Maplewood team member’s contest entry adds Greek flavours to much-loved chicken

Chicken kebabs are a new twist on a much-loved favourite meal

Maplewood residents “love chicken,” so Emily Morewood, a team member in the nutritional care department at the Brighton, Ont. long-term care home, has created a Greek-style kebab that everyone enjoys.

The Greek kebab was also Emily’s submission to OMNI Health Care’s March Madness recipe challenge.

Emily says she came up with this recipe while looking for a new way to serve chicken to residents.

After a trial run serving her chicken kebab recipe for friends, she decided to bring the recipe to Maplewood.

“(I) recently tried these recipes while entertaining friends and knew they would be a hit,” Emily writes in her contest submission form.

Emily starts by making a marinade from olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, paprika, oregano, basil, thyme, garlic, salt, pepper and onion. She puts cubes of chicken thighs into this mixture and lets the meat rest in the refrigerator for two hours to absorb the flavours.

She then puts the chicken onto skewers between squares of onion and red pepper before cooking for about 10 minutes until the meat is at a temperature of 170 F.

Chris Weber, OMNI’s operations manager of nutrition and food service, says the March Madness contest, which saw 16 recipes compete in a bracket contest where votes were cast each week between April 14 and May 6, was close.

The winning entry was a Mediterranean omelette, created by Josephine Goddard at Country Terrace, which won “by a very thin margin,” Chris says.

OMNI launched the first annual March Madness recipe challenge in March in recognition of Nutrition Month in Canada.

Chris came up with the idea to encourage nutritional care managers and cooks to showcase their most-loved recipes and to highlight the high-quality meals served in OMNI homes.

Throughout March, nutritional care managers and cooks prepared their favourite meals, plated them and took photos that were sent to head office. The photos were accompanied by the name of each meal and its recipe.

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