I am excited to share the incredible Feed Phoenix project with Local First Arizona as part of the City of Phoenix COVID-19 Emergency Food Assistance Funding. The project is designed to provide nutritious lunches incorporating locally grown produce to organizations in the City of Phoenix from August to October 2020.
It was an exciting program to participate in Feed Phoenix as the program created beautiful community collaboration with our local farmers, entrepreneur chefs, and organizations.
Serving: Native Health & Harvest Compassion Center
Experience Nutrition had the honor to create and deliver 200 grab-and-go meals in the Phoenix community. We created 50 delicious, healthy meals for Native Health, which serves the Phoenix Native American population with holistic patient-centered care, and 75 adult and 75 kids meals to the Harvest Compassion Center, a food and clothing bank for families in the Phoenix / Maryvale area. Huge thanks to Waste Not AZ for your commitment to feed the Valley’s hungry with food that would go to waste…and for delivering the meals in your refrigerated truck.
Plant-Based Farm-to-Table
As soon as Experience Nutrition was approved to serve our community, I reached out to plant-based Nadira Jenkins-El, to assist with the project. We brainstormed the lunch menu and decided to create a roasted veggie wrap, hummus, quinoa salad, and fruit.
Behind the Scenes with our Farmers
Since Experience Nutrition always focuses on plant-based farm-to-table and creates beautiful food with what our local farmers are growing, we determined the ingredients for the recipes based on what our local farmers were growing.
For the Roasted Veggie Wrap, I reached out to Cindy Gentry, who Sun Produce Cooperative. We purchased ten pounds each of sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, and red onions from Crooked Sky Farms, ten pounds of butternut squash grown by Mark Rhine at Rhiba Farms, and a beautiful Long Island Cheese (Cinderella) Pumpkin from the Orchard Community Learning Service.
For the Quinoa Salad, we received 25 pounds of incredible, just harvested (while I waited) Persian cucumbers from Abby Lee Farms, 15 pounds of green beans, 10 pounds of summer squash, and 15 bunches of cilantro from Green on Purpose.
For our fruit dessert, since watermelons are in-season, we ordered 80 pounds from Crooked Sky Farms.
Now let’s take a look at the beautiful food as the foundation for our intuitive culinary creations for the lunches.
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The next Experience Nutrition Blogs will feature the recipes and behind-the-scenes fun cooking for the Feed Phoenix Program. Look forward to sharing with you.
- Roasted Veggie & Hummus Wrap
- Cold Quinoa Cucumber Salad
- Kids Red Wrap
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Massaging the Quinoa Salad 
Creating the huge batch of hummus.
Amazing Roasted Potatoes, Squash and Red Onions 
Creating the tasty Roasted Veggie Hummus Wraps
Kids Red Wraps 
Grab-and-Go Plant-Based Lunches
By Melanie Albert, plant-based farm-to-table culinary leader. Founder & CEO of Experience Nutrition in Phoenix, Arizona, Award-winning cookbook author, cooking event and retreat host, plant-based artisan caterer. Creator of the new Plant-Based Food Art Movement.