The Hometown Café is open for dine-in and carryout.
WEEKLY MENU
Monday 11/16
Salisbury Steak, Caramelized Onions, Red Wine Sauce, Gold Potatoes/Broccoli
Soup: Potato
Sofrito is a blend of onions, celery, sweet peppers, garlic and thyme. To make a Salisbury steak, you combine cooked sofrito and ground beef. I use 90% lean beef, and we cook it on a rack, so much of the fat that is in the beef is tossed away. This time we’ll serve that with caramelized onions and a very light red wine and beef sauce instead of a heavy, oil-laden gravy. Don’t worry the alcohol is cooked off! The gold potatoes and broccoli are steamed and seasoned with just Smart Balance, salt and pepper. In the potato soup, I use 2% milk instead of cream and Better Than Bouillon ham base instead of bacon. You can buy Better Than Bouillon Soup bases right down at Gene’s grocery store! Look for the “Chef Steve’s Grab Good” label in the aisle! There’s really no way to avoid using an oil-based roux to thicken the soup, so it will have a little oil with the associated bump in calories. The red wine sauce, potatoes and vegetables are all gluten-free; the Salisbury steak and soup are not.
Tuesday 11/17
Roast Turkey/Gravy, Harvey House Sweet Potatoes, Green Beans, Cranberry Sauce
Soup: Vegetable Lentil
We use a boneless white and dark meat combination turkey roast that has 3 grams of fat (1 gram saturated), 50 mg of cholesterol and 600 grams of sodium per serving. We steam the turkey, so some of that 600 mg of sodium will wind up in the water left in the pan that we then dilute heavily and use to make the gravy. The daily sodium allowance for a moderate diet like the DASH diet is 2,000 mg, so you can still fit this meal into your diet if you are careful with breakfast and supper today. Fred Harvey opened his first Harvey House restaurant in 1876 in Topeka. Besides setting high-quality standards for hotels and restaurants frequented by ordinary people and helping to “civilize” the West, his Harvey House restaurants and hotels represented the very first “chain” business of any kind in the United States. In any Harvey House establishment, you could expect the same high-quality products and service. You could find these sweet potatoes on many Harvey House menus. The sweet potatoes are boiled, peeled and baked with butter and sugar. The original recipe calls for just powdered sugar, but I have enhanced it with brown sugar, honey and molasses. The cranberry sauce is made from whole cranberries with oranges, sugar and agave, a syrup made from the same cactus that tequila is made from. The soup is meat-free (except for Better Than Bouillon soup bases), dairy-free and low in sodium. Lentils are a great source of non-meat protein and fiber! You can buy Better Than Bouillon Soup bases I use in this soup, right down at Gene’s grocery store! Look for the “Chef Steve’s Grab Good” label in the aisle! Everything is gluten-free today except the gravy.
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Wednesday 11/18
Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl, Brown Rice, Baby Carrots
Soup: Curried Chicken
If you were ever given a sample of teriyaki chicken in a mall food court, then you have tasted this teriyaki chicken. I love this stuff; it’s tender but not shredded and is very well-marinated. This is now officially one of the favorite meals we serve in the Hometown Café! One portion of this chicken has 3.5 grams of fat (1.5 grams saturated), 50 mg of cholesterol and 290 mg of sodium. Brown rice is a great non-meat source of protein with a huge fiber punch! Remember, if you are following the DASH diet, aim for 30 grams of fiber daily. Brown rice can give you a great head start on that number! The last two times I ordered bok choy; it arrived the week after it was on the menu. This time it arrived on time! The curry in this soup will be light but will have everything you’d expect in a good curry, including ginger, garlic, allspice, coconut milk and a good Madras curry powder with a pile of vegetables! You can make it a meal in itself if you want! The rice and vegetables are gluten-free. The soup is not. The box for the teriyaki chicken has a gluten-free statement, but I see soy sauce listed several times in the ingredients, and soy sauce is derived from wheat.
