Podcast No. 114: Jesse Perkins & Austin Brown of ComeUnity Café
Jackson native Austin Brown and missionary kid Jesse Perkins from Africa never expected their paths to lead them to cooking, much less in a non-profit, pay-as-you-can café. Today on our podcast, Kevin Adelsberger interviews these two ComeUnity Café chefs about how they met, what they love about cooking, and what makes their kitchen so special.
Learn more about ComeUnity Café and see today's menu on their Facebook page.
Kevin Adelsberger and his wife Renae moved to Jackson for college (proud Union alumni) and have stayed ever since. Jackson has since taken hold of Kevin’s heart, and he looks forward to continuing to grow with the city. Kevin opened Adelsberger Marketing in 2014 and saw working with Our Jackson Home as a way that he could serve the city he loves. Kevin and Renae are members of First Baptist Church and volunteer with the youth group there and with Madison County CASA.
Production, editing, and photography by Kevin Adelsberger.
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Cooking at home should never be stressful or frustrating. Whether you’re throwing together a simple lunch or making dinner for the neighborhood, it should be a pleasant, relaxing experience. You also don’t need to be a classically trained chef or have a kitchen stocked with exotic ingredients to whip up something delicious. Anyone can do this, and that’s what we’re going to show you.
There are plenty of conversations about what art is and isn’t, who it is and isn’t for. I’m interested in this conversation, but I can’t answer that question, unless I answer it for myself. This September, I painted a mural that is now one of the first things to greet you when you arrive in downtown Jackson. Nestled just past Grubb’s Grocery and the Jackson Walk on North Highland, it’s a bright and idyllic scene, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s an even more idealistic message: Love your neighborhood.
While perusing the West Tennessee Farmers’ Market, it would be hard to pass by the mountain of deep green vegetables and neon radishes of Rose Creek Farms, owned by Ray and Ashley Tyler. Their farm is nestled in a valley in Selmer, Tennessee, with a little over one acre of active farming land. With the help of high tunnels and row covers, they’re able to extend the typical season barriers to grow deliciously tender greens and veggies all year round.
By most standards, I’m a baby vegetarian, as I’ve only been a vegetarian for three-and-a-half years. But in those years, I’ve seen my body do incredible things. Let me back up a little bit. After having my first child, I struggled with losing the sixty pounds (yikes) I’d gained during pregnancy. I talked to a friend of mine who I’d always considered “the healthy one,” and she gave me some of her favorite recipes. I noticed all of them were meatless. So I decided to cut out meat, but just for a little while because, hello, bacon!
2002 was the year that changed my life. I had just moved to “the big city” of Jackson from the incredibly small town of Trezevant, Tennessee. My new journey started at Union University as a Christian Studies major, and quickly I realized I had turned religion into a textbook, not an action. It took a while to recover from the shock of not knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, as this was my plan for quite some time—going into ministry. I continued pressing on with my major until 201 Ash Street happened.
Welcome to West Tennessee, City Farmhouse Pop-Up Fair shoppers! We're so glad to have you. If you're taking a few days to peruse the fair but also want to check out all the fun we have here in Medina and Jackson while you're in town, check out some of our best local picks from Our Jackson Home Editor-in-Chief, Katie Howerton, and White Oak Farms owner, Stephanie Alexander, featuring our favorite restaurants, boutiques, and more.
Our second annual celebration of 731Day was an absolute blast, and Shelby Kee and Katie Howerton have put together this highlight video to show you how much fun we have! Go ahead and mark your calendars for next year; Tuesday, July 31 will come faster than you think! Featuring "Rebels" by Coopertheband.
In his essay collection Heretics, G.K. Chesterton extols, “Once men sang around a table together in chorus. Now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason he can sing better.” In other words, as our scientific age has grown in competency and achievement we have become isolated from the rootedness which gave rise to our confidence in the first place—experts in everything but being human. Can there be any question this is more true today than when Chesterton wrote almost a century ago?
It seems quite contradictory to write a piece on why people should stay in Jackson on the eve of our move to Nashville. After eight years of choosing to stay, the decision to leave didn’t come easily, and I certainly put up a fight. However, I had to come to terms with the fact that sometimes a dream is for a season, and it’s okay for dreams to develop towards other places. You don’t have to abandon a sense of “place” once you move.
We've had a blast getting a taste of some of Jackson's finest restaurants, new and old, during our first season of Our Jackson Table! Check out these first thirteen stops we've made throughout the spring, then join us for even more local cuisine this summer.
Exit 85: West Tennessee School for the Deaf. I take this exit off of I-40 every week to go to my English lessons. The exit sign catches my eye (and not just because it is also the exit for Christmasville Road, which I think is a pretty fantastic name for a road). Here is some background to the significance of my road sign musings: my youngest brother, Jack, is hard of hearing. After we found out about his hearing loss, our family moved several hours away in order to be near a good school for him.
The garden is a block away from the café, a small oasis of green amidst the severe office buildings and cloudy gray-scale urban landscape that makes up downtown Jackson. It doesn’t draw attention to itself, and many pedestrians walk quickly by without even noticing it, busy with their phones or their thoughts or their plans to hurry on to something, somewhere, sometime.
I’ve lived in several Tennessee cities in my lifetime, from Nashville to Murfreesboro to Knoxville to Cookeville and a couple little towns in between. Each one of those cities has its own set of charms, but none have captivated me quite like Jackson. It was not love at first sight, mind you. It’s been an ever-growing, ever-evolving bond. I’ve had days where I’d live anywhere but here and days where I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
ComeUnity Café is doing something so exciting and new in Jackson, and I’m so thrilled to finally be sharing about it here! They are a non-profit cafe with a six-item menu that changes each day. ComeUnity Café is one of the most inviting and warm restaurants that I’ve been to in Jackson. From the greeting at the door to the smiles from the volunteers behind the counter, everything is just extremely pleasant.