I've moved!

Please find me at jenniferjustuswrites.com.

See you there. 

JJ

Under Construction!

I'm happy to report this blog will soon roll into a new site to be launched the first week of October.

More coming soon!

JJ

Food Bloggers Against Hunger

The trouble with writing about hunger is I’ve never felt it. Ever.

Yeah, I’ve skipped meals and dieted. I’ve lived on just juice for a couple of days. 

But I’ve always known that the next meal could happen whenever I wanted. To be truly hungry is something I’ve never known.

Maybe that’s part of why it’s hard to get our attention on hunger and food insecurity issues. It’s something that feels too far away, and it's something we can compartmentalize to the weekly free meals for the homeless down at the church. Someone else is taking care of it, right?

But when I saw “A Place at the Table” at The Belcourt, it got my attention, it made me cry, and then it made me angry.

It has all the stats – 1 out of every 2 kids in the United States will at some point be on food assistance, 50 million Americans rely on charitable food programs, we’re making more food than ever, but people are obese and hungry.

But it also puts a face on hunger by following three families dealing with food insecurity. Rosie, a fifth grader from Colorado, for example, can’t concentrate in school sometimes because her "stomach is hurting." Here's the trailer:

It’s a face I’ve seen here in Nashville while writing a story about the awesome work of The Nashville Food Project. I watched hungry people fill plates, but I also saw a woman who looked to be about my age pick up a yellow squash from Nashville Food Project’s garden. “I don’t know what to do with this,” she said.

My parents live in a small North Georgia town near the bottom of the Appalachian Trail. As teachers for many years, they’ve seen poverty in ways I haven’t. My father found a student at the technical college where he worked sleeping in his car. Another couple in the cosmetology program had been buying crackers and other snack foods in large quantities at the bookstore using their leftover Pell grant funds. The store manager asked them what they were doing with all of it. “We’re feeding our family,” the man said.

The day after I saw "A Place at the Table," I learned about Food Bloggers Against Hunger, which is why I’m posting today. Several other bloggers in town will post today along with about 200 bloggers nationwide for the project.

A few of us decided locally to also hold an event to screen the film again in Nashville on Monday, April 29. Since it’s a film that makes you want to take action, we’re following it with a food advocacy fair. Attendees can immediately check out ways to get involved from helping kids learn to grow and prepare fresh vegetables on Hands on Nashville’s Urban Farm to learning more about how to protect SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) with Community Food Advocates.

In thinking about a recipe to share, I remembered my parents again and how we often made a meal of just white beans (“soup beans” as they called them) and cornbread. It’s something that became an occasion. We would visit my grandparents just to eat this meal.

To step it up, I followed a version by Frank Stitt in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook that adds onion, garlic, bacon and a healthy serving of collard greens. To keep costs low, I also had to omit a few items such as the Parmesan cheese, and I chose a cornbread mix, which costs less than buying buttermilk and eggs.

The average daily allotment for a person on food assistance is about $4. But this simple meal -- with ingredients omitted -- cost me more than twice that much. It makes it easy to see how $4 a day is not nearly enough. 

I’ve never known hunger, but a film like "A Place at the Table" helped me feel it through its stories. And when we can feel it, I hope we’ll all be moved to do something about it.

Get involved:

1. Join us to watch “A Place at the Table” at Downtown Presbyterian Church on Monday, April 29 at 6 p.m. The film also can be watched on demand at iTunes.

2. Send a letter to Congress to help protect funding for federal nutrition programs. It just takes a second.

3. Follow #takeyourplace hashtag on Twitter.

Collard Greens and White Beans

Makes about 8 servings

3 cups white beans, ½ cup cooking liquid reserved

1 pound collard greens, tough ribs removed and cut into pieces

Vegetable oil

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium onion, diced

½ cup bacon, cooked and crumbled

1. Prepare the beans and set aside.

2. In a large pot, cover the collards with salted water, then heat and boil until tender about 30 minutes. Drain.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until tender about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for a minute longer. Add the collard greens and stir to coat. Add the bacon, adjust seasoning and serve warm with cornbread.

