By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Mennonite Friendship Communities are holding their tenth Liverwurst and Fried Mush dinner fundraiser on Friday.
"Both products would come out of the area where people would, in butchering, use every part of the animal," said Lowell Peachey, President and CEO at Mennonite Friendship Communities. "Liverwurst comes from, after you're done butchering, you take all the cuts of meat off, you cook the bones down, then once it's all cooked, pick the meat off of the bones, grind it up add special spices and lard. Of course, in those days, you'd have had freshly rendered lard from butchering. Then you make this kind of crumbly mix of meat that's called liverwurst."
The Fried Mush is cooked with great care, as well.
"We make ours gluten-free," said Peachey. "We make it into a loaf and then it's sliced and fried. We have a couple of guys, Joe Yoder and Leroy Hershberger from the community here who actually built a whole trailer that has, I think, ten or twelve fryers in it. They use laser temperature to get the oil just perfect temperature. They've really created a system where they can create very uniform golden brown fried mush."
The event is an important fundraiser for Mennonite Friendship Communities.
"We probably have well over 50% of the folks who live in our nursing home who are receiving Medicaid funds to help support them," Peachey said. "Without getting into a lot of those details, I think when we started back in the 1970s, we expected maybe 10 or 15% of the people who would live in our community would be receiving assistance and now it's grown to well over 50%. I think, in the state of Kansas over 50% of nursing home residents need Medicaid assistance. Medicaid is a cost reimbursement program. Talking to some folks yesterday, I said, they pretend to reimburse us for our costs and we pretend to appreciate it. The issue is, it really doesn't cover our costs, and so there's a gap between our private pay rates and the Medicaid rate. Part of the endowment fund goes to offset some of those costs."
The facility also has a few charity cases that are paid through the endowment, as well. The Liverwurst and Fried Mush dinner fundraiser is from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Journey @ Yoder one mile north of Yoder on Yoder Road. The meal is by freewill donation to benefit the Continuing Care Endowment Fund at Mennonite Friendship Communities.