Another very important point to observe in serving food is not to serve too much at one time. In dealing with a capricious appetite, the sight of a quantity of food often repels when a small portion of the same food daintily prepared and attractively served would be eaten with a relish and an appetite for more created. At the same time no cause should be given for the criticism that a patient did not get sufficient to satisfy him, when his doctor allowed him to have plenty. In planning for regular diets, the fact needs to be kept in mind that a larger quantity of food, proportionately, will be consumed in the men’s ward than in the women’s wards, and sufficient to replenish the supply should be sent from the kitchen.
Bills of Fare
A settled bill of fare for the different days of the week is never a good plan in a hospital. The patients will soon learn the rotation of the different dishes. Old patients will tell new ones, and the matter will come up for discussion. Frequently before the food is served, some patient who has heard objections to some food stated has decided she does not want it, when if it had been taken unexpectedly to her it would have been eaten without question.
Dishes
The prettiest, daintiest dishes the house can afford should be provided for the private rooms. The constant breakage of dishes and especially of dainty china, which goes on in a hospital makes it out of the question to provide this kind of ware for the wards, and here beauty must give place to durability. But a few dainty cups, especially for the women’s wards, will be greatly appreciated, for there are refined, sensitive people in the free wards, as elsewhere. These special cups can be used in serving hot effects. Indeed it is astonishing how few nurses know attractiveness to the food which is in itself an aid to digestion. Care must be observed to avoid partiality in this matter, for patients, like children, are quick to discern symptoms of favoritism.
Glasses are now so inexpensive that every hospital can afford to supply a sufficient quantity for all the patients.
A writer in Table Talk thus describes from a patient’s point of view the invalid’s tray in a certain hospital and shows not only what delightfully dainty effects may be secured in serving the commonest articles of food, but how the memory of those effects remained long after the hospital experience was ended:
“A couple of weeks spent in an up-to-date, twentieth century hospital, has opened my eyes on many points connected with nursing, and especially in regard to the setting forth in an appetizing way of the tray for an invalid.
“At breakfast, dinner and supper these trays were artistic creations of the highest order. One dinner tray was a study in golden greens and white as to china and food, with the needed touch of color given by wreathing the salver with racines of flowers in soft old pink, a flower whose old-fashioned name I could not remember, but whose color and fragrance took me back through more years than I care to count to a sweet, old New Jersey garden.
“There was a golden brown chop in a circle of riced potato; crisp, yellow-green lettuce leaves, ivory white at the base; strips of white and gluten bread spread with golden butter and piled log-cabin fashion on a pretty fluted dish of green and white china; pale green squash; a quivering mold of yellow custard and a pretty teapot in green and gold, with fragrant amber tea and a tiny pitcher of yellow, thick cream.