Preparing Christmas dinner for hospital patients
No-one wants to be in hospital during the festive season, but a small army of catering staff are making sure patients and staff get to enjoy a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
Preparations have been underway in the United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (ULTH) kitchens and catering teams for many weeks.
Team Leader Patricia Hopkins has been busy with the catering teams at Lincoln County and Grantham and District Hospitals: “Being in hospital at any time of the year can be hard, but especially at Christmas. We hope by putting in this extra effort over the festive period it lets our patients know that we want them to have as merry a Christmas as possible given the circumstances.”
On Christmas Day, the Trust will serve more than 2,000 patients and staff a roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
Hundreds of turkey crowns have been ordered, along with thousands of sprouts, a mountain of baby carrots, a tonne of potatoes, thousands of pigs in blankets and stuffing balls, a sea of gravy, hundreds of Christmas puddings and, of course, gallons of custard and brandy sauce.
Some of the ingredients have also been used to serve around 3,000 staff and volunteers a festive roast dinner in the hospitals’ restaurants in the days leading up to Christmas.
Thousands of festive treats including mince pies, biscuits and other snacks were also sorted by the teams and delivered to more than 600 departments and wards across hospital and community sites in Lincolnshire.
Dozens of giant Christmas cakes, enough to feed 1,650 people in total, have already been baked at Pilgrim Hospital, Boston and have been delivered to each hospital kitchen where they have been covered in marzipan and iced. The gigantic recipe contains 63kg of fruit, 30kg of marzipan and 20kg of icing sugar.
Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group Head of Catering, Matthew Charlton, added: “Well done to our catering staff for all the effort that has gone in so far, and especially on Christmas morning when they sacrifice spending time with their own family to make sure everyone in hospital is able to have a Christmas dinner.”
