These ideas apply to any situation when you bring food to someone in need: a family in the midst of a move, an individual post-surgery, someone who has recently lost a loved one...
All photos are mine, but the pale blue links lead to the original recipes.
All photos are mine, but the pale blue links lead to the original recipes.
1: Don't assume you have to bring the meal at dinner time. Instead of arriving when everyone is already hungry, it might be more suitable to come right after nap-time or even in the morning.
2: If you are not the only one bringing a meal, consider contributing breakfast or lunch items instead. Any mealtime can be crazy time, but everyone still needs to eat. Muffins, hard boiled eggs, cheese sticks, pancakes, fruit, soup, sandwiches-- great choices to help make the whole day run smoothly.
3: Bring a pack of paper or foam plates along with your food items. Even the environmentally-conscious mom or the mom with a dishwasher, appreciates an easy meal clean-up during a time of stress or transition.
4: Deliver the meal in disposable containers or containers you don't need to be returned. You can purchase foil pans for less than $1 a piece, perfect for baking casseroles or cakes, and also large enough to transport slices of bread or a batch of muffins. I recently picked up 2 large plastic containers at Walmart, also $1 per container, each large enough to hold the contents of an entire pot of soup. I don't care if I see the containers again...and I still have my soup pot available for my own use!
5: Instead of a whole cake or an entire batch of cookies, bring a smaller portion of dessert. This is especially relevant if you are not the only person delivering a meal. While dinner leftovers can be reheated the next day, dessert leftovers sometimes spoil before they can all be eaten. And of course, if you deliver only part of the dessert you made, your own family can enjoy the surplus which is an added bonus!
6: If you don't like that idea, consider a dessert that doubles as breakfast, like muffins or a coffee cake.
Bonus tip: Get your kids involved! My kids love being involved, it helps to share the workload, plus it teaches servant-hood at an early age.
Do you have any tips for bringing a meal to a new mom?
Has anyone ever delivered a meal to you?
I would also add that if the mom has a big freezer, that bringing frozen meals ahead of the birth is awesome. Then she just has them whenever she needs them.
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