Tallahassee Foodies Raised Over $11K At Our Inaugural “Under The Harvest Moon” Dinner, Benefitting Second Harvest Of The Big Bend

Once upon a time, my friend Katie reached out and said, “hey Jen, you should do some sort of fun dinner for Harvest Moon”. 

That exact day, I’d had a coffee date with my friends at Second Harvest about hosting a fundraising dinner, hopefully filling seats with our amazing Tallahassee Foodies members, and thank goodness something clicked in my mind that a “Harvest Moon” dinner should absolutely be our fundraising moment for “Second Harvest”!  The emphasis on food and harvesting is the most perfect pairing!

The term “harvest moon” refers to the full, bright moon that occurs closest to the start of autumn. The name dates from the time before electricity, when farmers depended on the moon’s light to harvest their crops late into the night. This year, the Harvest Moon fell on September 10th.

At this point, the ideas started flowing. As if Harvest Moon for Second Harvest wasn’t a wonderful enough fit, guess what else was meant to be – Chef Leon on the board of Second Harvest, and lucky for all of us, he couldn’t have been more excited to donate his time to this wonderful opportunity!

So now we needed a location…. Tallahassee Nurseries was so happy to donate their space for this amazing gathering under their gorgeous centerpiece gazebo, but my goodness if the weather didn’t have other plans!

Second Harvest was able to pivot our location to the beautiful Jubilee Cottage at Goodwood Museums, while Tallahassee Nurseries still participated as a major sponsor, and donated the gorgeous centerpieces used as giveaways at each table!

“Under the Harvest Moon” included a multi-course meal from passed appetizers to desserts, designed and executed by Chef Leon and his team, with specially chosen wine pairings for each course selected by Velva Knapp, Wine Educator at Browns Kitchen and a member of the Second Harvest team serving on their board.

I was absolutely shocked that this dinner sold out in less than 48 hours, most sold to our All Access Foodies that earned first access to tickets, and then we fully sold out when we offered up the remaining few tickets at our public forums.

In this moment, I realized the power of our locals, the way they come through for an amazing non-profit fundraising dinner literally brought tears to my eyes. I’m so proud that we were able to raise over $11K to help fight hunger – that’s over 44K meals that will serve our community!

We are so very happy that Second Harvest is our non-profit of choice. As a group, we voted on a charity to support and felt that, of all amazing non-profits to choose from, that a local food group should be support a local food bank to help fight hunger in Tallahassee and surrounding areas!

If you are able to do so, please lend your support by way of a monetary donation or by volunteering your time. We love to volunteer as a family, it’s such a great learning experience for our kiddos!

Thank You For Making This Possible!

Thank you so very much to all of our amazing guests for supporting a great cause! I hope that each year our annual “Under the Harvest Moon” dinner gets bigger, better, and raises even more money than before. And I also hope to see you all next year!

I was so very happy to donate my time to promote and host this event. Thank you so very much to our major sponsor, Tallahassee Nurseries, as well as Chef Leon Brunson for serving up a delicious meal for our guests, Noah Escobar for the amazing videos and the super talented Dave Barfield of Lonely Fox Studios for the incredible images!

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