New menus to cheer the needy
EVEN in times of disaster Hong Kong people are fussy about what goes on the dinner table and, as a result, menus for those in need have been improved.
A set of menus offering more varieties of meat and vegetables than ever before is being offered to disaster victims by the Social Welfare Department.
Instead of providing boring canned sardines, the department's Kowloon kitchen now offers beef, pork, chicken and fish.
And the amount of meat per person has been recommended by government nutritionists, said the head of the kitchen in Shamshuipo, Leung Yiu-tong.
'Last year, we introduced a healthier and more attractive menu which sees less rice and oil, but more vegetables and meat,' he said.
The quantity of rice per person per meal has been reduced from 170 grams to 150 grams, and oil from 15 grams to five grams; whereas the amount of vegetables has increased from 113 grams per person per meal to 200 grams and meat from 84 grams to 113 grams.
'We found that Hong Kong people do not like eating rice very much,' Mr Leung said. 'They prefer more meat and vegetables cooked with less oil which is different from Vietnamese boat people who like fatty pork with chilli.' The 20-year-old kitchen is the territory's main base for providing emergency meals and relief articles such as blankets, mats, towels, toothbrushes and eating utensils to victims of typhoons, rainstorms, landslides and fires.
It also offers meals twice a day for Vietnamese boat people at Kai Tak transit centre and New Horizon departure centre, paid for by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Using 30 huge cooking pots, the kitchen can supply up to 62,000 meals a day and has storage capacity for 20,000 blankets and 10,000 mats.
Last year, it prepared more than 18,000 meals for local people and 348,000 for Vietnamese.
