While street parties, gatherings and events will take place up and down the country this weekend to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, there are some who limited to getting involved.
For those who are in hospital, celebrations of this kind will be more likely to be few and far between.
However, staff at NHS Grampian have devised a royal themed menu to help put smiles on patients’ faces.
Serving up around 2,000 patients across a multitude of hospitals including Dr Gray’s in Elgin and Cornhill and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ARI) in Aberdeen, patient catering manager for NHS Grampian, Ruaraidh Mackinnon, and his team will serve up a special menu on Sunday June 5.
Responsible for around 340 staff across the business, Ruaraidh says it will take roughly up to 130 members of the catering team to ensure everyone is fed on the day.
This isn’t the first time NHS Grampian has put on themed menus. They celebrated the last Jubilee and William and Kate’s wedding.
But the logistics and operation around these menus just to see them come to fruition is extensive, so planning is necessary.
“They usually go down quite well. Some of the wards will have little celebrations going on, so the menu adds something different. It is really for the patients, especially the longer term ones. It is also nice for our staff as it is something different.”
Devising the NHS Grampian Jubilee menu
Although the menu was Ruaraidh’s initial idea, it has been a team effort in pulling it together with catering managers and team leaders involved.
The menu has to work across the whole of Grampian and with three different production kitchens, all of which have their own methods of cooking, the dishes have to be adaptable and work everywhere.
Planning for the event started in February and instead of ordering one big cake, which the hospital would usually do but cannot due to Covid, he has organised for individual gluten-free cupcakes to be delivered from a company on Loch Ness.
The cakes were ordered in March due to the size of the order and will boast the emblem of the celebrations printed on a chocolate disk on the top.
On the menu patients will get to enjoy a range of choices, with some royal stand-outs including chicken Balmoral, smoked haddock and salmon melting in the middle fishcakes, mashed tatties pipes into crowns and baked in the oven, and strawberries and cream.
He added: “We tried to pick in season Scottish produce. For the last two years we’ve had a lot of issues getting products because of Brexit and Covid, then the war in Ukraine has also affected the food markets.
“We left it to the last minute before announcing the menu to ensure we could get all of the ingredients.”
The price of the menu
NHS Grampian works on a budget of cost per day per patient and every penny is considered when pulling together menus.
On average, according to Ruaraidh the last quarter of the financial year saw each day at around £4.50 per patient. This Jubilee special occasion menu is 95p more expensive than usual.
Dr Gray’s Hospital food preparation is slightly ahead of ARI and Cornhill due to it providing meals for numerous community hospitals, but anyone in a NHS Grampian hospital this Sunday will receive the menu.
The Elgin location also operates a cook/chill kitchen which means food is prepped in advance, chilled down and then held for serving. This is due to it serving a multitude of community hospitals. ARI and Cornhill teams will prep the meal on the day.
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