Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Feel the Bern('s)
The first time I visited the famed Bern's Steak House in Tampa I was an 18-year-old baton twirler in town to perform at a college football game. My priorities at the time were:
1) Boys
2) Not dropping the baton
2) Not dropping the baton
3) Not gaining weight as to look decent while trying to not drop the baton.
I have no idea what I ate at Bern's expect for a bite of gator appetizer, and I only remember that bite because I have a photo of it.
But now that my priorities have shifted, I've been curious about Bern's again because:
1) John T. Edge reviewed it recently in Garden & Gun
1) John T. Edge reviewed it recently in Garden & Gun
2) I read in Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte that Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic at Vogue, once called it the best restaurant in America
3) My boyfriend's mother lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, so I knew I'd be near Bern's on a trip we were planning over my furlough.
We decided to drive up from St. Pete for our Valentine's dinner. But it seems Bern's is one of those restaurants even with its fame (or maybe because of its fame) that locals try to talk you out of visiting. They say it's overrated, too expensive and old-fashioned, and yes, it's a bit of all those things. But it's also an *experience.* It's a "last meal" kind of restaurant as Tony aptly put it. And while I certainly don't aspire to become a regular, I'm glad we went.
Once seated at our table, we looked over the menu. It's sort of like steak math.
You choose your cut of meat, then thickness, and then how many people you want it to serve.
With the help of our waiter, I went with a 6-ounce Chateaubriand and Tony chose a 17-ounce porterhouse, the most aged steak on the menu. Each entree comes with choice of French onion soup and salad, which could not have thrilled me more.
You choose your cut of meat, then thickness, and then how many people you want it to serve.
With the help of our waiter, I went with a 6-ounce Chateaubriand and Tony chose a 17-ounce porterhouse, the most aged steak on the menu. Each entree comes with choice of French onion soup and salad, which could not have thrilled me more.
The French onion arrived in a perfectly sized pewter bowl -- refreshingly smaller than most vessels for purchase in a modern-day Williams-Sonoma. Tony upgraded to the lobster bisque.
I also should add my favorite thing about our server. He kept offering tips on how to make our meal more enjoyable as if they were secrets he had never uttered to another soul. Born in Yugoslavia and raised in France, he's been at Bern's for 13 years. He sat down our soups and pointed to a tray of garlic melba toasts that had arrived earlier. "Crumble these into your soup," he said to me, in a near whisper. Then to Tony: "To your soup, do nothing."
I slid a cracker under the blanket of cheese into a deep brown liquid, thick with soft onions, and waited a minute. Divine. Tony's soup tasted rich and velvety with cream and butter. Drops of sherry glistened on top. He refused to try even one spoonful of my soup. "That would be like drinking orange juice after brushing my teeth," he said.
Our salads came next -- also perfect in size and with grated white cheddar and vegetables compartmentalized neatly rather than tossed together. The dressing arrived on the side. Before we had a chance to taste them, our server spooned some of Tony's dressing on another garlic toast and handed it to him. "Try on this," he whispered again. "Danish blue cheese, aged 6 months."
Something about the server and our experience also reminded me of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. I imagined backstage at Bern's as more chaotic with clanging silverware and plates -- a foreign land where hardly anyone speaks English -- and vastly different from the civilized floor that prances to the tune of classical music. At one point, our poor guy was so in the weeds, that he hunched over a tray of baked potatoes, frantically dressing them with sour cream and butter, while muttering wildly to himself. But by the time he reached our table with the potatoes, he had regained his composure. "Anything you like," he kept repeating.
I also should add my favorite thing about our server. He kept offering tips on how to make our meal more enjoyable as if they were secrets he had never uttered to another soul. Born in Yugoslavia and raised in France, he's been at Bern's for 13 years. He sat down our soups and pointed to a tray of garlic melba toasts that had arrived earlier. "Crumble these into your soup," he said to me, in a near whisper. Then to Tony: "To your soup, do nothing."
I slid a cracker under the blanket of cheese into a deep brown liquid, thick with soft onions, and waited a minute. Divine. Tony's soup tasted rich and velvety with cream and butter. Drops of sherry glistened on top. He refused to try even one spoonful of my soup. "That would be like drinking orange juice after brushing my teeth," he said.
Our salads came next -- also perfect in size and with grated white cheddar and vegetables compartmentalized neatly rather than tossed together. The dressing arrived on the side. Before we had a chance to taste them, our server spooned some of Tony's dressing on another garlic toast and handed it to him. "Try on this," he whispered again. "Danish blue cheese, aged 6 months."
