How To Prepare Lunch in 737 Easy Steps! Meal Prep Done Right at Sherwood Park Manor

Article submitted by Sherwood Park Manor as part of its redevelopment and expansion campaign.

Brockville – Before complaining about making your kid’s lunch for school today, think about providing delicious hot meals for over 100 people, plus snacks, every day. Do you have a fussy eater? How about preparing dozens of different combinations of food to meet the nutritional needs of 100 seniors, every meal, every day?

The dietary staff at Sherwood Park Manor Long Term Care take great pride in making every meal experience for their residents a “pleasurable dining experience,” in spite of the many special diets and variety of appetites that their residents want and require.

According to Dietary Manager, Connie Hoyland, much of their success starts weeks before a meal is served. The first step involves getting feedback from residents as to their preferences. By asking about resident likes and dislikes, talking to families, conducting surveys, and monitoring unneatened meal portions, menus are created and adjusted.

The next step involves a menu review and approval by the Home’s dietician, which is further adapted to meet resident tastes (and in some cases cultural preferences or religious restrictions). This menu is reviewed again to ensure every meal meets the nutritional needs of residents.

Even when food products are ordered well in advance, shortages and substitutions have become another increasingly frustrating challenge to the provision of meals within the expected nutritional requirements of the original menu.

Finally, it is time to prepare and serve the meal…no, not the meal…the meals. At mealtime, residents are presented with two options – the main scheduled meal, and an alternative, so they have the choice of selecting their preference, based on what they see and smell in the dining room. Hoyland says this is where the skills of the cooks at Sherwood Park really makes a difference. When a resident doesn’t want either the main meal or the alternate, the cooks improvise, and come up with something the resident says they would like!

As Dietary Manager Connie Hoyland says, “We don’t see these nutritional requirements and individual food preferences as problems, but rather as opportunities to meet and exceed our residents’ nutritional wants and needs.”

Kind of makes the preparation of those kid’s meals seem routine, wouldn’t you say?

(Article submitted by Sherwood Park Manor as part of its redevelopment and expansion campaign.)