Adapted from The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook (University of Georgia Press, 2010)

a post roast ramble

Here’s a goal I have for 2013: Find the perfect roast chicken.

And by the perfect roast chicken, I mean the version of roast chicken that I can truss up with my eyes closed and consistently please a small gathering of people with a juicy, flavorful bird.

I’m sort of embarrassed that I don’t already have a go-to version. I think I’ve been overwhelmed by all the "best" ways. I've read that Thomas Keller likes to roast his on a bed of root vegetables. Alice Waters goes with olive oil and herbs. Edna Lewis uses only butter. So many more!
 
I will give a few variations a spin, but I based the following experiment on this Birmingham blogger’s recipe. Her goth pic helped sell me. 

I roasted this chicken over the weekend while hanging out with my best friends. We brought it to room temp before roasting, but we didn’t have time to let it sit with the herbs. We also omitted the marjoram and lavender due to availability and roasted it in a deep skillet over a bed of vegetables as roasting rack.



It might be hard for me to beat this one.



I also hope to find my groove in biscuit-making and pie crusts this year (earlier efforts have had my grandmother rolling in her  grave). 

As for last year, I’m extremely grateful. But it also has been one of the wildest years for me so far. I’m glad to move into the next phase, and this year I’m hoping to follow Leonard Cohen's advice about becoming the sea rather than letting it make me so seasick. I've definitely had a few green moments hanging over the rail. 

But here are some things I loved learning about and writing down in journals last year. It’s not a “best of” list –- just a few things I liked thinking about.

-- Is it possible to "find" inspiration? Thomas Keller said it's just about staying aware, so that we can recognize the good ideas when they come. And then later I read this quote on one of my favorite blogs, Brain Pickings: "Inspiration is for amateurs -- the rest of us just show up and get to work." -Chuck Close

-- There's this: 



-- “I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are and continue to learn with all your might.” – Daisaku Ikeda

-- “Gotta have more 'want to' than 'don’t want to.'” - my friend Kevin’s dad

-- I also still love Cat Power:

 
-- “The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.” – Dalai Lama

-- I can’t name my favorite meal of the year, but my favorite drink came from La Condesa in Austin (thanks to Lindsay Taub for turning me on to it). It’s the manliest tasting, sexiest cocktail I have ever tasted.

El Cubico = Whole leaf tobacco-infused cazadores reposado, vanilla infused brandy, lemon, grilled pineapple juice, mescal essence, volcanic-saffron-infused salt rim

-- "...it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a 'good' writer or a 'bad' writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." -Joan Didion (also from Brain Pickings)

-- “To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

-- “Sometimes you need to just step outside, get some air, and remind yourself of who you are and who you want to be.” - anonymous

-- I went to Marfa, Texas this year.  

So odd and sparse. I loved it. 

-- I can see the draw for minimalist Donald Judd here, but I loved learning about John Chamberlain's art and hearing how he learned about the importance of selectivity, working quickly and trusting intuition from studying poetry in North Carolina.

-- I also loved the dust devils in West Texas. I had never seen these spontaneous mini-tornados, and I love how they just kick up in a swirl out of nowhere giving you something to look at on the horizon and making the wind real. I didn’t catch a dust devil on video, but I do have some of this West Texas eeriness. It's the Museum of Electronic Wonders and Latenight Grilled Cheese Parlour.

-- This annual trip to Mississippi never fails to guide me back toward the tracks:



-- Lastly, thanks to an Allison Glock essay in Southern Living, I loved learning that Dolly Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" for Porter Wagoner. She turned down Elvis Presley’s request to record the song because he wanted half the rights. In an act of confidence, she trusted her instincts giving us a beautiful example of believing in self and going with the gut.

Making a list

Well I've been inspired by an ice cream sandwich.

And Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury would have turned 92 last week. But when he died earlier this year, I had just finished reading Zen and The Art of Writing.

In one of the essays, he encourages readers to keep lists of things we really love as well as things we really hate. Bring the former to life by writing about it, he says, and extinguish the later also by writing about it. Write it to life — and to death.

But I like that he’s not just talking peace and poverty. He’s talking about how a single caper can pack so much punch or how a scratchy sweater can wreck a workday.

So with Bradbury in mind, here's a list of loves:

------------------------

The way chocolate wafer sticks to you fingers when eating an ice cream sandwich.

Actually saving room for dessert.

The bonus fry on your plate when you didn’t order them.

Coming back to the table to find your food has just arrived.

The first pointy bite of a slice of pizza.

The middle bite of a cinnamon roll.

The last bite of a hot dog.

The five second rule.

Wooden spoons.

The rhythm in chopping (when you’re not in a rush).

When you get an extra gumball from the machine.

When you get your favorite color gumball from the machine.

Having a favorite color gumball.

When you accidentally leave your leftovers, and the server runs them out to you.

Removing the cage from a bottle of champagne.

Pretty much everything about champagne actually.

Cracking through the sugar glass on crème brulee.

Crackers in soup at the perfect place between crispy and soggy.

Knowing when something's done by the way the house smells.

Starting with a cocktail (just one).

Ending with port (but only sometimes).

The anticipation and payoff in foods that require a little effort (peel-and-eat shrimp, crab legs, oranges, 

pistachios, fondue, s’mores).

Making space for a dish at the potluck.

Making lists of things to love.

Oh hell-o, Jell-o

When I go home to Georgia, it just takes about 20 minutes before mom starts pushing the congealed salad.

“You want some?” she said with her hand on the fridge door at half past midnight. I had just made the five-hour drive from Nashville.

Then the next morning for breakfast she asked again: “You want some congealed salad?”

Though she calls it salad, other people might call it dessert. It’s made from seafoam green gelatin with tiny lumps of creamed cheese, celery, canned pineapple, and nuts. Jiggly and loaded with kooky texture, it’s a food that manages to feel like the future and the past. It’s outer spacey, yet it’s like those green lunchroom cafeteria trays or the mints at wedding receptions in church Fellowship Halls.

Mom makes it because my grandmother made it. And it’s the food that everyone spends the first several years of life totally hating. So part of the appeal, I believe, lies in bonding over the fact that we went from being grossed out by it to loving it. We showed our version off to my boyfriend by slicing up big squares of it and raving. “Let me get you a Ritz cracker to go with it,” Mom said to him, because that’s a normal breakfast combo. And then Dad took it to the next level by plopping a dollop of Miracle Whip on top. That’s how Mema used to do it!

Mom says she can’t remember a time when my grandmother didn’t make congealed salad – mostly for church potlucks. My grandparents owned a small lumber and hardware business, and with two children they stayed busy. She could make congealed salad quickly by dumping a few things into a casserole dish and sticking it in the fridge. Mom also remembers a pivotal moment around age 8 when she realized that she liked it, and she ate it for three days straight with a friend who was staying over the weekend.

After my square for breakfast, I asked for the recipe for the first time. But when I got back to Nashville, I realized that it’s not the congealed salad I want in my house. I want congealed salad at my mom’s house. Plus, I feel like it’s her time to make it like it was my grandmother’s time before her. Someday I figure I’ll make it too. Just not yet.

Just a little hair piece

My hairstylist told me once that she could create an entire blog of the photos that clients take from her chair.

She also said that we rarely take a seat without making an apology for how we look.

I believe it. I have done both of those things many times, and I find the latter to be kind of sad yet fascinating.

It’s part of why Cali DeVaney's chair at Parlour & Juke is one of my favorite places to visit. Not only does she make me feel better about myself in a outward way, she’s always teaching me something new – from philosophical reasons why it’s weird to look into a mirror for a solid hour to her thoughts on music, books and documentaries.

