she also takes the time to recognize another local culinary crusader as a powerful inspiration in her everyday work. “Chef Mic True has led the charge in the North Nashville community through his work as a violence interrupter with Gideon's Army. I watch him create healthy meals for this community as well as introduce a vegan lifestyle by coming up with ways to showcase familiar items that they would not normally eat.”
Chef Mic True
We at The Nashville Food Project also celebrate Southern chefs who are educating our communities about the African foodways that are foundational to our cuisine and live on to this day. Chef Kenyatta Ashford of Chattanooga-based Neutral Ground has spent time traveling and studying the West African roots underlying Southern cuisine.
Chef Kenyatta Ashford
His restaurant menu as well as his supper club fundraising events on behalf of high school culinary students has focused on educating the public about the origins of the ingredients, methods and dishes that we cook in the South lest we not forget the debts we owe Black ancestors who struggled, innovated, and persevered often outside of the eye of the historical record.