This story was first published as “Community Cookbook: Make Senior Center meatloaf with Dara Drury of Cape Girardeau” in the August 2025 issue of The Best Years.
Mondays through Fridays, Cape Senior Center kitchen manager and head cook Dara Drury feeds approximately 400 people in Cape Girardeau County, from Scott City to Whitewater to Delta to Cape Girardeau. She and her kitchen staff and volunteers also send out frozen meals to be delivered to older adults throughout the region for the weekends and holidays.
“I love it,” Drury says. “I love the feeling of being able to feed that many people. Food makes people happy. It just does.”
Drury arrives at the Senior Center at 6 a.m. each day, and her staff comes in at 7 and 8 a.m., to have meals prepared to feed 55 people at Scott City at 9 o’clock, to deliver meals to approximately 200 homes throughout Cape Girardeau County at 10:10 a.m. and to feed approximately 150 people in-person at the Senior Center in Cape Girardeau at 11 a.m.
Although it can be stressful, Drury says kitchen volunteers often remark about how time-oriented she is, which is a necessity when feeding so many people.
“Quantity cooking is a skill,” Drury says. “What helps me keep my sanity is being very organized. I have to be.”
Drury first learned to cook at her job at a hospital kitchen, where she started washing dishes at 16 years old. Within a couple of years of working at the hospital, she began cooking there on weekends throughout the remainder of her high school years and through college. After graduating from college where she studied education, she taught in public schools for nine years and then homeschooled her children for 11 years.
When she and her family moved to Cape Girardeau from Nebraska, she began working in the kitchen for Cape Girardeau Public Schools, where she worked for 13 years, working at the Cape Senior Center kitchen and a daycare kitchen during the summers.
Now, she has worked at the Cape Senior Center full-time for the past decade. With all of her experience, she says tasks like ordering the correct quantities of food and knowing how much to prepare come naturally to her.
What she enjoys most, however, is interacting with those she feeds and works with.
“Serving and getting to see the people, that’s my favorite part,” Drury says. “And we have great volunteers here, and I love working with them every day. We have a great staff.”
Drury says faith and family are the most important things to her, and outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her husband, three children and eight grandchildren, who range in age from 4 to 20 years old. She also loves to flower garden, read and craft, especially making T-shirts with her Cricut T-shirt maker.
Drury says the Cape Senior Center is known for their meatloaf; it’s a favorite among the people who come to the center. They serve it once a month and offer it as a second entrée option once a month.
Although she usually makes the meatloaf with 60 pounds of ground beef, she has cut the recipe down in order to share it here.
A recipe that was passed on to her when she started working at the Senior Center, it’s a staple for the community.
“Everybody says it’s the best in town,” Drury says.
Senior Center Meatloaf
Ingredients:
5 pounds ground beef
7 ounces quick oats
5 eggs
⅓ cup diced onion
⅓ cup diced celery
18 ounces tomato sauce
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
⅓ cup barbecue sauce
1½ teaspoons liquid smoke
Instructions:
Mix well.
Put in loaf pan.
Cover with foil.
If using a conventional oven, bake for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. If using a convection oven, bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees.
Uncover to brown for 15 minutes.
Needs to temp at 165 degrees.
Top with a mixture of ketchup and barbecue sauce to taste.
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