Being a resident at Merton Court has never tasted better than it does now that staff have completed their one-year program with the Maggie Beer Foundation.
For 12 months the kitchen staff, with chef Annah Dellosa at the helm, have been working with mentor chef Paul McDonald to provide nutritious but more importantly tasty and exciting meals to residents.
“It has been challenging from the perspective of the kitchen team because everything is from scratch, it’s not prepackaged, it’s not frozen,” Annah shared.
“But the thing is, we have this goal, we’re doing this for the residents, extra chopping, extra peeling, that’s part of the job.”
The ethos of the program is to not just nourish the body of residents, it is about invigorating them, encouraging them to follow their noses to the kitchen and enjoy what they are eating.
“We actually have residents in the kitchen now, we want this, for the people that are capable and have the ability, we want them to be involved as much as possible,” Meg Feringa, Merton Court operations manager shared.
“It’s hard to put into words the impact that this has had, not only for our small community, but spreading this concept throughout the industry.”
Residents and their families have been involved throughout the whole process, being offered the opportunity to bring in their own recipes and having regular conversations with staff about what they would like to see on the menu.
Last week families were invited to join residents and staff at a special lunch to mark the completion of the program, but it will not end here as the connections made will last.
“From the home’s perspective, they’ve got access to the professional community which is a depository of thousands of recipes now, where we’re building a spring and summer menu that’s fully nutritionally analysed,” Paul explained.
“There are brand new recipes that will ask people like Annah, who are our high achievers, to test for the next round of mentor program subscribers.”
The final word in this story needs to go to the residents, who have had arguably the hardest job of all. Sampling all the meals.
“It’s all changed, and it is all nice now, there’s not much we can grumble about,” Cindy Tapper shared.
“There’s nothing you can’t have or get, even in drinks, we have three or four different juices, we have tea, coffee milkshakes, and nothing is a problem, they’ve just got a new variety,” Ray Brind added.
