The Pennsylvania Department of Health is committed to increasing access to healthy food options through the Pennsylvania Healthy Pantry Initiative. The department has partnered with Feeding Pennsylvania and its member food banks to increase healthy options available to community members in food pantries.

A registered dietitian with Feeding Pennsylvania and a nutrition educator in the participating food banks help guide pantries through phases to increase healthy food options. Excerpts for this article are taken from PAHPI. For further details, go to tinyurl.com/4zmdj2tk.

Second Harvest Food Bank selected 16 pantries out of the 200 it serves to be a PAHPI. From the six-county area Second Harvest serves, Lehigh County has five HPI pantries. These include Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative, Northern Lehigh Food Pantry, Allentown Ecumenical Food Pantry, East Side Food Pantry and Promise Food and Wellness Center. The remaining 11 HPIs are in Northampton, Carbon, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties.

WCHI’s registered dietitian with Second Harvest is Kim Slack. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Science degree in nutrition. To be a registered dietitian, one must complete 1,200 hours of supervised practice in an internship and sit for a national exam. Slack completed her internship at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, Va.

Her job is to assess pantries to determine needs, provide marketing materials and layout changes to nudge clients toward healthier choices, make suggestions to increase healthier pantry inventory, upgrade or add materials to display and store healthier options and offer hands-on nutrition education with pantry guests.

Slack visits us periodically. She provided a taste testing at both our Nov. 9 and 16 food pantry morning distributions. She served a beef enchilada casserole, one of Feeding America’s healthy recipes. This recipe makes eight servings.

It was very good. It was not spicy like I thought it would be. The recipe is below.

Ingredients: one tablespoon olive oil; two pounds ground beef (Slack used one pound ground beef and two 15.5-ounce cans of black beans to make it cheaper and stretch the meal); one 24-ounce jar chunky salsa; three cups shredded cheddar cheese; 12 corn tortillas cut in four pieces; three medium-sized tomatoes, seeded and chopped; a quarter cup pitted black olives, sliced; and three green onions or scallions, thinly sliced (optional). Slack did not use the black olives or the green onions.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and grease a baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the beef. Break the beef up into small pieces as it cooks. Cook for about eight minutes, until beef is cooked through and begins to brown. Stir in the salsa. Pour the mixture into the baking dish.

Fold in one cup of cheese and the tortillas until mixed. Top with the rest of the cheese. Bake until the cheese is melted and sauce is bubbling - about 15-20 minutes.

Top with tomatoes and the olives and green onions, if using.

Serve and enjoy.

Our food pantry had the ground beef, black beans, blocks of cheddar cheese and tomatoes available in November.

WCHI is trying to make a difference in people’s lives by offering more healthy food pantry choices, including lower salt or no-salt and lower-sugar items.

Have a great week!