Multiple choices at lunch and dinner to satisfy all tastes. Fresh, seasonal ingredients purchased from local traders. Fish at least four times a week. Well-balanced dishes, full of fibre and sources of vitamins and minerals. Checked weights and generous portions. And, the icing on the cake, once a week the menu includes a local speciality.
We are not talking about a restaurant in a high-end spa, but in a residential home for senior citizens: the Casa Albergo run by Fondazione Colledani Bulian in Valvasone. The home can host up to 25 self-sufficient or partially self-sufficient people and has always distinguished itself for its special focus on its guests’ wellbeing.
That special care includes meal preparation: a new menu has recently been introduced, the fruit of a project involving Euro&Promos Social Health Care, which manages since 2015 the Casa Albergo’s services, the Fondazione’s management and a dietician from the local health authority. “Not forgetting the involvement of the guests, too, because this project centres around the quality of their lives,” Euro&Promos’s chairman, Sergio Bini, explains. “In an old people’s home, mealtimes are important opportunities for giving flavour to the whole day. The medical guidelines for this category of guests are followed meticulously, but without placing less importance on flavour and the pleasure of eating”.
So, no to standard menus prepared in central kitchens from semi-processed products then packaged – as often happens in this kind of place. “Yes to fresh, seasonal ingredients, lots of fish and lots of fruit and vegetables, all bought from local traders,” says Rosanna Papaleo, a degree in Food Science & Technology and the sales manager of Euro&Promos Social Health Care, who coordinated the work on this new menu in close association with a dietician from the department for preventive medicine at the Aas5 Friuli Occidentale health authority.
“While respecting each guest’s specific needs, any medical guidelines and the importance of a healthy, balanced diet, we have encouraged personal choice as much as possible by providing options for the first and second courses, side dishes and fruit at each meal. The menu is as varied as possible, we prefer local ingredients and we carefully train our staff to manage ingredient sourcing and meal preparation in the best possible way”.
The Casa Albergo’s two cooks are employed by Euro&Promos, as are the other members of staff, about fifteen persons who deal not only with the canteen but also with coordination, assistance, entertainment, hygiene, sanitisation, laundry and guests’ personal laundry. To make lunches and dinners even more special, once a week the menu includes something particularly tempting: a local speciality dish from the guests’ places of origin.
A few days after its introduction, the new menu was already a great success with the guests and with the chairman of the Fondazione Colledani Bulian, Enzo Gisonni: “Our family-style care is one of the strong points of our home, so when it comes to our menu and cuisine we focus first and foremost on our guests’ health”.