Something about the server and our experience also reminded me of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. I imagined backstage at Bern's as more chaotic with clanging silverware and plates -- a foreign land where hardly anyone speaks English -- and vastly different from the civilized floor that prances to the tune of classical music. At one point, our poor guy was so in the weeds, that he hunched over a tray of baked potatoes, frantically dressing them with sour cream and butter, while muttering wildly to himself. But by the time he reached our table with the potatoes, he had regained his composure. "Anything you like," he kept repeating.
Our steaks arrived, and Tony's gigantic bone-in porterhouse looked like something out of a cartoon. But with a porterhouse you have bites of filet on one side of the bone and bites of strip on the other, with a small portion on the side of tenderloin. It was great fun to compare his cuts of meat aged like the cheese with my tender filet with the grain of the meat running horizontally in contrast to typical filet mignon. The steaks were garnished with shaved carrot salad.
"No one needs to eat half a plate of steak," Tony said as he cleaned his plate. "They need to eat their salad fully. Eat all their broccoli and half a filet."
No one needs to retire to the "dessert room" at Bern's either, but that's what we did.
Essentially a separate restaurant on the second floor, the dessert room is a collection of dimly lit cubicles -- very romantic and old school -- with a telephone in each for dialing up our server in the case of dessert emergency. The phones also have buttons for choosing the genre of music that you'd like to hear in your cube.
We passed on "broadway" and "contemporary" for the live piano jazz piped in from the dessert room foyer.
Being at Bern's, it felt apropos to order the oldest school of desserts on the menu, so I suggested the Baked Alaska.
"Baked Alaska?" Tony said. "I thought that was some kind of fish."
"No one needs to eat half a plate of steak," Tony said as he cleaned his plate. "They need to eat their salad fully. Eat all their broccoli and half a filet."
No one needs to retire to the "dessert room" at Bern's either, but that's what we did.
Essentially a separate restaurant on the second floor, the dessert room is a collection of dimly lit cubicles -- very romantic and old school -- with a telephone in each for dialing up our server in the case of dessert emergency. The phones also have buttons for choosing the genre of music that you'd like to hear in your cube.
We passed on "broadway" and "contemporary" for the live piano jazz piped in from the dessert room foyer.
Being at Bern's, it felt apropos to order the oldest school of desserts on the menu, so I suggested the Baked Alaska.
"Baked Alaska?" Tony said. "I thought that was some kind of fish."
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
MFK and Minestrone
"Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry,
as well as for those who are tired
or worried
or cross
or in debt
or in a moderate amount of pain
or in love
or in robust health
or in any kind of business huggermuggery,
is minestrone...
It is a thick unsophisticated soup,
heart-warming and soul-staying,
full of aromatic vegetables
and well bound at the last
with good cheese."
-M.F.K. Fisher
It's cold tonight, and I've been inspired to make minestrone.
I looked over several recipes including
M.F.K. Fisher's from How to Cook a Wolf
and decided on a variation of
Mark Bittman's from How to Cook Everything
instead.
It's simple and makes use of basic winter ingredients
and it makes me feel good.
Winter Minestrone
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 1/2 to 2 cups winter squash, diced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
6 cups vegetable stock
1 cup chopped tomato (canned with juice)
2 cups kale or collards, cut into smaller pieces
1/2 cup arugula
Pasta (whatever you have on hand)
Parmesan cheese
1. Put oil into a large, deep pot over medium heat. When hot, add the onion, carrot and celery. Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the squash and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring for a minute or two, then add the stock and the tomatoes; bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Cook, stirring every now and then, until the vegetables are fairly soft, about 15 minutes.
3. Add the greens and adjust the heat once again so the mixture simmers. After about 5 minutes, add the pasta. Cook until all the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes more. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with cheese.
2. Add the squash and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring for a minute or two, then add the stock and the tomatoes; bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Cook, stirring every now and then, until the vegetables are fairly soft, about 15 minutes.
3. Add the greens and adjust the heat once again so the mixture simmers. After about 5 minutes, add the pasta. Cook until all the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes more. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with cheese.
Adapted recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.
A pretty song for cooking on a cold day...
Friday, January 20, 2012
Winter sun
Tonight I'm making a Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie.
I'm inspired after spending a morning last week at the home of pastry chef Lisa Donovan for a Tennessean story.
"I sort of block the months of the year off with types of pies," she said. "I just love citrus in winter."
I'm inspired after spending a morning last week at the home of pastry chef Lisa Donovan for a Tennessean story.
"I sort of block the months of the year off with types of pies," she said. "I just love citrus in winter."
--------
Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says
To the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that.
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
-Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Couple of chickens
I recently made Crispy Oven-Fried Drumsticks from Southern Living for a story in The Tennessean about lighter comfort food.
