Long term care going fresh and local

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Nowak CEC on February 5, 2010 at 7:37pm

I work at a CCRF in southern Oregon, which is the headquarters to the corperate corperation. We have a upscale approch to our dining services. We buy in fresh produce and try to buy from local meat companies. Corperate is had been trying get us to buy from selected approved vendors, in order to get price breaks. We have fought them on this and at least for now they give us the freedom to still buy from the local meat companies. We have a program in the summer with a large local farm that supplies us with some of the freshest and sweetest corn available. They also supply us with peaches, tomatoes, and sweet onions. We have challenges with local since we have close to 1,000 residents on campus and now 3 different kitchens. Our need is great and can be real challenging organizing & ordering. Most local farms have difficulty meeting our mass needs, but it has been great finding the farm to help supply us. Our residents look forward to the local corn and even have a committee that meets to shuck the corn each week when the harvest comes in. They are our great marketing tool, since they are proud to tell other resideints that the com was picked, shipped, shucked by them, and then cooked and served that evening, all within a 24 hrs. period. I think we give them a beer after they are done and they have a good time doing it and are happy to help out.

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Permalink Reply by Elisabeth James on February 6, 2010 at 10:25am

that is awesome I wish that were the case we are dictated by the vendors and also the ministry in the restrictions to local products in health care in canada however I am lets say maybe 1\4 to half using local or fresh meats and 100 percent local produce. maybe they residents would love a beer shucking night
lis

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Permalink Reply by Cindy Graham on February 11, 2010 at 8:06pm

I totally agree with you. Jeremy you have a great chance to make a difference in senior's health...I have found that many, many of the community senior lunch programs are very poor in quality. This is an area I am very interested in, along with school foods being improved. Of course its back to the bottom line issue...tell us more about your experience, Elisabeth..I am in Kansas City, MO area.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Nowak CEC on February 18, 2010 at 6:24pm

I am a chef de cuisine of a upscale contiuing care retirement community. It is very different from a nursing home that has the reputation of being low quality and/or a lack of caring for those that live there. We have about 1,000 residents on campus living in cottages around campus, some in a condo/hotel type rooms with kitchens, and others in special care, or residental living (which a staff checks on them through the day and may help with needs they have). One would buy in at retirement age and then live on campus in a cottage at first and then progress to the other listed as their needs dictate. We now have three dining rooms & kitchens to choose from for our residents. All of which are a little different to choose from. Our newest dining room which we just opened, about 4mths. ago, is set like a restaurant ala cart orders. Our other two dining rooms are buffets and my kithen does some orders out of the kitchen (we do burgers, eggs, omellets, etc. What we can do we will). We are on a 7wk. cycle menu serving 2 entrees, 2 veggies, a starch, and a dessert. We cook a boneless carving turkey 6 nights a week and carve it in the dining room. Fresh mashed potatoes and gravy each night. We carve other items in the dining rooms like roast sirloin, rack of pork, as well as pot roast and meatloaf. We have a very high resident satasfaction and when their families come in they are usually impressed. We feature omelet bars, waffle bars, and pasta bars in the dining rooms, were the residents choose their ingreidents and we make it in front of them. My dining room got remodled in the last year two and we designed a custom exibition cooks/carving station. We designed it with burners, a small char broiler and griddle top, sink, cold and hot holding drawers. We wanted lots of options on how and what we used it for. We feature special items out there and just cooked qusadillas and pad thai on that station. The residents love it, we can keep the food really fresh, and it gets the aromas and action going that really excites the residents as well as our staff. We have different kinds of ethnic cuisine, cooking styles on the menu. Our cooks have a large training period, since things are different each day and some items they may not see again for 7 wks.,but we do a good job and we are proud of what we do. Hope that answered your question.

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Permalink Reply by Elisabeth James on February 19, 2010 at 2:18pm

that is great I I too have worked in retirement which is totally different then homes that
seniors that cant afford Retirement living end up. Originally the food per resident day for LTC was $4.10 now at least it is $7.31 per resident day and believe me I work hard to keep my food fresh and local and stay with in budget. Nothing worse then a hard frozen Asparagus. I am glad to here that retirment is still keeping up with qaulity Try LTC

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Permalink Reply by Elisabeth James on February 19, 2010 at 2:21pm

HI I am in Toronto Canada
This is a very extremely improtant subject for me as well. Seniors deserve better than some places are giving but trying to attract qaulity chefs is hard especially since most of the so called cooks have been in these institues for 35 years or more. There skill are rusty. I have had to start from scratch by teaching how to make quiche, but I maintain a fresh produce roaster as well as local beef ect.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Nowak CEC on March 6, 2010 at 6:04pm

We had those same issues with institutional style cafeteria cooks at our place when I first came on board here. A new director of dining came about a year before me and had already started the change process. She had put a freeze on long term employee wages (since they would get an automatic wage increase on there yearly evaluation and I don't think I want to know what some of there wages were. They were high for the work they were doing. Raises then switched to a performance based increase). Then the bar was raised as to the quality of food and service that we provided. We kept employees accountable to that expectation. We also had to relocate some of our long term employees to different parts of the kitchen (some of the previous hot food cooks, moved to our pantry or other locations that fit there skill level better). Some of them got frustrated and left on there own. When we rehired we made a commintment to hire culinarians, those didicated to excel in this career, as a profession. It has been a slow steady upward climb. We are in southern Oregon. The skilled labor in this profesion is limted, but the area is growing quickly, and I have to say we do have some of the best chefs and cooks in this area. Our benifit package, mixed with working conditions, seem to have attracted the better talent. Like you said we contiue to go through in house training and our current cooks/chefs have increased their skills throught the years. It is great to teach and share our skills, as long as the employees are willing to learn. Hang in there things are getting better and the expectation is raising for long term care facilites, which will in turn attract skilled workers.

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