Chinese New Year at TSH

We were so excited to celebrate the Chinese New Year in the General campus kitchen, and Ignatius Yuen, one of our chefs, created a delicious menu to welcome in the Year of the Dragon.

One of our top priorities with our ReFRESHing our Menu project is to include recipes that reflect the diversity that exists within our hospital community.  In addition to being locally sourced and wholesome, food needs to be familiar and comforting to really nurture wellness and healing.  In this effort, we’re adding items like congee and sesame noodles to our menu.

For Chinese New Year, our menu included sweet and sour chicken, sesame bok choy and steamed rice.  Ignatius was here to cook the meal, and since it was being cooked from scratch, we needed all hands on deck, as we had lots of chopping to do.

This was the scene that I walked into, and my heart skipped a beat at the vision of these cheerful, leafy greens waiting to be chopped.  This vision of fresh, raw food is pretty uncommon for hospital kitchens, as it is very labour-intensive.

The vibe in the kitchen was busy and excited, as it’s rare to have three cooks working together to produce a meal.  Debbie, our head chef, was thrilled to have company in the kitchen—she’s used to working alone as she prepares meals.  Who knew sauteéing bok choy could be so much fun?!

Here’s Ignatius’ sweet and sour chicken, full of flavour and colour!  The kitchen smelled absolutely heavenly, and we were all working busily to get everything ready for when the beltline started running.  This kind of collaborative effort is exactly why kitchens are magical places.  There’s a team of people, each working to contribute something to the whole.  It is precisely this bit that makes kitchens such exciting, creative places to be.

Our steam table on the beltline looked especially fresh and lively that day, and our staff was proud to serve this food to patients.  It had been quite a while since our kitchen produced a from-scratch meal, and this was a pretty fantastic success!  It also feels wonderful to begin to restore the original spirit of this hospital kitchen.  There was a time where fresh, beautiful food was cooked from scratch every day by a large team of cooks.  Our team today is much smaller, but no less dedicated to supporting this transition.  And watching our staff start to feel inspired and proud about the work they do is simply delicious.  Plus, it felt quite auspicious that one of our first, fresh meals was made to welcome in the fiery, active dragon. Gung Hey Fat Choy!

To learn more about the exciting work going on at The Scarborough Hospital please visit http://transformingtsh.com/

If you would like to receive The Scarborough Hospital’s special monthly update on their innovative patient food improvement project, ReFRESHing our Menu, please email Julie Dowdie at jdowdie (at) tsh.to.