So I was flattered when she asked me to write a guest post for the salon’s blog about being a redhead. Here’s what I came up with: (click here)

Potato Salad (and an apple)

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

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

Adapted recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

A pretty song for cooking on a cold day...

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."

--------

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

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.

(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...

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).

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:

(Photo by Shelley Mays, The Tennessean)

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."

--------

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

Christmas Recap Part 2

My dad doesn’t like chicken and dumplings, and he has never bothered to make them. But it’s interesting what a person can pick up just by hanging out in a kitchen with a woman who cooked for eight children at home and hundreds more at her work.

My grandmother was an elementary school lunch lady (back when lunch ladies cooked), and she made chicken and dumplings for every major holiday. So when I decided to make them for Christmas, dad stepped in as supervisor extraordinaire offering tips on everything from seasoning of broth to consistency of dough.

I like cooking with my father because he has a deep built-in knowledge about food that must have seeped into his pores with the steam off a stock. He’s also pretty fearless.

Here we are posing for mom in a faux wishbone-pulling shot (the Christmas equivalent of our ribbon cutting).

Making the stock.



Rolling the dough.


Dad’s sister tasting the dumplings -- and giving her approval. (This is a big deal.)

Here’s something I wrote about chicken and dumplings for USA Today and The Tennessean earlier this year, and the reason I decided to make the dish:

My father grew up the youngest of eight children, so Thanksgiving on his side of the family - with in-laws and cousins and grandkids in tow - made a potluck spread that could rival entire church congregations in our small Georgia town.

We would gather in my grandmother’s kitchen, where finding a spot for each dish felt like working a Thanksgiving jigsaw puzzle - rectangular dishes of sweet potato casserole wedged next to small bowls of marinated carrots, a tray of turkey squeezed beside a platter of ham. Pies and cakes such as my aunt’s chocolate pound cake with fudge frosting were even exiled until later atop the washing machine.

But no matter how short on space, we always made room for the largest mixing bowl of the lot. Sitting like a queen on the table, it held a dish that completed our tradition: My grandmother’s chicken and dumplings.

When my grandmother’s eyesight began to fail, it was my aunt Loyce who took over dumpling duties (partly because she loved them so). But now with my grandmother gone and Loyce too, I called my cousin Margaret, Loyce’s daughter, for the recipe. I should have known, though, that traditions don’t always come with traditional recipes. What’s left of granny’s chicken and dumplings is a paragraph of instructions typed directly from Margaret’s memory -- learned not from the page of a recipe but from standing at a mother’s elbow.

I asked my father if he, too, remembered watching his mother cook the dumplings.

“She’d throw flour out on the counter; she didn’t have a cutting board,” he said. “She would roll out the dough with a jelly glass and cut it into strips.” Then she’d drop the dough into the chicken stock, heavily peppered, and rich with cooked hen. “That was something that all the girls learned to do from Granny,” he said of his four sisters.

Maybe I’m a bad Southerner, but being too young for a lesson, I have never tried to make chicken and dumplings. Could I learn to make them too? This year, I’ve decided, it’s time to find out.

I referred to the chicken and dumplings recipe in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook. You can find a version of that recipe here, but I totally recommend buying the book.

Christmas Recap Part 1

“We gonna put the MAS back into ChristMAS!!!”

That’s the message my friend Emily sent when she invited us over for a tree-trimming fiesta.

It’s the only tree-trimming I’ve ever attended, and it might as well be my last ‘cause I doubt anyone else could make it cooler. Emily served stiff margaritas rather than eggnog, and carnitas tacos with a trio of salsas instead of boring canapés. Tony brought a ukulele and a six pack of Corona, and the lovely Molly Thomas joined us. Then we helped Emily and Kevin decorate their tree with Elvis figurines and miniature guitars and sock monkeys and psychedelic icicley things.

Emily shared her recipe for pineapple salsa, which added sweet crunch to the tacos, and tasted perfect with tortilla chips, too.

