WEEKLY MENU

Monday 8/25

Roast Turkey/Gravy, Harvey House Sweet Potatoes, Peas/Butternut Squash, Homemade Cranberry Sauce
Soup: Roasted Garlic & Cauliflower

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 allocation for sodium on 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. These sweet potatoes could be found 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 cauliflower and the garlic are both roasted. 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! Everything is gluten-free today except the gravy and the soup.

Tuesday 8/26

Reuben Sandwiches, Sweet Potato Fries
Soup: Broccoli Cheese

After we serve corned beef and cabbage, we use the leftover corned beef to make Reubens! I cook the corned beef here. I start by roasting the corned beef on a rack so that some of the fat is rendered and removed; then it’s a long and slow steam that makes it extremely tender. I steam it twice and discard the water both times. The final product is a very tender homemade corned beef low in fat and sodium. A Reuben is made with corned beef, drained and washed sauerkraut, thousand island dressing and Swiss cheese. It’s definitely a treat meal, but a good one! The sweet potato fries are baked, not deep-fat fried and have 140 calories, 4 grams of fat (0 grams saturated), 0 mg cholesterol and 130 mg sodium per serving while delivering 3 grams of dietary fiber! I use 2% milk instead of cream in the soup. It is thickened with an oil-based roux. Even so, it is a healthier version of a cream soup than you will find in other restaurants, but there is no getting around the fact that it has cheese in it. Consider it a treat and be careful with sodium at breakfast and supper. I did not see any starches with gluten in the ingredients for the sweet potato fries. The bread on the sandwich is obviously not gluten-free and neither is the soup.

Wednesday 8/27

Beef & Broccoli, Brown Rice, Egg Rolls
Side: California Rolls
Soup: Egg Drop

In Jamaica, as the Executive Chef at the Half Moon in Montego Bay, I learned to make the Jamaican BBQ called “jerk.” Jamaicans use a light soy sauce in some versions of jerk and I took it one step further and fused jerk with teriyaki, making something I call “sesame jerk.” I use this as the base for the beef and broccoli. The flat iron steak I use has about 5 grams of fat (2 saturated) and 50 grams of cholesterol. The sauce and marinade will add some sodium. If you figure on 300 mg of sodium on the high side, that will cover it. Brown rice is a good source of non-meat protein and packs a powerful fiber punch as well! We have two egg rolls. The smaller one is pork and has some textured vegetable protein in it. The larger egg roll is all vegetable with no meat whatsoever. Chinese restaurants all deep-fry their egg rolls in oil, making the final fat count something you probably don’t want to know about. We bake them here, so our fancy air-frying oven allows us to keep the fat count way down! Even so, it’s safe to consider egg rolls as a treat meal. The California roll is a healthy food option. The surimi, or imitation crab, has a fair amount of sodium, but I only use about half a portion on an entire roll. One portion of the California roll will give you about 150 mg of sodium. If you can not tolerate the small amount of gluten in soy sauce, the brown rice, California roll and soup are the only 100 percent gluten-free items today.

Thursday 8/28

Taco Salad
Soup: Chili con Carne

One-half of the salad bar is dedicated to taco salad toppings. Be careful with the cheese, sour cream and guacamole if you want to reduce calories, fat and sodium, but the shell is surprisingly low in all of that! The taco shell has only 3 grams of fat (0 saturated), 0 cholesterol, only 188 mg of sodium and just 16 carbs. Every diet I can think of except the exceptionally low-fat diets can fit that in! A portion of the ground beef has 10 grams of fat (4.5 grams saturated), 65 mg of cholesterol and 66 mg of sodium in it. We brown the meat first and then drain the fat off, so it is much lower in fat than that! The Chili is a traditional bean and meat chili. Everything is gluten-free except the taco shell.

Friday 8/29

Steamed Salmon, Baked Cod, Fresh Asparagus, Steamed Gold Potatoes
Soup: Steak

The salmon is simply steamed with a little Smart Balance, salt and pepper. The cod 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 cod 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.

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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.

DASH Diet Guide

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'S GRAB GOOD

“Chef Steve and his crew make awesome food!!”

The Hometown Café is open for dine-in and carryout.