They rocked way more than I expected them to.
As I wrote in the story, the drumsticks stay moist, and I love the hand-held shape for quintessential fried chicken chomp. And more than crunch of cornflakes, these have a buttermilk bath before going for a roll in Parmesan and cayenne for a touch of heat.
We photographed the chicken at my house and decided to shoot it on the pan. We wanted to show that they're baked while also keeping a "hot" surface with the aluminum foil.
They rocked way more than I expected them to.
As I wrote in the story, the drumsticks stay moist, and I love the hand-held shape for quintessential fried chicken chomp. And more than crunch of cornflakes, these have a buttermilk bath before going for a roll in Parmesan and cayenne for a touch of heat.
We photographed the chicken at my house and decided to shoot it on the pan. We wanted to show that they're baked while also keeping a "hot" surface with the aluminum foil.
(photo by Larry McCormack, The Tennessean)
I'll make them again.
This weekend, though, I'm headed to Memphis. So yes, I'll be having the full-fat, non-baked version at Gus's Fried Chicken, and I can't wait.
In the meantime, a really great song about chicken...
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Keep hoppin'
I only make Hoppin' John once a year (on New Year’s Eve). But you know what? That’s gonna change.
At the new year, I figure it’s my chance to work in lots of black-eyed peas, and it goes well with collard greens (both for good fortune). But I love the hoppin' john recipe that I cook from so much that I moan and sigh with dread over every bite until the last pea is gone.
And though I do think there’s something to be said for dishes saved for special occasions, I’ve decided this one’s too good to cook just once a year. It’s simple and warm both in temperature and spice, and the rice -- plump partly from a soak in beer – tastes like how a pub feels in winter.
I found this recipe in a copy of GQ magazine back in 1998. I still have the original page -- ripped out, crinkled, stained and hole-punched for the binder where I keep favorites.
But even more than taste, I’m hoping that this meal will remind me throughout the year – not just on January 1 – that it’s okay to start fresh again. And again. And again.
Hoppin’ John
Adapted from Steve Steinberg’s recipe in GQ
Serves 8
1 ½ cups dried black-eyed peas
1 cup uncooked rice
2 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
About ¼ pound spicy pork sausage, sliced
About ¼ pound mild chicken sausage, sliced
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon cayenne
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup beer (I like to use Yazoo Dos Perros.)
1. Place black-eyed peas in a deep pot. Add enough cold water to cover by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes or until peas are soft. Turn off heat, cover and let sit for an hour. Drain peas, reserving the liquid and set aside.
2. In a large saucepan, sauté onion and peppers in oil for 5 minutes. Add sausage slices and sauté for another 5 minutes or until onions are almost clear. Add rice and stir to coat. Add drained black-eyed peas, spices, 2 cups of the reserved liquid and beer. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Stir, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Remove from stove and let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Serve with cornbread, collard greens and hot sauce (I like Frank's).
At the new year, I figure it’s my chance to work in lots of black-eyed peas, and it goes well with collard greens (both for good fortune). But I love the hoppin' john recipe that I cook from so much that I moan and sigh with dread over every bite until the last pea is gone.
And though I do think there’s something to be said for dishes saved for special occasions, I’ve decided this one’s too good to cook just once a year. It’s simple and warm both in temperature and spice, and the rice -- plump partly from a soak in beer – tastes like how a pub feels in winter.
I found this recipe in a copy of GQ magazine back in 1998. I still have the original page -- ripped out, crinkled, stained and hole-punched for the binder where I keep favorites.
But even more than taste, I’m hoping that this meal will remind me throughout the year – not just on January 1 – that it’s okay to start fresh again. And again. And again.
Hoppin’ John
Adapted from Steve Steinberg’s recipe in GQ
Serves 8
1 ½ cups dried black-eyed peas
1 cup uncooked rice
2 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
About ¼ pound spicy pork sausage, sliced
About ¼ pound mild chicken sausage, sliced
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon cayenne
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup beer (I like to use Yazoo Dos Perros.)
1. Place black-eyed peas in a deep pot. Add enough cold water to cover by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes or until peas are soft. Turn off heat, cover and let sit for an hour. Drain peas, reserving the liquid and set aside.
2. In a large saucepan, sauté onion and peppers in oil for 5 minutes. Add sausage slices and sauté for another 5 minutes or until onions are almost clear. Add rice and stir to coat. Add drained black-eyed peas, spices, 2 cups of the reserved liquid and beer. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Stir, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Remove from stove and let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Serve with cornbread, collard greens and hot sauce (I like Frank's).
Friday, December 30, 2011
Another helping, please...
