Homecare: Meal Prepping For Your Parents: Where Do You Start?

Homecare: What is meal prepping?

It’s a process where you prepare meals or parts of meals at once to save time during the week. When you’re a family caregiver, meal prepping helps with time management on busier days. It also helps with portioning, helping to reduce food waste. Homecare services can help you with this.

Homecare: Meal Prepping

Create a Menu With Your Parents

The first step in any meal prepping plan is to determine what your parents want to eat. A corkboard is helpful. Find appealing recipes, print them out, and pin them to the board. Look for recipes that target your parents’ nutritional needs, such as high-fiber and low-sodium.

Once you have the week’s menu planned out, create a shopping list for any missing ingredients. Take your parents to the store to choose the brands and items that fit their preferences.

Prepare as Much as Possible

You’ve done the shopping. Back at your parents’ house, prepare as much as you can. Package up the proper portions as listed on each recipe. Fresh vegetables will last up to five days once they’re sliced up. If they’re frozen, they’ll last for months. Slice and package any meats that are needed for the different recipes. If they need to be marinated, freeze them in the marinade.

For recipes that include cooked rice or other grains, prepare them in advance. Portion them into reusable bags or containers and move everything to the freezer until it’s needed.

If recipes use a specific blend of spices, you can make the spice blend in advance. Mix the spices into butter, oil, wine, or stock and freeze that. It eliminates a step on the day you cook that meal.

Your goal is to have reusable bags and containers with the ingredients for meals, all sliced, diced, and ready to use. On the day you’re making that meal, thaw any frozen ingredients in the refrigerator. To cook the meal, you’re just taking out packages and following the recipe’s instructions.

Make Stocks and Bone Broth From Scratch

Many recipes call for bone broth or stock. Make these in large batches once a month and freeze them in cup-size portions. Keep the salt out and use fresh herbs and citrus juice for added flavor.

Chicken stock is one of the easiest to make. You have recipes that call for cooked chicken. Buy a roasting chicken or some bone-in chicken breasts. Cover them in water with fresh herbs, lemon, and pepper. Bring that to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer it for an hour or two.

Strain the chicken pieces from the broth. Let the broth cool. Remove the meat from the bones and store that separately.

Hire Home Care Aides to Cook Meals for Them

Home care assistance is another option. You want your parents to have hot meals throughout the week, but they cannot handle cooking now. Have home care aides go to your parents’ house and cook meals for them. Learn more about homecare assistance by talking to an expert in-home care.

If you or an aging loved one is considering hiring Homecare in East Quogue, NY, call the caring staff at Artful Home Care today at 631-685-5001.