Nearly 100 volunteers produce 3,100 meals a week from the two cooking spaces that are the Nashville Food Project (TNFP). There’s a lot of creativity involved in planning meals based on what comes in and a lot of work for the volunteers who chop, slice, clean, assemble, blanch, compost and cook. And the volunteer cooks come from every walk of life. Indeed, some of TNFP’s volunteer cooks bring a lifetime of self-taught experience to the kitchen.
“I’ve been a home cook since I was in the single digits,” says Rita Pirkl, a TNFP volunteer since May of last year. “Some of my best early memories are standing on a chair in my grandmothers kitchen and stirring pots.” Ann Fundis has been volunteering with TNFP for five and a half years, but she still remembers that first visit and quick orientation with TNFP’s meals coordinator.
“She asked one member of the group to go into the kitchen and make a dry barbecue rub,” Fundis recalled. “The young woman looked like she had been asked to paint the Mona Lisa from memory. I said that I was pretty comfortable in a kitchen, so I offered to do it.” She’s been a regular volunteer ever since.