Here’s Looking at You

Who are the unsung heroes of the food world?

Sure, you have celebrity chefs who grace the pages of tabloid magazines and the television screens of the Food Network and Cooking Channel. They’ve made a household name for themselves through culinary expertise, photogenic faces, and charismatic personalities (though, let's be honest and pick just one or two out of the three - no one’s perfect!).

But not everyone can be so lucky or blessed to have fame and fortune.

How many of you out there are chefs toiling away, developing unique and innovative dish designs that combine wonderful flavors or textures… only to have no one to serve it to except Harry and Mary who come in every Tuesday at 4 PM for the senior citizen’s early-bird special.

How many of you out there are line cooks who can make that perfect char-brown sear on a steak while leaving the middle pink-red, moist, and juicy? You’ve got the skills in the kitchen to make every dish perfect. But you also have ideas for new dishes and are just itching to express your creative side. Show the world what you’ve got. You just need the chance to prove yourself.

Or maybe you’re a parent or spouse coming home from a hard day at work to cook a meal for a loved one; maybe you’ve been slaving away in the home kitchen all day long to make a feast for the whole family.

There are a lot of wonderful individuals in the world making mouth-watering, eye-popping dishes - wowing people with inventive ideas and putting smiles on the faces of friends, family, or customers as the perfect bite satisfies that primal craving for the sustenance of life.

But I think recognition is sorely lacking in one area.

I’ve made a lot of hospital visits over the years from town-sized local hospitals staffed by homegrown family physicians to major medical centers where nationally-recognized doctors perform cutting-edge research and handle patients with the most complex of problems.

Hospitals aren’t exactly the happiest places on Earth. You won’t mistake them for Disneyland. Unless you’re there for childbirth, there’s nothing cheerful about the idea of going to a hospital as a patient or a visitor. It’s not like you *want* to see the doctor; you go because you *have* to see the doctor. You’re not going to book an appointment with your doctor because you like to hang out with him.

“Hello, is Dr. Smith in next Monday? I’d like to book an appointment. No, I don’t need a physical. We just haven’t played poker in a while. Tell him I’ll bring the wine, and he should bring the cheese and stethoscope.”

It doesn’t happen like that. Or if it does, maybe a visit to the psych ward would be more helpful than the doctor’s office.

Even the whole sterile nature of the environment is lacking in personality. You walk into a hospital. Everything is usually white - white walls, white linoleum floors, doctors in white coats. Sure, they try to make it cheerful - you might see a row of blue tile along the floor; maybe you’ll see some pictures hanging along the corridors to the patients’ rooms. You might even get lucky and have some floral patterns painted on the walls in some areas. Better yet, there might be actual living potted plants! Still, there’s no doubt that Martha Stewart wasn’t consulted for the decor here.

Whether it’s because of the physical space or your own state of mind, a hospital is a place where you want to get in and get out as fast as possible. It’s also not a place that’s number one, number two, or number 167 on your list of top places to go out for dinner.

Imagine calling up your significant other for a date night, “Hey honey, feel like Italian tonight? I hear the hospital makes a great lasagna. Seven o’clock good? See you there!”

But let’s do that. No, not plan date night at a hospital. I mean let’s think about the food there.

Like the decor, the food at a hospital isn’t going to win any awards. But let’s stop for a moment and consider how important it is. I don’t mean the food that’s in the cafeteria for the visitors and staff. I mean the food that the patients eat.

If you’ve just gone through some major surgery, you’re going to be feeling either starved or nauseated. Maybe even both.

You might be starved because you weren’t allowed to eat anything for hours prior to the surgery. Then you were in surgery for several more hours. Then you were still asleep afterward as the anesthesia wore off. That’s a long time. Ever get grumpy if your dinner time is delayed? You know the feeling.

After all that, your body needs nourishment to heal itself. Vitamins and minerals from vegetables; proteins from meat, fish, and legumes; sugars from carbohydrates (yes, you can finally eat that cake and feel good about it, too!). The repair process can be slow and arduous; it needs building blocks to begin.

On the other hand, you might be nauseated. Your body has gone through major trauma.

Maybe you had something called laparoscopic surgery. This is where they make a small incision through your skin, then shove the cold steel of instruments and cameras inside you to get the job done. Small incision, big ouch.

Maybe you had to be cut wide open; maybe they had to saw your bones apart for open heart surgery or to amputate a limb.

No matter the type of surgery, it’s common that your bowels might get blocked afterward and you need to just *go* but you can’t. The plumbing is clogged. So you don’t want to eat but you still really need those building blocks to heal.

Starved or otherwise, that’s why food is so important at hospitals.

I’ve been lucky. Sure I’ve had my fair share of injuries - broken ribs, broken wrists, broken elbows, skin ripped from my knees, nose bitten, finger sliced open by an Exacto knife (occupational hazard). But nothing life threatening and nothing life changing.

But I also have a very close family member, who I dearly love and, who practically has been living in hospitals her whole life. One surgery after another, one condition after another. She’s lived in the cold sterility of hospitals almost as much as in the solace of her own home.

On those hospital visits, somehow food always came up as a topic of banter. I suppose it’s a natural topic. We’re human and who doesn’t like to talk about food?

We would be sitting in her hospital room on a typical New England day. The sun would peek through the clouds, beaming its soft warm rays through the window, providing both much-needed natural light and an afterglow of cheer to the room's ambiance. The television attached high on the wall opposite the bed would be muted. Maybe news or some movie would be on screen to help pass the time. The overbed tray table just off to the side would be littered with goodies piled high from earlier visitors: a once-bitten chocolate brownie wrapped in a white paper napkin, a half-eaten cinnamon-raisin bagel peering out of wax paper, an untouched croissant leaving grease marks on a brown paper bag, and a package of cookies ripped open along the edge spilling crumbs on the floor beneath. Several styrofoam cups with flexible straws sticking up in the air like periscopes from a submarine would sit mostly empty with remains of water, fruit juice, or soda lying at their bottoms.

Nearby, the hospital menu would rest at the edge of the tray table. Sometimes we would peruse it together to decide what she should have for lunch or dinner later that day. Although the selections were broad and varied, we would always gravitate toward a small set of choices. Maybe a wrap, salad, or soup for lunch; salmon or pasta for dinner. We’re all creatures of habit.

Funny enough, although hospital food has a reputation for being not so great, some of it was surprisingly delicious.

At the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, we discovered an amazing chicken soup. Herbs provided a balance of flavor that wasn't too salty and a delicate roux gave it a silky consistency. The chicken salad wrap was shockingly delicious. Large chunks of white-meat chicken with the richness of the mayonnaise cut through by a secret ingredient - dried cranberries!

Likewise, some of the food choices at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut were equally appetizing. They had a split-pea and ham soup with a creamy consistency and earthy flavor. The spaghetti and meatballs had a perfectly sweet and tangy balance to the sauce.

Ok, so these aren’t Michelin star dishes. But let’s keep things in perspective. Food is vitally important to a patient’s well-being. Not just nutritionally, but mentally and emotionally as well. Even if you are the type who “eats-to-live” rather than “lives-to-eat” (hey, then why are you here reading a food blog?), you have to admit it - there’s a certain joy to thinking about your next meal.

So here’s a tremendous “Thank You” to all the chefs in all the kitchens in all the hospitals in all the world. We’ll never see your faces and we’ll never know your names. But we'll always be grateful for your work. Here's looking at you!

What’s your experience with food in hospitals? Please share your thoughts!