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– Meal Preparation Done Right at Sherwood Park Manor –

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. 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 meal time, 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 make 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?

We are kicking off our annual Flu Shot campaign for our residents this week! All residents will be offered the appropriate influenza vaccine for their age as per Public Health Ontario. We will also be offering COVID boosters to those residents who are eligible in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or concerns please contact our IPAC lead, Ali, at 613-342-5531 ext 123. For more information from Public Health Ontario, please click here.

Sherwood Park Manor has set up a Rotary Harvest Food Drive Drop-Box, at the main entrance. Feel free to donate canned and dry goods. All donations will be provided to Rotary on the October 6th.

We are currently experiencing a COVID outbreak on the North Wing at Sherwood Park Manor.

Visitors are still more than welcome on all wings, however, masking and hand hygiene are required upon entry and throughout to our home and extra PPE may be required depending on who you are visiting. We do ask that you do not visit multiple residents at a time.

Visitors with symptoms will not be granted entry into the Manor.

Updates about the outbreak status will be provided, as we navigate the infection.