Holiday Ideas: Resident Recipes

Many facilities do a resident-planned menu for Christmas and New Year's Day. Some also do resident-planned menus for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. These are great ways to involve residents and give them what they like. However, it is still a rather limited number of selections.

In addition to the holiday meals, you can do something along the "Twelve Days of Christmas" theme. Solicit favorite recipes from residents. For twelve days, feature one of the recipes for at least one meal. (If you can do it for noon and evening that doubles the recipes used.)

Work these recipes into the normal menu. It is not difficult to substitute dessert, salad, vegetable, and bread recipes into an existing menu. Even entree recipes can be substituted into the menu without too much effort.

Make copies of the recipes and include who submitted them. Distribute the recipes with the meal. It will give the residents something to discuss as well as provide additional variety for the meals!

Remember, you do not have to do this alone. Activities would probably enjoy helping to solicit and collect recipes. They can even copy and distribute the recipes that you use.