KINGSTON, N.Y. — If you’re 60 years of age or older and eggplant parmesan, Hawaiian chicken, or stuffed shells sound appetizing, then it may be a good time to consider Gateway’s Community Cafés or the Senior Mobile Meals program.
Stephanie Turco, president and CEO of Gateway Hudson Valley, said the programs not only provide delicious, nutritious meals to hundreds of Ulster County seniors weekly but they offer employment and training opportunities to individuals who avail themselves of the agency’s residential and outpatient programs and services.
“We provide internships and job opportunities in the Senior Meals Program, and we have folks who are learning all kinds of skills in the kitchen around food preparation, food safety [and] handling,” she said during a recent phone interview.
Whether Gateway staff and interns are packing shelf-stable “pantry bags” with canned milk, canned chicken breast, cranberries or pudding, or working to prepare meals at a Community Café or for home delivery, they are learning skills ranging from food prep and handling to cooking, she said. Gateway provides residential and outpatient services, including career and job training, to people with psychiatric disabilities.
“And so, packing pantry bags is a pretty challenging thing and we’re packing hundreds of those every single month,” Turco said. “And maybe that’s an internship or maybe that’s a job, learning how to do that. The skills around it — it’s one of these and two of those and six of those in every bag. And the bag has to be packed this way and it has to look this way. … We use interns to do all sorts of stuff,” Turco said.
“There are a lot of opportunities in our organization for people to grow, change, heal, be employed, all of that,” Turco said. “What makes Gateway unique is that there are folks who were interns who are now employees of Gateway that are my colleagues and are accumulating paid time off and … it’s just incredible the opportunities that people can have if we’re willing to give people a try.”
The 350 home-delivered weekly meals are prepared in Gateway’s commercial kitchen at 1 Amy Kay Parkway in Kingston and are in addition to hundreds of meals served weekly at community cafes in Saugerties, Ulster, Ellenville, Rosendale, and New Paltz.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cafes were forced to close but Gateway set up in parking lots so that seniors could pick up meals daily. Turco said that more than 20,000 extra meals were prepared and served by Gateway in 2021 to seniors in need. The meals were funded by the Ulster County Office for the Aging and the Community Foundation of the Hudson Valley, she said.
“We also provided thirteen hundred or so meals to city of Kingston residents that were suffering from COVID-related food insufficiencies,” Turco said. Those, she added, were funded by a federal Community Development Block Grant and by the City of Kingston Office of Community Development.
Not only are meals meeting a need, Turco said, but they’re “delicious.”
“It’s Hawaiian chicken with chicken breast and pineapples, and rice and broccoli. And it’s a snack and it’s a soup or a salad. It’s bread and butter. It’s milk. It’s dessert,” she said, adding that an Office for the Aging-registered dietitian assures that all of the offerings meet stringent requirements “to make sure we’re providing the optimal nutrition for the seniors.”
All menus contain one-third of the recommended daily allowance for a 2,000 calorie diet, according to the Office for the Aging. They are suitable for low-salt, low-fat, and low-ugar diets and include sides of bread, milk or juice, and a fruit cup or dessert.
Ulster County residents age 60 or over may be eligible to receive home-delivered meals. To learn about eligibility requirements, call the Office for the Aging at (845) 334-5125.
Like the cafés, home-delivered meals are free of charge with a suggested $3 donation to help defray costs. According to the Ulster County website, the cost of the senior nutrition program is covered by “federal, state, county and local contributions.”
For mobile seniors who prefer to get out and dine with their peers, the Community Cafés offer lunches at no charge, although there is a suggested $3 donation to help defray the cost of the meal, according to the Office for the Aging website. Participants are asked to complete an application before participating in the program and reservations are required.
For more information about Community Cafés or to make a reservation, call (845) 331-2180. Community Cafés take place weekly at the following locations:
- Trudy Resnick Farber Building, 50 Center St., Ellenville, serving Mondays and Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m.
- Rosendale Recreation Center, 1055 state Route 32, Rosendale, serving Fridays at 11:30 a.m.
- Frank Greco Senior Center, 207 Market St., Saugerties, serving Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m.
- New Paltz Community Center, 3 Veterans Drive, New Paltz, serving Thursdays at noon
- 1091 Development Court, Kingston, serving Mondays and Wednesdays at noon
