Breakfast on the barbecue? Why not?
Friday November 28, 2003 Sheri Fiegehen
It’s 6 a.m. at Streamway Villa. Residents are starting to awaken and the kitchen begins gearing up for breakfast. But then, without warning, everything goes black. The power is out. Now what?

No problem – you spark up the barbecue. Such was the novel idea of Dietary Aide Lois Ward during a recent power outage.

“I have to say, Lois outdid herself this time,” notes Denise Ansell, the Cobourg home’s life enrichment co-ordinator. “In doing some problem-solving, Lois thought of an off-the-wall idea,” which was to cook breakfast on the barbecue.

“Well, they have to eat, and I wasn’t about to just give them cold cereal and peanut butter and jam sandwiches,” quips Lois. “I figured that we have barbecues, so we might as well use them.”

So, there Lois was, out in the rain, cooking up scrambled eggs on one barbecue and oatmeal on another barbecue. She also heated up pots of water for coffee and tea.

“The only thing I couldn’t give them was toast,” she says.

It took a little longer to get through the breakfast process, adds Lois, since there was quite a bit of running around back and forth.

But her efforts were much appreciated. “Thanks to Lois’s creative thought, our residents were given a quality meal, says Denise.”

And, as Lois puts it, “We’re just like the post office – we deliver.”