Posted Aug 30, 2011
Every hurricane season, Mayo Clinic nutrition director Sherry Mahoney gives her interns an assignment: Prepare a meal plan featuring three days of creative, delicious dishes from food that doesn’t require refrigeration or cooking.
They need to come up with recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and an evening snack for families that may be stuck in their homes without electricity. The recipes can’t be boring and they can’t consist primarily of commercially processed food.
“They need to be colorful, exciting, tasty and nutritious,” Mahoney said. “The most difficult part is no refrigeration and no cooking.”
Every year, she said she rejects some recipes because they contain an ingredient that requires refrigeration or they don’t taste good.
But interns Sheri Lingle and Debra Silverman created some good ones this year, and were ready to share them with Mayo Clinic employees Monday in the staff cafeteria off San Pablo Road. Their creativity was timely because Hurricane Irene was threatening the East Coast, and people were thinking about hurricanes.
“Just because the power is off doesn’t mean you can’t eat good food for a while,” Ron Stone, assistant director of nutrition, said at the lunch event.
And if a hurricane misses the Beaches, and your power never goes off, any of these items can be assimilated into meals after the season is over,” Mahoney said. “These recipes taste good.”
Lingle, who recently graduated from the University of North Florida with a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics, and Silverman, a recent graduate of Simmons College in Massachusetts with a master’s in nutrition, gave out samples of two of their recipes during lunch hours this week.
They whipped up one of the dinners, Fiesta Black Bean and Corn Salad Tacos, on the spot Monday. And they handed out samples of Peanut Butter and Jelly Sushi Rolls made with whole wheat tortillas.
They also gave out recipes for all of the meals.
As nurses, physicians, therapists and office workers passed their display table, many took the recipes and tasted the food.
“It’s delicious,” Silverman said while handing out a sushi roll. Coming up with the recipes “was somewhat difficult,” she said. “But we’ve taste-tested everything because tasty is important.”
The taco dinner contains 10 ingredients in addition to taco shells. The recipe calls for one can of corn, two cans of black beans, dried parsley and onion flakes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic powder, honey and salt and pepper to taste.
Reggie’s Chopped Barbecue Chicken Salad on flat bread is made with canned chicken, canned barbecue sauce and canned kidney beans in addition to olive oil and lime juice and several other ingredients.
One of the lunches, Tasty Tuna Salad on whole wheat pita bread, requires mayonnaise, but Stone said individual packets of mayo stay good without refrigeration.
He said most condiments such as ketchup, mustard and relish stay fresh for long periods without refrigeration because they are vinegar based.
He recommends people stock up on the individual packets of mayonnaise, which can be purchased in bulk at big box warehouse stores, because refrigerated mayo in a jar is no good after eight hours without power.
The average refrigerator will keep cold at around 40 degrees for about four hours, he said. Freezers filled with food remain good for 48 hours; half-full freezers remain good for 24 hours.
If the power goes off, use your refrigerated and frozen items first, Mahoney said.
When people go grocery shopping to stock up in anticipation of a possible hurricane, she said they should buy bottled water, powdered milk and bread items right before the storm. And they should be sure they have a manual can opener.
The interns’ meal plan and recipes could also work well for families who decide to flee a hurricane in their car because they can be whipped together quickly, Mahoney said.
maggie.fitzroy@jacksonville.com, (904) 249-4947, ext. 6320
©2011 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.)