A slice of Life After Fifty

By Madeline Mazak

Volunteers bustle around a small kitchen located inside the Life After Fifty West End Centre to feed an entire village.

The daily lunch program originally only ran on Fridays and now runs Monday through Friday to meet popular demand. Volunteers are the life force behind the program that provides home-cooked meals to the public.

Raymond Murphy, who has been a volunteer at the centre for six years, said the kitchen gives him a place to be creative and utilize his background as a trained Red Seal chef, pastry chef and baker.

“There’s a little community here,” said Murphy. “The membership says they really like that and they want more of that.”

The menu features a new $4 special every day. Some examples include chicken tacos, quiche, and even pancakes coming up on Fat Tuesday.

“We try to make it reasonable because people are on set incomes,” said Murphy. “It’s a reasonable price for students and the community when you can get lunch specials for $4. We’ve had students, community members and seniors come in. Next week with March break we’ll probably have some seniors bringing their grandchildren in.”

The LAF-To-Go program which is run out of the kitchen, has also experienced sweeping popularity among the members of the centre, as well as non-members. The program sells frozen ready-made meals Monday through Saturday.

Trudy Smith, who has been a volunteer cook for approximately 14 years, said people in the community definitely know about the program.

For $5 per to-go-meal, Smith said she sees some people come in every few weeks stocking up on close to $60 worth of frozen meals.

“It keeps me out of trouble,” said Smith while laughing. “I live with my daughter so I don’t get to cook at home anymore, and I like cooking.”

Volunteers want people to know that anyone can walk in and enjoy a home-cooked meal.

“I always love seeing new faces,” said Murphy. “That’s one of the things about the center is you always have new faces coming in.”