On Thursday Oct. 18, junior Grace Trompeter and other student volunteers lent their hard work to prepare diabetic-friendly food for over 20 guests at the Geneseo United Methodist Church.
Trompeter is a member of the Community Health Alliance on campus and led the effort for the dinner with a menu low in both carbohydrates and sugars to make the selection more suitable for people with diabetes.
According to Trompeter, the purpose of the dinner, which started with only a small tasting three years ago, is to “make a meal for our diabetic patients that is healthy, tasty, easy and cheap and show our patients that they can cook healthy meals that abide by the guidelines that are recommended for people who have Type 2 diabetes.”
Thursday’s meal included a great variety of dishes: minestrone soup, sautéed green beans and mushrooms, mashed cauliflower, roasted rosemary lemon chicken and for dessert, flour-free peanut butter cookies, fruit skewers and a low-sugar and low-carbohydrate pumpkin pie.
Trompeter also provided low-cost and diabetic-friendly recipes for the guests to take home including buttermilk ranch salad dressing, hot chicken salad, beef with sun-dried tomatoes and orange chicken.
The event was also held in conjunction with a foot clinic. A podiatrist came to check the circulation in patients’ feet. A symptom of diabetes is poor circulation, which occurs most noticeably in the extremities. After patients had their feet checked, they were served their choice of the menu.
The Community Health Alliance works in conjunction with Geneseo Parish Outreach Center, Inc., and Trompeter said that one of the most frequent diagnoses at the center is diabetes.
“That’s why we chose to do a dinner focused on diabetic-friendly food,” she said. “We had the opportunity as a club … to use our resources, our manpower and our skills to do something more than just shadow doctors here [at the center] to understand how a clinic works and do something for the patients.”
“I love it,” Trompeter said of the event. “I love food, and I love cooking for other people.”