By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
A weekly lunch for Medical Lake seniors will kick off the season at a new location today, Sept. 16, and is scheduled to run through the last week of May, 2011.
The Senior Nutrition Program, which has been held at City Hall for about 15 years, will now take place at St. Anne Parish Hall, 708 E. Lake St., beginning at 11 a.m. each Thursday.
Bill Trout and his wife Pat are the head chefs and supervisors of the volunteer-run meal program, which is geared toward Medical Lake area residents age 55 and older, though Trout said, “we don't check birth certificates.”
The new facility, which has no stairs and plenty of nearby parking, is spacious and more easily accessible for seniors than City Hall, Trout said. St. Anne also has a large commercial kitchen, better equipped for cooking up meals for 60-plus attendees each week. The cost per person is $4, which pays for food and supplies with any surplus set aside to fund an occasional free meal.
Trout and his wife got involved as volunteers last year when they heard previous head chefs Bob and Rosemary Hamann were thinking about stepping out of the role after a 10 year run. The Hamanns will continue to help out in a backup capacity, Trout said, but will no longer be supervising the operation.
“They didn't want to carry the whole load any more and they shouldn't have to,” he said.
Trout's credentials more than qualify him to step up to the stovetop. After retiring as an Air Force officer in 1986 he earned degrees in culinary arts and commercial baking at Spokane Falls Community College. He cooked for a fraternity at Eastern Washington University and was the chief baker at Holly B's Bakery on Lopez Island, Wash.
He and Pat would like to eventually see Medical Lake's Senior Nutrition Program expanded to include in-home delivery of meals for those who have a hard time getting around. While the Cheney Care Center currently operates a Meals on Wheels program for seniors in the West Plains region, delivery is on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis only.
“Right now we call this the ‘nutrition program' but I don't know how nutritious one meal a week is,” Trout said, adding that more frequent meal services for homebound individuals would require many more volunteers and at least one full-time helper to oversee a regular delivery schedule.
For now, Trout is looking forward to the inaugural lunch this year, which will feature barbeque hamburgers and hotdogs with all the trimmings, although he said the food itself isn't the most important part of the gathering for many of the regulars.
“We could probably serve hotdogs at every meal and people would keep coming back,” he said. “For some it's more of a social gathering, a conversation situation.”
Call Bill Trout at (509) 280-8618 for more information. For more on the Cheney Care Center's Meals on Wheels in Medical Lake call (509) 838-1588.
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)