Senior living community's harvest salad surprises and delights residents

At GreenFields of Geneva, a senior living community in Geneva, Illinois, local ingredients are a fixture on the menu. 

“We try and utilize local products as much as possible,” says Executive Chef Eric Jansen. “Our vendor is great at pointing out when they have local items that we can utilize.”

When grouper was available, the team decided to create a salad based around it and the harvest salad was born. Along with the fresh fish, the dish also features local spring mix, local sun gold tomatoes, beets, honey crisp apples and blueberries. 

“The items all just kind of mesh very well together,” says Jansen. “They love their fish here. So anytime we can incorporate some fresh fish, the residents are overjoyed by that.”

The grouper is prepared using sodium-free seasoning that includes smoked paprika, fennel, black garlic, dried thyme and black pepper. 

“We use a house seasoning that's our regular salt free house seasoning that we developed because obviously in this setting, sodium is a big concern, so we try and do as many things without added salt,” says Jansen. 

Once compiled, the salad is then topped with a tarragon-honey vinaigrette and served to hungry residents. 

Surprising and delighting 

The menu item is one of many limited time offers (LTOs) that the dining team serves at random as part of its “surprise and delight” initiative. 

As its name implies, the initiative is intended to surprise and delight guests and give them something different when the sit down to eat. 

“It’s something that we don't necessarily advertise, but we just put it on the regular menu,” says Jansen. 

Each ‘surprise and delight’ dish is only served once before it disappears, however, so residents need to be quick if they want to try it. While there will always be those who are less enthusiastic about trying something new, Jansen says, there are quite a few that do. 

“In this setting, some of these folks are very set in their way and they plan their meals out a week in advance so we don't really capture that portion,” says Jansen. “But people who ordered it loved it, and we got a lot of positive feedback on it.”

Do you have a dish that uses local ingredients on your menu that you would like to see featured in Locally Sourced? Please send an email to Benita Gingerella at [email protected].