Nutritious shelf-stable meals cooked up by a local chef are satisfying hunger in the Hudson Valley.
Food insecure residents who often wonder when and where they’ll sit down to their next meal have a nourishing new option to depend upon: prepackaged lunch and dinner dishes created by an award-winning area chef.
Shelf-stable and ready-to-eat, the meals are conceived by John Doherty, executive chef/owner of BLACKBARN Hudson Valley at Diamond Mills in Saugerties, in partnership with Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley, based in Latham, with a newly opened distribution center in Montgomery.
Chef Doherty demonstrates how easy it is to prepare his shelf-stable meals. Photo courtesy of BLACKBARN Hudson Valley.
“My life has been all about feeding people at a very high-end level,” says Doherty, who is also the founder of Hope Kitchen, an organization that aims to combat hunger and food insecurity across the state. “The whole goal is to get these into the hands of people who need them.”
Convenient and complete with a balanced nutrition profile, Doherty’s easy-to-prepare meals are being distributed to food pantry partners of Regional Food Bank, with a special focus on Montgomery-based Garnet Health’s Food as Medicine program and regional school backpack initiatives. Individuals who receive them will dig into single-serve portions of 3 bean chili, macaroni Bolognese, and red beans with rice and chicken.
“Is this something you are going to eat every day? No,” acknowledges Doherty. “But when you don’t have the time or the ability to prepare what you get from a food bank, this is definitely a quick fix.”
Each year, approximately 5,000 patients managing chronic disease—including those who are homeless—benefit from medically supportive food bags handed out at healthcare facilities throughout the region, while about the same number of in-need kids go home on weekends with backpacks of food to nourish them when the meals they receive at school are not on the table.
In 2023, Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley distributed 48 million pounds of food across 23 counties in the northeastern part of the state, which translated to 40 million meals. With the addition of these chef-led shelf-stable dishes, life will be fuller—and tastier—for those who hunger most.
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