Proposed Menu Format for Better
Interpretation
This probably should go to Mathew and
whoever types up the weekly menu, but it's also important to get the
opinions of Eskaton residents who are served by the menus. Click here to see a sample of a
proposed menu improvement.
My printer doesn’t handle legal size paper so I reproduced only the central five days of the seven day weekly menu. As things stand, a menu with photos can be done only when it’s too late, because the photos are of sample meals that have already been made. But since Mathew plans and produces meals on a repeating cycle, menus for the next cycle can be made with photos from the previous cycle. The need for new photos will taper off as we accumulate a library of meal photos. This example demonstrates that even though the printed pictures are small they are large enough to help residents interpret Mathew’s menu text. Without the sample meal to look at it’s very easy to misinterpret what Mathew had in mind when he wrote the text. Sometimes it’s obvious but, for me and others I’m sure, what the meal really is isn’t clear until I see the sample, or in this case the picture. The other important observation is that once a layout has been designed and produced, the whole process goes quickly. I would be happy to take the pictures and edit them into what you see here and work with one or two others to make sure someone is available to take pictures. A standard smart phone is suitable to do the job; I used my iPhone and uploaded pictures to my computer for processing. Finally, I decided that the evening meal is more important than lunch and has more components needing further explanation beyond the descriptive text. By concentrating on the evening meal I was able to fit all the current text for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus photos of both evening meal choices at the full width of the menu columns. I’ll continue taking photos and, if we decide to go ahead with this menu improvement, enlist one or two assistants to make sure we have full coverage. If EVGV doesn’t have a legal size color printer, it would be easy to send a PDF to a local printer to do the job for the same or reduced cost. I’ve used the copy center on East Main for similar work when I produced a wildflower booklet for the South Yuba River State Park at Bridgeport. I printed a few samples for those who would like to see the end product. I’ll drop a copy to Michele’s office. |