Bananas Waldorf, whole wheat garlic breadsticks, bulgur chickpea salad, deep dish apple cranberry pie—what do all of these foods have in common? They’re all tasty, affordable, healthy, and part of the SNAP-Ed Connection’s Recipe Finder database.
Nutrition educators everywhere know that there is one surefire way to make classes more fun and engaging: just add food! The SNAP-Ed Connection Recipe Finder helps nutrition educators to do just that as they teach low-income families how to prepare healthy, affordable, and delicious foods.
The Recipe Finder delivers over 600 recipes contributed by community nutrition educators across the country. It contains recipes for entrees, vegetarian items, ethnic foods, side dishes, snacks, and beverages, not to mention desserts that are healthy, inexpensive and delicious.
With so many recipe Web sites and databases on the internet these days, the Recipe Finder stands alone in providing recipes that are screened by Registered Dietitians to ensure that they can be part of a healthy diet; use low-cost, readily available ingredients; and are suitable for beginner and seasoned cooks alike. Each recipe comes with a nutrition facts label and a cost estimate (updated annually based on the consumer price index), and all are available in both Spanish and English. The Recipe Finder also gives educators the opportunity to rate the recipes and to contribute photographs of their culinary creations.
Although the Recipe Finder was created for nutrition educators working with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), the database is freely available to everyone, so the next time you’re in need of some culinary inspiration, be sure to check out the SNAP-Ed Connection Recipe Finder for healthy and tasty recipe ideas.
The SNAP-Ed Connection, a collaboration between USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and the National Agricultural Library’s Food and Nutrition Information Center, is an online resource center for nutrition educators working with SNAP.