Every day, 365 days of the year, the team at Cool-Aid Society’s Mount Edwards Court facility makes and serves dinner for its 78-plus residents, all of whom are 55 and older and arrived here in need of an affordable home and light support services.
The meals range from lasagne (very popular with the residents) to taco salad to burgers, and often feature produce and meats from Victoria-area farmers, thanks to the South Island FarmHub Farmbucks program, which subsidizes the cost of local food for charities and schools.
“How do you support your local food economy and stay in your budget? Farmbucks is the only way,” says Cool-Aid’s Food Service Manager Paul Stewart. “Farmbucks is the only way I can stay within my food budget.”
On the night we visited, Senior Cook Jerry Kwan was whipping up an all-FarmHub sourced meal featuring a quiche with Lockwood Farms eggs, Cowichan Station Creamery Koksilah cheese, Boughneath Farm sausage, roasted red peppers, and scallions, plus a side salad of all local greens and fresh strawberries.
For senior residents, many of whom face health issues like diabetes, having fresh, nutritious food can have a big impact on their health.
“I like quiche because it has eggs and red peppers in it,” says one resident named Sharon. “The salad is really good—it’s green stuff [and] you can eat as much as you can.”
Cool-Aid currently supports its Mount Edwards Court facility with the Farmbucks program, but they would like to expand the program further to other facilities—they have over 550 apartments for people who were previously homeless.
Comments