Together · 3 min · For caregivers
Eatingwhen you cannot cook
Food that takes no cooking, no planning and no washing up, for the weeks when you are feeding someone else first.
You are feeding someone else, badly or well, three times a day. Your own meals have become crackers eaten standing up, if they happen at all. Here is a way back.
The steps
Two small steps,in your own time.
Put together one plate right now with no cooking: something with protein, something that grew, something filling.
Eat it sitting down, with the person you care for if they are awake.
Lower the bar on purpose
Cooking is off the table for now. Say it out loud. The question is not what to cook but what to eat, and the answer should take under five minutes and one plate. A real meal is a bit of protein, something from a plant, and something filling. It does not have to be hot or arranged.
Eggs, boiled in a batch on Sunday, peeled in the fridge. Tinned fish on toast. Cheese and an apple. Hummus and whatever will carry it. Yoghurt with nuts. A rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, pulled apart over three days. Soup from a carton, heated in a mug. Frozen vegetables, microwaved, with butter and salt. None of this is cooking, and all of it is food.
Make the kitchen do the remembering
Put the things you will actually eat at eye level in the fridge. Keep a bowl of fruit where you walk past it. Stock the freezer with meals that go from frozen to table in ten minutes, and do not feel anything about that. A caregiver's freezer full of ready meals is a well-run freezer.
If people offer to bring food, say yes, and say what: things that freeze in portions, things that can be eaten cold, things in containers they do not want back.
Eat at the same time as them
When you make their meal, make yours. Same tray, two plates, even if theirs is three mouthfuls and yours is toast. Sitting down together is one of the five practices of this house, and it does two jobs here: you eat, and you are company for someone whose appetite has gone. Your eating often helps theirs.
Drink water
Caregivers forget to drink more than they forget to eat. A full bottle by the kettle in the morning, empty by evening. Headaches, fog and irritability are often thirst wearing a disguise.
About their food
If the person you care for has lost their appetite, do not fight it with big plates. Small portions, often, warm, soft, familiar. What they liked as a child often works when nothing else does. Keep notes in the week book of what went down well. The care team can advise on the rest, and a dietitian is a proper ask if weight is dropping.
No guilt
Some days it will be crackers. That is a crackers day, not a failure. Tomorrow has eggs in it.
WE · TRIBE
Try itwith someone.
Tell one person you are trying this today, and ask if they would like to do it with you. Small things done side by side are easier to keep.
Try it today
Today, try: boil six eggs and put them in the fridge, and eat one with something green before the day gets away from you.
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