New Kitchen - New Mac
Good Bowls has been providing meals for the Medicaid Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP) for the last 18 months and each week participants in the program have a box of 14 Good Bowls delivered to their home. The goal of the program is to evaluate how providing people with non-medical interventions, such as healthy food, transportation, housing, and other social services can improve health outcomes in high risk populations.
Day 1 of producing the Country Mac n’ Cheese at 39 West Catering
Good Bowls has been bringing on a steady stream of HOP enrollees for the past year and the program continues to grow - so much so that we needed to partner with a new kitchen just to keep up with the demand. Last week we cooked our first batch of Bowls with 39 West Catering in Pittsboro, NC. Owner Greg Lewis and his team at 39 West Catering have been cooking up delicious creations for the people of Chatham County and the surrounding area for years, and are excited to join the HOP program to help provide nutritious meals for Medicaid recipients in the Cape Fear NC region.
The new Country Mac n’ Cheese is packed with vegetables and fruit.
For the 39 West kitchen we rolled out a new Bowl - it’s a slight twist on a Good Bowls classic. The new Country Mac n’ Cheese is a vegetarian version of the perennial favorite, Farmhouse Mac n’ Cheese. This bowl is not just the comfort food that you’ve always loved, it also has the nutritional balance expected in Good Bowls, with 40% of the bowl being vegetables and fruit to go along with that cheesy goodness.
The new Country Mac n’ Cheese
Our new partnership with 39 West also offers a bit more flexibility than our larger commercial kitchen. We were able to get the 39 West chefs up and running in just a couple weeks and now we’ll be able to add or modify recipes much more quickly. This will be beneficial for some of our programs on the horizon that could include: providing meals for patients in hospitals, participating in ‘Food is Medicine’ programs for NC health insurance providers, and expanding our medically-tailored-meals program.
Manager at 39 West Catering with the finished Country Mac n’ Cheese bowl
One of the missions at Good Bowls is to support the local food economy and our new partnership with 39 West is an exciting way to advance this goal. As we continue to supply bowls for more federal, state, and institutional programs we use more local labor at our kitchen partners and use more local produce from our statewide farm partners. This means that every bowl that goes out to a resident in North Carolina not only provides them with a healthy and delicious meal, but it also helps to employ local chefs and local farmers too!
Stay tuned as we roll out new recipes and join with new programs with our Pittsboro partners at 39 West.