Emily’s Pineapple Salsa

2 cups of diced pineapple chunks (fresh or canned in juice, either is fine here)
1 cup of diced white onion
1 generously sized serrano chili, diced finely
1/2 cup minced fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar
Juice of a small lime
Season generously with salt, to taste

Mix it all up, and feel free to add more or less of anything to taste. This salsa is all about the balance of sweet, crunchy, spicy, sour and salty. Make it like you like it!

-------

And speaking of Mexican-influenced experiences, I went back to Sopapilla’s in Franklin not long ago.

Earlier in the year, I spent 101 minutes there for Nashville Lifestyles and The Tennessean. Here's what I wrote:

-------

This month I decided to go it alone.

Up until now, I've spent my 101 minutes at restaurants with friends
because I like food shared. Discussed. Enjoyed over conversation. Its
ability to connect us is one of the main reasons I write about it.

But then there's also something special about eating alone, too. It
helps me pay closer attention to the soft texture in a slice of warm
bread, the hearty aroma of slow-roasted beef, the pop from a fleck of
cilantro. The colors both on and off the plate shine. It's an
opportunity to (try to) be completely in the moment. To wonder about —
and be grateful for — the people who planted the chile peppers,
harvested them, roasted them over an open flame. It's both a spiritual
act and an indulgent one, like meditation — or a spa treatment. My
friend Jaime has a favorite restaurant she likes to visit alone. She
calls it church.

So on a recent Wednesday, I snuck off for Sopapilla's in Franklin.

It was 4:30 p.m. when I took a seat at the copper-topped bar. It was
early for the dinner crowd, so the place was mostly empty. The
bartender — bearded and bald, tattooed with small hoop earrings — had
the music cranked (Seal and the Kings of Leon in the mix) as he
hustled to prep his station.

He stopped his side-work to get me drink. The Cucumber Margarita. His
choice. I loved how the crisp cucumber in fat slices added freshness
to a drink that can sometimes taste too sweet and too tart. Cucumber.
Ah. Spa treatment, indeed.

He also placed in front of me a bowl of salsa (my very own bowl!) and
a basket of warm chips. I later learned that Steve Dale, the
restaurant's owner, had spent months perfecting the salsa that he
would take in batches on tour when he played bass with artists like
Carrie Underwood and Little Big Town. The muted rusty-red color with
flecks of black pepper was a salsa more layered and complex than
standard Mexican restaurant fare.

Soon after my drink arrived, a couple of women who work at the salon
next door popped in for a couple after-work drinks. Sopapilla's sits
at the corner of Camden Commons, a shiny newish development that mixes
businesses with residential space on top. The bartender recognized the
women.

"We have $5 house wines and margaritas," he said.

Then he shot me a look.

"I'll give you a discount on that one," he said pointing to my
speciality margarita that wasn't part of happy hour.

"I didn't tell her," he explained to the ladies.

I didn't mind, but then I heard one of them order a drink that isn't
on the menu. The Key Lime, a creamy concoction that arrived in a large
martini-shaped glass. He reminded the ladies of his name again, and
introduced himself to me. Roland.

Next up, I ordered my meal. Should I go Green Tamale & Chipotle Shrimp
Taco or the Stuffed Sopapilla, I asked him. He didn't hesitate.

Stuffed Sopapilla.

Chicken or beef?

Beef.

I like a man who gives direction with authority.

As I waited for my meal, a fourth guest rolled up to the bar — a
middle-age man in shorts and polo with a tan, gray hair and
sunglasses. He was just killing some time, I learned, by eavesdropping
between verses of a Tom Petty song. He ordered a margarita and read a
book off his iPhone. Meanwhile, my sopapilla arrived smothered in
sauce, chock with hunks of green Hatch chili and a melty layer of
cheese. Swaddled inside it was a mound of spicy, shredded beef.

