Deck the Streets with Summerset’s Christmas Party

For Gina Collins-Smith, the regional food lead for Summerset Lower North Island, food is about bringing people together and creating life-long memories.

remember being three years old, with a tea towel tied around my waist like an apron, flour in my hair with my grandmother showing me how to shape the sultana scones. “The love I felt in that moment is something I have never forgotten. It is what inspired me to embrace cooking as a form of communication and expression.”

Collins-Smith was the managing chef at Summerset by the Ranges for nearly a decade before moving into her current position.

“I wanted to provide a high level of customer and food service to the residents, and now, I am in a position to share my knowledge and experience with fellow chef managers.”

Collins-Smith helps the village chefs create homely and nutritionally sound menus, serving the food on bespoke, dementia-friendly plates that Summerset designed with Southern Hospitality.

“A study showed that residents consume up to 25 percent more food when using a red plate. The red rim also provides a plate edge reference guide for residents.

“Red is a stimulating colour for dementia patients, and it provides contrast with food and promotes appetite.”

For those on texture modified diets, CollinsSmith uses Pure Foods. After trialling this product, Collins-Smith found that not only did residents consume up to 40 percent more food, but it also cut down on labour in the kitchen.

“Using Pure Foods saves us a full eight-hour shift by removing the labour-intensive processes of creating texture modified foods. It gives the kitchen time to focus on attention to detail,” said Collins-Smith.

Each year, Summerset holds a Christmas celebra-tion for residents. Usually, it’s a get together of all residents, sometimes as a themed dress-up, with entertainment, games, and a festive-themed meal.

“We’ve had a team working on what the 2021 celebration will look like for several months now.

“With the current Covid situation and uncertainty around alert levels, we wanted to provide all our residents with a special Christmas celebration.

The team came up with a Christmas picnic/ street party, allowing residents to come together in a socially distanced celebration. Depending on each site, dishes will be served either in the street under marquees or in recreational rooms.

For those in higher alert levels, such as Auckland, the celebration will come to them with a dressed-up team delivering a picnic box with bubbles to the residents home via a golf cart “blinged” out with Christmas decorations blaring Christmas carols over the speaker.