As part of year-end reflection, I’ve been looking at my work from 2011 to decide what I liked/didn’t like and also to determine the subjects I hope to write more about in 2012.
It might seem simple, but I have to keep reminding myself that I’m most interested in writing and life when I stay ahead on story ideas – when I’m trying to carve out little roads rather than just fill potholes in other words. I feel like I should always be asking: “What do I need to say?” "What do people really need to know?”
Here’s something I really wanted people to know about in 2011:
The Nashville Food Project serves hot meals, hope
By Jennifer Justus | The Tennessean
This is the story of a 42-cent meal.
A plate of baked chicken with balsamic sweet potatoes; a salad of homegrown lettuces tossed with peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, herbed croutons made with Provence bread and freshly whisked lime vinaigrette; and ending with a scoop of bread pudding drizzled with vanilla glaze.
Yes, that meal costs only 42 cents. No, it's not especially efficient.
But The Nashville Food Project Executive Director Tallu Schuyler Quinn
is OK with that. Because the energy it takes to help make this meal —
served to some of Nashville's poor — helps make connections among
local food advocacy organizations while reducing waste, invigorating
volunteers and emphasizing cooking over convenience. It provides
nourishment, but also education and empowerment. So, yes, this meal
costs 42 cents, but it's worth much more than that.
The Nashville Food Project (TNFP), which changed its name from Mobile
Loaves & Fishes recently, has been serving meals to Nashville's poor
since 2007. Until lately, it mostly provided sack lunches with a
turkey sandwich, boiled egg, bag of trail mix, cheese stick, piece of
fruit, pretzels and bottled water. But increasingly, the organization
has been adding hot meal runs to underserved areas — providing
homecooked food with produce grown at the organization's two gardens
or gleaned from farmers market donations and Second Harvest Food Bank.
While the sack lunches cost about $200 for 80 people, the hot meals
cost about $31 for 82 people. Meanwhile, as Americans waste about 27
percent of food available for consumption, the hot meals help move the
excess to those who don't have access.
We followed the process to learn just how a 42-cent meal comes to be.
A numbers game
Tucked inside Second Harvest Food Bank's warehouse with beeping
forklifts and boxes stacked to the ceiling is the "open shopping" room
for nonprofit groups. It's the size of a convenience store —
fluorescent lights, freezer cases along the walls, shelves lined with
boxes of Triscuits and Cheez-Its.
The food here, facing its last days, has mostly been donated by
Kroger, Publix and Walmart, and it will be given away or sold by
weight at greatly reduced prices — 25 cents per pound of meat, 4 cents
for dairy.
Anne Sale, hot meal coordinator for TNFP, begins her Tuesday each week
at open shopping, and she likes to go early, before the "good stuff
gets gone." She heads straight for the meat, with a pallet on wheels
as her cart.
"I got a bunch of pork tenderloins today, which I'm so excited about.
... Oh, eggs! We can use those for the bread pudding," she said.
Sale tries to plan the hot meals a week in advance, but she'll make
adjustments if necessary, such as when a batch of slightly overripe
bananas became banana pudding.
The selection at open shopping can seem random — cans of clam sauce,
scads of pickles, guacamole — but with a little creativity, it can
make a fine meal.
"I'm a little bit of a numbers person, too, so I like to create as
nice a meal as I can with as little as possible," Sale said. "All this
is basically gonna get trashed. ... If I wouldn't eat it, I'm not
gonna get it."
Sale pointed out a box of frozen sweet potatoes. "I would normally get
those, but we just got bushels from the garden."
She also has to choose things she can get in large quantities. Each of
the two trucks owned by The Nashville Food Project can hold about 85
meals.
"Dessert, I kind of struggle with, because I want it to be healthy,"
she said, picking up a box of cake mix. "Trans fat, zero. I'm gonna
get some."
And then, looking in the freezer case, she spotted some sausage that
she hadn't noticed before. "This is turkey. I'll buy that." She had
made jambalaya last week.
Sale collaborates with volunteers at The Nashville Food Project and
must make quick decisions about the menu. But health is important to
her, too. She's fit, exercises regularly and practices moderation and
healthy choices, which she works into the hot meals. Her background in
banking also serves her well on the financial end of menu planning for
a nonprofit.
After having the contents of her cart weighed, Anne loaded it into her
car. She'll head back to The Nashville Food Project's headquarters in
Green Hills to prepare for the next day's run. She'll make croutons by
using donated Provence bread, donated olive oil and dried basil from
the garden. Meanwhile, volunteers will make homemade bread pudding.
But as she loaded her car, she worried about some limes she had been
given by a caterer who had extra after making a lime curd.
"I've still gotta figure out what to do with those," she said. "I just
love that challenge."