Thursday 11/19
Turkey Pot Pie
Soup: Manhattan Clam Chowder
Well, it’s that time of year again. Today starts the pot pie season! Nothing says Mid-Western comfort food like turkey pot pie! This is the real thing, so you will need to consider it a treat item if you are watching what you eat. As a reminder, the DASH diet limit for saturated fat is 14 grams a day for an average man’s 2,100-calorie diet and the pie crust has 20 grams of saturated fat in it, so you will have to leave some of the crust on your plate in order to make this fit the DASH diet parameters. The healthier option is the soup and salad bar. Manhattan clam chowder is the tomato-based clam chowder popular in New York as opposed to the cream-based clam chowder eaten in Boston. This is the clam chowder I modeled the chickpea chowder’s flavor profile after. Clams suspended against the blend of stewed tomatoes, onion, celery and potatoes is a classic! In the past, I would have started this soup with a nice chunk of fatback or slab bacon. Now I use Better Than Bouillon ham base instead of bacon. You can buy Better Than Bouillon Soup bases right down at Gene’s grocery store! Look for the “Chef Steve’s Grab Good” label in the aisle! The soup is thickened with cornstarch, not a heavy, oil-based roux, so it is lighter than soups thickened with roux and has far fewer calories. Only the soup is gluten-free today.
Friday 11/20
Steamed Salmon or Cajun Catfish
Fresh Asparagus, Steamed Gold Potatoes
Soup: Steak Soup
If it’s Friday in Smith Center, it is fish day at the Hometown Café! The salmon is simply steamed with a little Smart Balance, salt and pepper. The catfish has just a bit of Cajun seasoning on it and is baked, not fried and is VERY low in sodium, coming in at under 20 mg per serving! The potatoes and asparagus are also steamed, making this a super healthy meal option no matter what fish you choose. The steak soup is for the non-fish eaters. It’s actually a stew and is a meal in itself! If you are watching fat and sodium, you will have to make room for the soup in your diet, though. The soup and the catfish are not gluten-free
Open for dine-in or carryout weekdays from 11:30 AM to 3:00 PM. Due to supply shortages for some products, menus listed may change.
LUNCH PRICES
Full hot lunch (includes one cold side) – $7.99
Just entree – $3.99
Just vegetable or starch – $2.50
Pre-packaged side salad – $2.50
Full Salad Bar (unlimited trips, includes soup and roll) – $11.99
Children’s Salad Bar (8 and under, unlimited trips, includes soup and roll) – $3.99
Children’s Full Meal (8 and under) – $3.99
Senior Salad Bar (65+, unlimited trips, includes soup and roll) – $5.99
Senior Full Meal (65+) – $5.99
Salad only (unlimited trips) – $9.99
Soup only (unlimited trips) – $3.00
To-Go/One Trip Salad Bar – $7.99
Other sides priced specifically.
Be Relevant: About Chef Steve Smith
Chef Steve’s passion for delicious food is paired with a love for creating healthy options. Chef Steve was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and has opened 13 restaurants around the world. Most recently he was the executive chef at Coconut Grove in Nevis, West Indies.
Following a decision to make more healthy food choices in his own diet, Chef Steve became a registered and licensed dietitian. SCMH and Chef Steve have partnered to add nutrition education and support to patients and their families as a new service provided to those staying at the hospital.
Offering high-quality food in a healthcare setting is always a formidable challenge, one few healthcare facilities can tackle. The quality and service goals of a chef and food service professional do not always align with the nutrition concerns of a healthcare facility. Smith County Memorial Hospital has devised a unique solution to this problem in the person of a Chef-Registered Dietitian. By combining the responsibilities for creating food and delivering nutrition services we are able to maintain high quality standards of both food and service while filling the nutrition needs of patients and the community. The result is a food service department that is highly relevant to the medical team, the staff of the facility, patients in the hospital, and the community at large.
The Hometown Café is situated at the front entrance of the Smith County Memorial Hospital, located in North Central Kansas up near the Nebraska border. We are open to the public Monday through Friday from 11:30 am to 3:00 pm and serve approximately 100 staff members, 30 Meals on Wheels participants, 30 members of the public, and 10-20 patients and guests in the hospital daily. Our meals are based on the macronutrient parameters of the DASH diet, and we tailor food and nutrition to meet the needs of patients on an individual basis. As a Chef-RD, Chef Steve goes into patient rooms every day armed with 30+ years’ experience providing tableside service to patrons in high-end hotels and stand-alone restaurants, intimate knowledge of what is in the refrigerators in the Hometown Café kitchen and the skill to know what to do with it, and a dedication to the highest level of service called the Spirit of Hospitality.
Chef Steve's Grab Good
Chef Steve’s community health partnership with Gene’s Heartland Foods makes finding exciting, healthier ingredients a breeze. Look for Chef Steve’s Grab Good labels on the ingredients he selects at Gene’s. Scan the QR code for instant access to Recipes, Pro Tips from a Registered Dietitian, and How-To Cooking Videos. It’s never been easier to cook healthy and tasty meals.
With Chef Steve’s Grab Good, making healthy lifestyle changes is not just easy, it’s a breeze!
“Chef Steve and his crew make awesome food!!”
