This is the fourth installment of the What’s Cooking? Blog Series. In honor of the Let’s Move 5th Anniversary, and the commitment USDA shares with Let’s Move to promote healthy eating and access to healthy foods, this month-long series will highlight the various features of the What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl recipe website.
Attention nutrition educators helping Americans make healthy and budget-friendly choices—this edition of the What’s Cooking? Blog Series is for you! If you haven’t already heard, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipes have a new home on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl web site. This site combines recipes designed for SNAP-Ed, child nutrition programs, the food distribution program, and ChooseMyPlate.gov. Visit What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl, and you will see that there are hundreds of healthy recipes for educators to browse and use in nutrition education programming. For example, how do Zucchini Coleslaw, Mozzarella Chicken with Garlic Spinach, A Simple Mexican Salad, or Ginger Orange Muffins sound?
Many of the recipes found in What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl were created for educating recipients of SNAP benefits. The goal of the education component of SNAP, commonly called SNAP-Ed, is to improve the likelihood that persons eligible for SNAP will make healthy choices, within a limited budget, consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPlate. The SNAP recipes were developed by SNAP-Ed educators to do just that!
There are over 700 SNAP Recipes and 2,000 total recipes, for foods ranging from breakfast to dessert items and everything in between. There are more than 150 SNAP Recipes that cost less than $0.25 per serving to make food budgets stretch further. Recipes in the tool can be filtered by a variety of aspects including an option to search for SNAP-related recipes only. SNAP nutrition educators and participants may also find the “Sort by” feature useful to refine recipe searches by “Serving Cost” and “Total Cost” as well as by recipe “Rating” to view feedback from people who have tried the recipes.
Once you’ve found your recipes, the What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl can serve as a hub to connect you to other useful SNAP information and materials. For example, under the “Resources” section, there is a link to SNAP-Ed Connection, which has a Seasonal Produce Guide that educators can explore to find lesson plans, handouts, and general information about fruits and vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, or other ingredients in a recipe.
The next time you need a delicious dish packed with both nutrients and a budget-friendly price tag for your educational programming, be sure to browse the recipes at What’s Cooking? USDA Mixing Bowl.