Restaurant Review: Lunch at the Provo Senior Citizen's Center

If you are a resident of Provo, Utah, and are sixty years of age or over, you qualify for the Senior Lunch Program at the Senior Center on Freedom Boulevard. It costs three dollars per meal, but it is done strictly on the honor code -- they put out a little wooden box for you to put your money in. I usually give five dollars per week. The building is the back of the Provo Recreation Center. It features classrooms, billiard tables, a quiet lobby with a tropical fish display and  fireplace and vinyl-covered chairs that discourage comfortable naps. There are exclusive exercise rooms and a large social hall with a stage, where lunch is served promptly at noon.

The Senior Center also provides several free health, finance, and legal noontime workshops for Seniors every month. Today it was an eyesight and glaucoma check up, from BYU. I'm happy to say that even though I've had the same pair of glasses for six years now, my prescription does not need to be updated.

The menu today is:
Salisbury steak
mashed potatoes and gravy
carrots
a dinner roll
and a bowl of pears.

It is served cafeteria style.

Everyone thought the pears were apple sauce, and several went back up to the servers to say it tasted funny. That's how they found out it was pears they were eating, not applesauce. Since about half the group is Hispanic, the condiment table features pickled cactus strips, which several elderly Gringo ladies mistook for green beans -- filling their plates full of them and then nearly losing their dentures because of the heat. We also get a small carton of one percent milk, so they were able to cool down.

It's cafeteria food, so what can I say about it? The only way I can actually eat it and enjoy it is to skip breakfast so I'm ravenous by noon -- then it tastes pretty good. Most of the people who eat lunch at the Senior Center are no longer able to do much cooking for themselves, or have completely lost interest in eating at all. The volunteers who staff this lunch program provide one hot meal a day to people who otherwise would probably only ever eat cat food and baloney sandwiches.

I eat there now because I need to save up enough money for a colonoscopy and to get my prostrate taken care of. I figure in six months time I'll have enough money saved up to do so. If I can stand it. I might start nagging my children for money instead. It's never worked in the past but maybe the recent General Conference has turned them into angels . . .