Emporia’s Friendship Meals are being cooked in Emporia again. On Monday’s menu was baked chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli and Jell-O salad.
The move to the new kitchen allows the meals to be cooked in Emporia rather than in Ottawa. Friendship Meals had been distributing meals out of the Heritage Center on Whittier Street. The Friendship Meals program recently acquired the former Emporia Rehabilitation building, 221 W. Logan Ave., to bring the meal preparation back to Lyon County.
Bringing the cooking back to Lyon County will allow the food to be fresher, said Terry Brooks, nutrition coordinator of Friendship Meals.
“I think it’s important for the meals to be cooked in Emporia because these people are going to get fresher meals,” Brooks said in a previous Gazette article. “They are going to be hotter.”
Monday morning, the kitchen area smelled of a freshly prepared meal, and Friendship Meals volunteers buzzed in and out picking up meals for home delivery. Christal Mackey and Tonya Maltbie rushed in to pick up their cooler of meals and rushed out to their cars.
“This is what we do,” Mackey said, as she loaded a cooler into her car.
Brooks said the meal program is a vital part of the community. Last year, the program averaged 160 meals a day just in home deliveries. That does not include meals served at the county’s senior centers, for which the organization also prepares meals.
The new site will cook meals for Emporia, Hartford, Olpe and Neosho Rapids, said Karen Hartenbower, who is chairing the committee that will be marketing the rest of the space at Emporia Rehab. Hartenbower said priority for the space will go to non-profit organizations.
“We found at the annex (the former Lyon County Courthouse) people are still asking the (county) commission for office space,” Hartenbower said.
Hartenbower said the main reason for purchasing the building, however, was to get the meal preparation back to Lyon County.
“That’s what we have achieved here,” she said.
The agency is still looking for money to buy the building, which will cost $200,000. A fund has been set up at ESB Financial, 801 Merchant St. and 12th Avenue and Industrial Road. Checks should be made payable to the Friendship Meals Project.