Hospital's new foodservice program features local, fresh ingredients

July 25—Tomato and corn salad and blueberry sorbet aren’t your average items on a hospital menu.

“When you think of hospital food, you think of it as a step above airplane food,” said Matthew Croussouloudis, director of food and nutrition of the Hudson Valley Hospital Center. “So we wanted to take it to a whole new level.”

On Tuesday, residents and hospital employees gathered at a farmers market to taste samples from the hospital’s new patient and cafeteria menu. The samples were given out by Noah Sheetz, the hospital’s executive chef. He was the chef at the governor’s mansion during the Pataki administration.

“It tastes so natural,” Croussouloudis said of the tomato and corn salad. “It doesn’t even need any sugar or anything else but itself. We want to stray away from processed, canned foods.”