Dale, who moved to Nashville in 1995 for music, grew up in Phoenix and
Albuquerque.

"From the get-go when I got here, I felt like there wasn't the Mexican
food I was accustomed to in Phoenix and Albuquerque," he told me after
my visit. "I started cooking my own food."

He had fallen in love with the Hatch chili while busing tables at a
restaurant during high school.

"Just the heat of the chilies and rich, roast flavor," he said.

The chilis grow in Hatch, N.M., where the soil and humidity suit them
well. Dale now orders them 1,500 pounds at a time, about every three
months.

In addition to his salsa experiments, Dale treated his musician
colleagues to "fiestas" while on the road.

"We'd break out the Crock-Pots and slow cook meats during the day," he
said. "After the show, we'd have a big thing of margaritas ...
quesadillas ... and tacos."

His restaurant's concept and menu development — about three years in
the making — happened on the back of a tour bus.

"Not bad for a margarita," Roland said to the sunglassed man.

"It does not suck," he said. "Hits the spot. Thank you, Roland."

Then he ordered a second one.

With hardly anything — but everything — happening around me, I didn't
remember to be grateful for my time alone until 5:06. Shame on me. But
the man in sunglasses was asking Roland about his past. I just had to
hear.

Roland came to Nashville from Columbus, Ohio, for music. He played in
a Christian hard rock band. His father had been a musician, too.

"What's for dessert?" I asked him.

He suggested the sopapillas again — this time without a savory
stuffing and just with a drizzle of honey — which are on the house.

Dale explained later that sopapillas typically arrive mid-meal in New
Mexico, "like we would have biscuits here." And while he sees himself
as a bit of an educator on authentic New Mexican cuisine, the timing
of the sopapillas hasn't resonated here. Guests would often ask the
servers to take them away until after dinner so they would stay warm.

"We kinda lost that battle," Dale said, though he's OK with that.

I, too, would be having mine for dessert. They arrived as dreamy
little pillows, soft and studded with pockets of air. With just a thin
layer of crisp on the outside from the hot oil and a dribble of honey,
they'll make you want to lick your fingers.

Sopapillas originated in Albuquerque hundreds of years ago. The
Indians were making fried bread when the Spaniards arrived, adding
their own twist.

"It's really an art form," Dale said. "We call it getting the bump."

When the staff gets it wrong, he'll tell them: "We're not called
'Indian Fried Bread.' Throw those away. It's our namesake."

I offered my second sopapilla to the man with the sunglasses.

"Oh, no, thank you," he said. "I would eat it."

And as the bar began to pick up, it was time for me to leave.

A trio of regulars had convened at the end of the bar to drink
happy-hour margaritas and talk football, and it reminded me how
restaurants embody so much life as places to play, work, nourish,
socialize.

When my check arrived, I learned that Roland had not discounted my
drink. He just didn't charge me for it at all.

"Thank you, Roland," I said waving over the heads of the regulars. I
sort of wanted to be a regular, too. Despite my time alone, I couldn't
help but feel the call of connectedness.

"Hey, have a good night and come back," he said.

And then it occurred to me, I was never really alone at all.

--------

Sopapilla's

1109 Davenport Blvd., Franklin

615-794-9989, www.sopapillas.net

What to order:

Try the blue corn chicken enchiladas with a fried egg on top.

"That's probably the most authentic dish that we have," said owner Steve Dale.

And while the traditional sopapillas with honey come on the house,
they're also good with meat tucked inside. When given a choice, go
with the beef. It's road-tested.

What to drink:

The Cucumber Margarita arrives in a tall glass with ice and several
thickly sliced hunks of cucumber. Or ask for Roland's off-menu drink,
The Key Lime, which works well as a precursor to the peppery cuisine
of New Mexico.

The restaurant has also upped its wine list since the bar was
installed in January.

About the Series

It's been said that a proper chef's hat has 101 folds representing the number of ways you can cook an egg. So we're choosing a local restaurant to visit each month — just for 101 minutes