New name, focus
TNFP serves hot meals on Wednesdays and Fridays with plans to add a
meal on Thursdays in November and a fourth weekly meal in January.
Volunteer coordinator Nicole Lambelet said that the idea to serve hot
meals initially came from a desire to pack more nutrition into each
plate while using produce from the garden or donations. But then they
realized that the hot meals could be cheaper.
Sale was part of that ah-ha moment with Quinn when the pair sat down
with a recipe for chicken pot pie.
"This is like $30, and that's all," Sale remembered for a meal that
served about 80. The aluminum pans used for serving the meals (which
they try to use more than once) are the largest expense, along with
other serving supplies.
The emphasis on hot meals also happened to coincide with the rollout
of a new name for the organization. The group recently broke away from
Austin-based Mobile Loaves & Fishes.
"It was an amicable divorce," Quinn said. "I think we outgrew the
national organization and what was expected to be part of it."
Quinn said she wanted to be a local organization using local money
with local volunteers focusing on the local problems of hunger and
poverty. And although Mobile Loaves & Fishes isn't affiliated with a
particular religion, Quinn — a minister at Woodmont Christian Church —
wanted to remove the association.
"I would never want the people we serve to think they have to believe
in something in exchange for our food."
Fresh, local ingredients
On the morning of the Wednesday hot meal truck run, Sale drizzled
glaze onto bread pudding while volunteer Rachel Blair, a caterer of 30
years, whisked up a citrus vinaigrette. She had found a place for the
donated limes.
The meal had come together mostly through donations, harvests from the
garden and purchases made at a discount. Cucumbers, tomatoes and
peppers had been gleaned by The Society of St. Andrew, an organization
that picks up leftover food from local farmers markets and
redistributes it where needed. Garbanzo beans, adding protein and heft
to the salad, were purchased from Second Harvest at 18 cents a can.
For later meals, Sale pointed out a bowl of figs donated by Whole
Foods Market, a pallet of tomatoes from the farmers market and a
colorful bowl of antohi peppers from Eaton's Creek Organics. There
were 25 logs of goat cheese and chocolate almond tea bread in the
refrigerator, also from Whole Foods, and a bucket of Jerusalem
artichokes just harvested from the garden that she'll roast with
potatoes for meals later in the week.
Care and feeding
The truck crew for the day, coordinated from a pool of about 650
active volunteers, included Quinn, longtime volunteer Becky Atkinson,
and newcomer Judy Alford, a Hendersonville farmer at Hunt's Century
Farm. Alford had donated some corn, turnips, potatoes and tomatoes in
July and wanted to learn more.
"I'm just kinda trying to figure out the bigger picture," she said. "I
just love that you are using produce that we can't sell." It's a
situation she sees often, like when the ugliest tomatoes — still
perfect in taste — get left behind.
The truck headed toward Dickerson Pike and Trinity Lane, an area known
for high crime, drug use and prostitution.
"This is where the thistles grow," Quinn said. It's an expression used
by the Magdalene House's Thistle Farms, a group that helps get
prostitutes off the streets.
The people who live in many of the motels along this stretch of North
Nashville pay $600 to $700 a month for rooms with maybe a small fridge
and microwave for cooking. Some are in transition from homelessness.
Others live in a motel room for decades.
"If I were driving down this road this time of day," Alford said, "I
would have thought no one was here."
But when the truck pulled into the Key Motel and Quinn honked the
horn, a man stepped out of his room and waved. Residents trickled out
of their doors as volunteers formed an assembly line.
Lisa Allen, 49, said she looks forward to seeing the truck every week.
"Wednesday at 12 o'clock, I'm like 'Where you at?' " she said.
"I came here 10 years ago to spend a weekend and never left," she
said, though she's worked as a manager at the hotel for the past three
years. "It's not what it's all cracked up to be."
But on this Wednesday, she had particularly bad news for volunteer
Becky Atkinson. A former resident named Linda that Atkinson knew had
died. Allen said Linda had suffered from AIDS and cirrhosis, caused by
alcoholism. Allen knew Atkinson would want to hear.
"I love them to death," she said of TNFP. "They are thoughtful people.
They not only come and serve us lunch, they pay attention to us."
"Just like her," she said, pointing to Atkinson. "They talk to you,
and if they can, they give us suggestions."
Despite the bad news, the volunteers at TNFP have hope. The group made
the decision, Quinn said, to focus on smaller neighborhoods such as
Dickerson Road and the Trinity Lane area where their small
organization can have a greater impact by partnering with other
organizations. As a mobile unit, they also choose out-of the-way
places that aren't near a bus line or downtown, where more meals are
served to the homeless and poor.
