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Southern Cooking-Marni Style - Creations

I spend every day surrounded by Southern Cooking. The Lakeside Nursing Home (where I am interning at for 8 1/2 more weeks!) is a fantastic establishment and I just love being there so bright and early almost every morning. The nurses and kitchen staff are so nice to me and it is so much fun interacting with the residents. I am still learning names but I am always greeted with warm "hellos" whenever I come across a resident, nurse or administrative personnel.
The nursing home is "restaurant style" which is really neat for the patients. Rather than being served a hot meal inside the room, patients can come to the dining hall for breakfast and lunch and place an order with the server based on the menu for the day. The nursing home uses a 3 week cycle menu so they rotate the menu's every 3-weeks.
Although there are certain items on the menu for the day, residents are free to order whatever they like and if it is in the kitchen somewhere, they can get it.
The residents enjoy most of the items so there is certainly not a lot of "extra" requests. Favorites include collard greens, greens, biscuits, macaroni and cheese, apple cobbler, eggs, ham and bacon.
Some of the residents love vegetables and salads but overall, the Southern Food seems to win on a daily basis. Sadly, I haven't heard any requests for tofu or veggie burgers but that's ok....I still have 8 more weeks there :) hehe

After working from 5:45 until 2:15 (I gave an inservice to the kitchen staff at 1:30 on food safety and temperatures that went really well) I made a quick stop to the gym for a isolation-specific weight lifting session (working on my muscle imbalances, specifically on my rt side. I am doing a lot of single leg exercises with machines for my legs) and then headed home to give my Campy some love, do a little homework and then fix dinner before Karel came home from work.

I was inspired by the menu for the day so for my menu..collard greens.
Worried that I wouldn't like them (the only lettuce I seem to enjoy cooked is spinach) I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the peppery taste of them and they complemented by bowl of tofu, eggs, mushrooms and garlic very well.