Linda Falkenstein
Goodman Community Center’s Felicia Williams (left) and Gayle Laszewski: Meals served with a side of companionship.
Shirley Smith likes to have lunch at the West Madison Senior Center, largely for the companionship. “I still cook at home,” says Smith, who lives at the Rosewood Villas senior apartments on the city’s west side. “But having somebody else cook once in a while helps.”
There are probably as many reasons for eating at a senior meal site as there are sites in Dane County — currently, 27.
“The feeling about these meals has always been, ‘I’m not old enough’ or ‘I’m not poor enough,’” says Angela Velasquez, Area Agency on Aging program specialist for Dane County. She’d like to banish the stigma. “It has nothing to do with being too young or having too much money. You can be wealthy and home alone and not eating a balanced meal with fruits and vegetables. You can have chewing problems from bad teeth or be on a medication that affects your appetite. There are multiple factors. We want people to age well and eat well.”
Smith is dining at Dane County’s newest meal site, at the Meadowood Community Center, 5740 Raymond Road. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m., volunteers serve 15 to 30 seniors a well-balanced meal cooked by Gaylord Catering.
Seniors 60 and over are asked to pay what they can, with a suggested $4 donation, but there is no requirement that they give anything. Today’s meal is hot shredded beef on a bun with a spinach salad, apple slices and a yogurt cup. The beef is ample, savory and a great example of comfort food. The spinach is impressively fresh, although everyone has trouble ripping open the slippery plastic packets of Newman’s Own salad dressing.
The Meadowood site was launched last November with state grant money earmarked for revitalizing the senior dining program, says West Madison Senior Center executive director Katie Kluesner. Meadowood will be funded through the end of 2016, and Kluesner hopes the site proves popular enough for that to be renewed for 2017.
It’s one of four locations at which West Madison serves meals, the others being Temple Beth El (Monday), Lussier Community Education Center (Wednesday and Friday) and the center’s headquarters on Sawyer Terrace (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday).
“Many older people start relying on cereal and soup, because they’re easy,” says Kluesner. These meals are approved by a dietician and must provide one-third of the recommended daily nutrition for aging adults.
But health doesn’t come from nutrition alone, Kluesner notes: “It’s about socializing. Getting out. Talking with people.”
West Madison is only one unit in a patchwork quilt of nonprofits, churches and municipalities that the county contracts with to manage senior meals. (Transportation to the sites is also available.)
Mandi Miller, nutrition site manager for the city of Fitchburg, oversees a program that offers lunch Monday-Friday in the Fitchburg Senior Center. The crowd usually numbers 25 to 30 seniors, “more on the days when it’s ribs or baked chicken,” says Miller.
A recent lunch of shrimp salad had a robust shrimp-to-macaroni ratio and plenty of crisp celery — and was better than many area grocery store’s deli offerings. It came with a side of fresh sweet-and-sour cucumbers, canned sliced apricots, milk and a cup of ice cream. Fitchburg’s food comes from Consolidated Food Services of Dane County (other kitchens that provide meals are Waunakee School District, Colonial Club in Sun Prairie and the Goodman Community Center). Seniors are not limited to the meal site closest to them; if they have transportation, they can pick any site where they like the menu on a given day.
In addition, Dane County launched an innovative program in 2013 called “My Meal My Way,” which brings the senior dining program into several restaurants. Cranberry Creek was the first site, followed by Fink’s in Mount Horeb and, in December 2015, the DeForest Family Restaurant. On Oct. 6, Ziggy’s BBQ Smoke House and Ice Cream Parlor in Oregon will become the fourth. The number of entrees that qualify for the program range from four to 10. Here, too, payment is by donation.
“It’s wonderful to be able to go to a restaurant,” says Dane County Department of Human Services director Lynn Green. “Senior sites are neat, and there is a lot of good socialization, but being able to order off a menu, a lot of people like that.”
At the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s east side, lunch is cooked on site by Felicia Williams, Monday through Friday.
“I just love cooking,” says Williams, who uses some of her own recipes and will sometimes bake a few pies to bring in, just for fun. “Everything is from scratch,” says Williams. She says her most popular dish is mac and cheese.
“Everything she makes is to die for,” says a diner passing through the serving area.
Goodman combines activities with its meals, and bingo on Wednesday means that meal is the most popular. Typically attendance ranges from 30 to 60 diners; Williams estimates based on day of the week, and always preps 10 extra meals (Goodman is one of three sites that does not require a day’s advance phone-in registration).
Gayle Laszewski, Goodman older adults program manager, says 10 percent of its users are homeless, unique among the county’s sites. Its crowd skewed more male than female, unlike West Madison and Fitchburg, and was the liveliest dining room — with a blues combo playing beforehand and several round tables occupied by groups of regulars deep in conversation.
Every lunch at Goodman starts with a fresh salad of mixed greens; a recent menu consisted of Williams’ black bean burritos, salsa, spicy corn (well, mildly spicy), and rice — all homemade.
Angela Velasquez from the Area Agency on Aging says that the county is “looking at the foods being as fresh as possible and as local as possible. But it also comes with a price tag, and there’s only so much money.”
The senior meals program is part of the federal Older Americans Act, and is funded through a combination of federal, state and county money, often topped off with funds from cities and towns, plus grants that the managing agencies apply for. “We couldn’t do this without everybody,” says Velasquez.
In Dane County, “one-third of the funding for the meal program is paid for by donations from the seniors themselves,” Velasquez says. “Wisconsin is one of the top states in the nation for seniors contributing. They give what they can, and those who can, give more — for those who can’t.”
Since Velasquez came on board in 2013, she has reduced food waste and is always looking for creative ways to get food to older adults. Ideas for the future include working with food carts and holding a lunch and movie event at an area movie theater. “We’d love to partner with someone. If anyone has any great ideas to bring to the table, let us know.”
More info on the senior dining sites is online at
aaa.dcdhs.com/pdf/nutrition_brochure_040615.pdf