"As we've made this transition, more of the people we serve have
started volunteering with us," Quinn said. The formerly homeless
residents at the Hobson House, a place created after Tent City was
flooded in 2010, now help prepare and deliver TNFP meals, sending the
message that those served can someday do the serving.
Quinn and Lambelet also hope to implement cooking education in 2012.
"Not only do people need access to food, they really need to be
empowered to make it themselves," Lambelet said.
Further down the road, Lambelet spoke of a "dream" to have a
pay-what-you-can restaurant. Located in a food desert with alternative
staffing, it would provide jobs, education and an income stream for
the organization.
But even now, the group's efforts prioritize cooking over a meal that
can be standardized.
Resident Shawn Lewis also stopped by the truck to grab a quick lunch.
He works at a tire shop and has been staying at the hotel for about
two years. He makes maybe $35 a day, which is hardly more than what he
pays in rent per day.
"You gotta eat somehow," he said. "It helps. ... Sometimes you can't
get to the mission."
And so as volunteers packed up to leave, it seems the hot meals — and
lending an ear — are making a difference.
"I'm sorry about Linda," Atkinson said to Allen.
"I am, too," she called back with boxes of food stacked in her hands
for her boyfriend and grandchildren. "I really do miss her."
It might seem simple, but I have to keep reminding myself that I’m most interested in writing and life when I stay ahead on story ideas – when I’m trying to carve out little roads rather than just fill potholes in other words. I feel like I should always be asking: “What do I need to say?” "What do people really need to know?”
Here’s something I really wanted people to know about in 2011:
(Photo by Shelley Mays, The Tennessean)
By Jennifer Justus | The Tennessean
This is the story of a 42-cent meal.
A plate of baked chicken with balsamic sweet potatoes; a salad of homegrown lettuces tossed with peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, herbed croutons made with Provence bread and freshly whisked lime vinaigrette; and ending with a scoop of bread pudding drizzled with vanilla glaze.
Yes, that meal costs only 42 cents. No, it's not especially efficient.
But The Nashville Food Project Executive Director Tallu Schuyler Quinn
is OK with that. Because the energy it takes to help make this meal —
served to some of Nashville's poor — helps make connections among
local food advocacy organizations while reducing waste, invigorating
volunteers and emphasizing cooking over convenience. It provides
nourishment, but also education and empowerment. So, yes, this meal
costs 42 cents, but it's worth much more than that.
The Nashville Food Project (TNFP), which changed its name from Mobile
Loaves & Fishes recently, has been serving meals to Nashville's poor
since 2007. Until lately, it mostly provided sack lunches with a
turkey sandwich, boiled egg, bag of trail mix, cheese stick, piece of
fruit, pretzels and bottled water. But increasingly, the organization
has been adding hot meal runs to underserved areas — providing
homecooked food with produce grown at the organization's two gardens
or gleaned from farmers market donations and Second Harvest Food Bank.
While the sack lunches cost about $200 for 80 people, the hot meals
cost about $31 for 82 people. Meanwhile, as Americans waste about 27
percent of food available for consumption, the hot meals help move the
excess to those who don't have access.
We followed the process to learn just how a 42-cent meal comes to be.
A numbers game
Tucked inside Second Harvest Food Bank's warehouse with beeping
forklifts and boxes stacked to the ceiling is the "open shopping" room
for nonprofit groups. It's the size of a convenience store —
fluorescent lights, freezer cases along the walls, shelves lined with
boxes of Triscuits and Cheez-Its.
The food here, facing its last days, has mostly been donated by
Kroger, Publix and Walmart, and it will be given away or sold by
weight at greatly reduced prices — 25 cents per pound of meat, 4 cents
for dairy.
Anne Sale, hot meal coordinator for TNFP, begins her Tuesday each week
at open shopping, and she likes to go early, before the "good stuff
gets gone." She heads straight for the meat, with a pallet on wheels
as her cart.
"I got a bunch of pork tenderloins today, which I'm so excited about.
... Oh, eggs! We can use those for the bread pudding," she said.
Sale tries to plan the hot meals a week in advance, but she'll make
adjustments if necessary, such as when a batch of slightly overripe
bananas became banana pudding.
The selection at open shopping can seem random — cans of clam sauce,
scads of pickles, guacamole — but with a little creativity, it can
make a fine meal.
"I'm a little bit of a numbers person, too, so I like to create as
nice a meal as I can with as little as possible," Sale said. "All this
is basically gonna get trashed. ... If I wouldn't eat it, I'm not
gonna get it."
Sale pointed out a box of frozen sweet potatoes. "I would normally get
those, but we just got bushels from the garden."
