At Cedar Lodge, we’re lucky enough to live in the beautiful Vale of Evesham.
Known as the Garden of England, the area has long been famed for its fertile soil. All sorts of vegetables grow here – in particular, asparagus; with 65% of the whole UK’s supply hailing from nearby farms.
If you drive to Cedar Lodge, you’ll see pretty quickly how farming dominates the landscape. The approach to the home is dotted with fields, nurseries and idyllic cottage-shops selling all manner of produce.
20,000 local people are still employed in horticulture. It’s no surprise therefore that a lot of our residents used to work in food production themselves.
Both in the past and present, food has played a huge part in local life.
Celebrating Food
At Cedar Lodge, we thought what better way to celebrate our culinary heritage than by cooking up a storm! Using the finest local produce, our residents spent an afternoon making pizzas. Truly scrumptious!
As our discerning care home chefs Tina and Anita will tell you, every resident at Cedar Lodge has their preferred veggies. And so, once they were each given their tomato base, everyone was free to populate their pizzas as they saw fit. Mushrooms, tomatoes and the quintessential Evesham asparagus all made the menu.
In the spirit of tolerance, we even allowed a resident to top their pizza with pineapple (there’s always one!)
Cooking Comforts
Making pizza was delicious good fun. But beyond that, the activity stimulated great conversations around how our residents used to cook.
Many residents have raised big families. And so, in younger years, a lot of their time would have been spent in the kitchen. While they’ve since earnt the chance to put their feet up, the activity brought back fond memories of cooking for relatives.
And such fond memories are always welcome in what’s been a strange year.
With social distancing at play, finding fun ways to fill our time has certainly required creativity. Cooking has been one covid-compliant activity that we’ve enjoyed.
In this way, we’ve mirrored a lot of people across the country. Faced with the uncertainty of the pandemic, many of us have retreated to the comforts of home cooking.
The phenomenon has been well documented. Back in May, the New York Times even bemused how ‘Pandemic-Baking Britain Has an Obscene Need for Flour’. At some point, we all seemed to join the home-baking craze.
A whole new field of psychology is beginning to laud the positive effects cooking can exert on our mental health. We confirm this was certainly the case at Cedar Lodge: a great time was had by everyone.
Anita and Tina even got some tips from our budding new chefs. Although don’t expect pineapple pizza to be on the menu anytime soon!
If you’d like to learn more about the type of meals we serve here at Cedar Lodge, take a look at our menu page.
Bon Appetit!
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