DINNER CHOICES

Our choice for the noon meal of the day here at Carrington Retirement Home is requested by the server at supper time the day before so the chefs have enough time to order the groceries needed and ready for the chefs to cook it. Two “sittings” make it possible to select the noon meal from 11:30 to 12:30 and the second sitting from 12:30 to 1:30 PM. Mine is the first sitting and when I wish to buy dinner for a guest I remind them to be here on time at 11:30 AM. The same servers are available for both sittings so the chefs have everything ready for the nearly 75 residents at each sitting.

Today’s choices of entrees needed for the following day will be known the evening before when your waitress asks for your choice and writes it on a dated clipboard so it will be ready for the next day. Monday offered Pork Rangers or Chicken Breast. After the green salad, the always-pleasant servers bring the one you chose the evening before. Mashed or baked potatoes arrived with spinach and mushrooms, along with tea or coffee. For dessert most varieties of ice cream are available, fruits or puddings and other specials to suit the day of the month. Thanksgiving and Christmas Day included the offer of pumpkin or apple pie. Today offered a blueberry combination which can melt into the cake that holds it in place and nearly every diner was attracted to the blueberry combination dessert. I was also, but the blueberries had already completed their lovely art work on the cake part that served as an easel that held the blueberries in place while the fancy whipped cream added a white top hat that an especially designed kitchen tool had squeezed in place and completed the view of this delectable combination. I wanted it also. But the blueberries would lose much of their nourishment while holding the cake in place - a no-no for those avoiding the flour and fat baked into any cake. By the time the offending part was removed, there would be little left, and that would be wasteful. I can almost hear you say, “Eat what you can and leave the rest.” I would, except my mother’s tapes of yesteryear start playing in my mind. “If you let food go to waste, some day you will regret it and wish for even just one bite of it.” My mind furnished a picture of some possible future time of near starvation that displayed prominent ribs that make the steps falter. I chose the tropical fruit,- it was good also. While having my eyes checked I once asked an eye surgeon if there are special foods I could eat to improve my sight. He replied "All colourful fruits and vegetables,"and that includes BLUEBERRIES.