She also has to choose things she can get in large quantities. Each of
the two trucks owned by The Nashville Food Project can hold about 85
meals.
"Dessert, I kind of struggle with, because I want it to be healthy,"
she said, picking up a box of cake mix. "Trans fat, zero. I'm gonna
get some."
And then, looking in the freezer case, she spotted some sausage that
she hadn't noticed before. "This is turkey. I'll buy that." She had
made jambalaya last week.
Sale collaborates with volunteers at The Nashville Food Project and
must make quick decisions about the menu. But health is important to
her, too. She's fit, exercises regularly and practices moderation and
healthy choices, which she works into the hot meals. Her background in
banking also serves her well on the financial end of menu planning for
a nonprofit.
After having the contents of her cart weighed, Anne loaded it into her
car. She'll head back to The Nashville Food Project's headquarters in
Green Hills to prepare for the next day's run. She'll make croutons by
using donated Provence bread, donated olive oil and dried basil from
the garden. Meanwhile, volunteers will make homemade bread pudding.
But as she loaded her car, she worried about some limes she had been
given by a caterer who had extra after making a lime curd.
"I've still gotta figure out what to do with those," she said. "I just
love that challenge."
New name, focus
TNFP serves hot meals on Wednesdays and Fridays with plans to add a
meal on Thursdays in November and a fourth weekly meal in January.
Volunteer coordinator Nicole Lambelet said that the idea to serve hot
meals initially came from a desire to pack more nutrition into each
plate while using produce from the garden or donations. But then they
realized that the hot meals could be cheaper.
Sale was part of that ah-ha moment with Quinn when the pair sat down
with a recipe for chicken pot pie.
"This is like $30, and that's all," Sale remembered for a meal that
served about 80. The aluminum pans used for serving the meals (which
they try to use more than once) are the largest expense, along with
other serving supplies.
The emphasis on hot meals also happened to coincide with the rollout
of a new name for the organization. The group recently broke away from
Austin-based Mobile Loaves & Fishes.
"It was an amicable divorce," Quinn said. "I think we outgrew the
national organization and what was expected to be part of it."
Quinn said she wanted to be a local organization using local money
with local volunteers focusing on the local problems of hunger and
poverty. And although Mobile Loaves & Fishes isn't affiliated with a
particular religion, Quinn — a minister at Woodmont Christian Church —
wanted to remove the association.
"I would never want the people we serve to think they have to believe
in something in exchange for our food."
Fresh, local ingredients
On the morning of the Wednesday hot meal truck run, Sale drizzled
glaze onto bread pudding while volunteer Rachel Blair, a caterer of 30
years, whisked up a citrus vinaigrette. She had found a place for the
donated limes.
The meal had come together mostly through donations, harvests from the
garden and purchases made at a discount. Cucumbers, tomatoes and
peppers had been gleaned by The Society of St. Andrew, an organization
that picks up leftover food from local farmers markets and
redistributes it where needed. Garbanzo beans, adding protein and heft
to the salad, were purchased from Second Harvest at 18 cents a can.
For later meals, Sale pointed out a bowl of figs donated by Whole
Foods Market, a pallet of tomatoes from the farmers market and a
colorful bowl of antohi peppers from Eaton's Creek Organics. There
were 25 logs of goat cheese and chocolate almond tea bread in the
refrigerator, also from Whole Foods, and a bucket of Jerusalem
artichokes just harvested from the garden that she'll roast with
potatoes for meals later in the week.
Care and feeding
The truck crew for the day, coordinated from a pool of about 650
active volunteers, included Quinn, longtime volunteer Becky Atkinson,
and newcomer Judy Alford, a Hendersonville farmer at Hunt's Century
Farm. Alford had donated some corn, turnips, potatoes and tomatoes in
July and wanted to learn more.
"I'm just kinda trying to figure out the bigger picture," she said. "I
just love that you are using produce that we can't sell." It's a
situation she sees often, like when the ugliest tomatoes — still
perfect in taste — get left behind.
The truck headed toward Dickerson Pike and Trinity Lane, an area known
for high crime, drug use and prostitution.
"This is where the thistles grow," Quinn said. It's an expression used
by the Magdalene House's Thistle Farms, a group that helps get
prostitutes off the streets.
The people who live in many of the motels along this stretch of North
Nashville pay $600 to $700 a month for rooms with maybe a small fridge
and microwave for cooking. Some are in transition from homelessness.
Others live in a motel room for decades.
"If I were driving down this road this time of day," Alford said, "I
would have thought no one was here."
But when the truck pulled into the Key Motel and Quinn honked the
horn, a man stepped out of his room and waved. Residents trickled out
of their doors as volunteers formed an assembly line.
Lisa Allen, 49, said she looks forward to seeing the truck every week.
"Wednesday at 12 o'clock, I'm like 'Where you at?' " she said.
"I came here 10 years ago to spend a weekend and never left," she
said, though she's worked as a manager at the hotel for the past three
years. "It's not what it's all cracked up to be."
But on this Wednesday, she had particularly bad news for volunteer
Becky Atkinson. A former resident named Linda that Atkinson knew had
died. Allen said Linda had suffered from AIDS and cirrhosis, caused by
alcoholism. Allen knew Atkinson would want to hear.
"I love them to death," she said of TNFP. "They are thoughtful people.
They not only come and serve us lunch, they pay attention to us."
"Just like her," she said, pointing to Atkinson. "They talk to you,
and if they can, they give us suggestions."
Despite the bad news, the volunteers at TNFP have hope. The group made
the decision, Quinn said, to focus on smaller neighborhoods such as
Dickerson Road and the Trinity Lane area where their small
organization can have a greater impact by partnering with other
organizations. As a mobile unit, they also choose out-of the-way
places that aren't near a bus line or downtown, where more meals are
served to the homeless and poor.
"As we've made this transition, more of the people we serve have
started volunteering with us," Quinn said. The formerly homeless
residents at the Hobson House, a place created after Tent City was
flooded in 2010, now help prepare and deliver TNFP meals, sending the
message that those served can someday do the serving.
Quinn and Lambelet also hope to implement cooking education in 2012.
"Not only do people need access to food, they really need to be
empowered to make it themselves," Lambelet said.
Further down the road, Lambelet spoke of a "dream" to have a
pay-what-you-can restaurant. Located in a food desert with alternative
staffing, it would provide jobs, education and an income stream for
the organization.
But even now, the group's efforts prioritize cooking over a meal that
can be standardized.
Resident Shawn Lewis also stopped by the truck to grab a quick lunch.
He works at a tire shop and has been staying at the hotel for about
two years. He makes maybe $35 a day, which is hardly more than what he
pays in rent per day.
"You gotta eat somehow," he said. "It helps. ... Sometimes you can't
get to the mission."
And so as volunteers packed up to leave, it seems the hot meals — and
lending an ear — are making a difference.
"I'm sorry about Linda," Atkinson said to Allen.
"I am, too," she called back with boxes of food stacked in her hands
for her boyfriend and grandchildren. "I really do miss her."
--------
Breaking down the plate
Chicken (purchased from Second Harvest Food Bank): 25 cents per pound
Sweet potatoes (harvested from The Nashville Food Project gardens): $0
Lettuces: spinach, arugula, heirloom bibb lettuce (harvested from TNFP
gardens): $0
Cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers (gleaned by The Society of St. Andrew
from local farmers markets): $0
Garbanzo beans (purchased from Second Harvest): 18 cents a can
Croutons (made with donated Provence bread and olive oil and dried
basil from TNFP gardens): $0
Lime vinaigrette (made with donated limes and extra virgin olive oil): $0
Bread pudding (made with donated bread from Provence, raisins
purchased from Sam's Club and eggs purchased from Second Harvest): 4
cents per pound (for dairy)
Staples, spices and condiments, such as sugar, flour, paprika, garlic
powder, vinegar and salt and pepper, are items kept on hand in The
Nashville Food Project's pantry.
To get involved
What: The Nashville Food Project
Where: 3605 Hillsboro Pike
Contact: 615-460-0172, thenashvillefoodproject.org or search "The
Nashville Food Project" on Facebook
Breaking down the plate
Chicken (purchased from Second Harvest Food Bank): 25 cents per pound
Sweet potatoes (harvested from The Nashville Food Project gardens): $0
Lettuces: spinach, arugula, heirloom bibb lettuce (harvested from TNFP
gardens): $0
Cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers (gleaned by The Society of St. Andrew
from local farmers markets): $0
Garbanzo beans (purchased from Second Harvest): 18 cents a can
Croutons (made with donated Provence bread and olive oil and dried
basil from TNFP gardens): $0
Lime vinaigrette (made with donated limes and extra virgin olive oil): $0
Bread pudding (made with donated bread from Provence, raisins
purchased from Sam's Club and eggs purchased from Second Harvest): 4
cents per pound (for dairy)
Staples, spices and condiments, such as sugar, flour, paprika, garlic
powder, vinegar and salt and pepper, are items kept on hand in The
Nashville Food Project's pantry.
To get involved
What: The Nashville Food Project
Where: 3605 Hillsboro Pike
Contact: 615-460-0172, thenashvillefoodproject.org or search "The
Nashville Food Project" on Facebook
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